- From: <coriordan@compsoc.com>
- Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 01:08:22 +0000
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Hello. As a computer programmer, I would first like to thank you for your proposed Royalty Free patents policy. Next I must point out a remaining problem. Your draft policy only requires patents to be made available royalty-free for a specified "field of use". This can create a situation whereby I may use your standards in only one area of computer science thus restricting my freedom to write software. The software (and documentation) that I write is released as Free Software (under the GNU GPL). My hope is create software that everyone can use for any purpose be they wealthy or not. In order to write Free Software I must avoid the use of patent restricted technologies. To allow me, and the thousands (or millions?) of Free Software programmers to continue writing software that makes use of the best technologies, please consider ammending the draft to require all patents to be royalty-free without restriction. Thank you. Ciaran O'Riordan
Received on Monday, 25 November 2002 20:10:09 UTC