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W3C Looking for More Patent Feedback
KjetilK writes: "The World Wide Web Consortium has posted a response to public comments it received. Part of the response is that the review period is extended to 11 October 2001. Continue to submit elaborate comments to the proposed policy, and make sure that the points made by the W3C are specifically addressed. Also, read the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ."
Given that now they have extended their feedback period, take the time to let them know that this is *BAD*. However, please take a few minutes to create an intelligent response rather than firing off an "This sucks, you are all corrupt idiots" type comment.
Also, read the already posted comments. There are many well thought out replies that nicely summarize *why* this is bad; I would certainly recommend reading Alan Cox's post which presents some very good arguments against this. I personally don't think I have anything fundamentally new to add (+ I only found out about the opportunity to comment after the original deadline) but I am planning to post a comment stating my view that this proposal is fundamentally flawed and refer to other comments which I agree with.
Above all, let them know that there is a *huge* number of people out there who value open standards and don't care to play the 'You need IP protection in order to stimulate research' game (as was stated/posted by some MSFT drone).
We have enough boring shopping malls already; we don't need to turn the internet into another one when it could be much more and be a truly open medium.
* may be conditioned on payment of reasonable, non-discriminatory royalties or fees;
Yeah,
just like some company, which created a new technology with a nice pricing policy and at least one well known founder.
One wonders if they have a patent pending.
John Gilmore addressed this with an excellent submission (this guy is now officialy my hero - I want to be John Gilmore when I grow up :-).
He makes the point that the IETF is actively moving away from RAND and towards RF. W3C appears to be going backwards.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
This is the letter I sent. I considered saying "RAND SUCKS, you are EVIL, and W3 is a PUPPET of M$!!!!!" but this seemed more appropriate, true, and likely to be considered intelligently.
The Working Draft was brought to my attention today, so please excuse what has been a rather hasty reading of the document. I applaud your efforts to have a clear process for discovering and handling patents as part of the W3 Process. However, I have some serious disagreements with the RAND licensing terms. The problem with RAND as it is currently written is that it does not allow for open source implementations.
As a developer, I find open source tools to often be the most important ones I bring to a project. This is due to the ease with which they can be evaluated and brought into a project as well as the guarantee that I will be able to deploy them no matter what happens to the creator of the tools. They also place an unchanging floor on the deployment cost of that component and allow me to deploy without waiting for license negotiations to finish. In particular, Apache.org is usually the first place I and my coworkers go when we need third-party software. It is valuable to be able to prototype all parts on Linux and deploy on Linux, Solaris or Windows, depending on my client's needs.
While I recognize the argument that RAND is tolerable for application layer services, I have to disagree. When I'm writing an application, I use components at all levels. Application layer software has a tendency to creep into server software for various purposes. For example, a graphics reader may be needed to convert an image to a different format or to modify the image.
I am also concerned about developing standards which are usable world-wide. Users in many parts of the world do not have the money to pay for commercial software. Many countries do not have the legal infrastructure to enforce patent laws. Open source software allows them to be first-class citizens on the World Wide Web, both as content producers and consumers. It can also allow them to localize software. If all the software which uses a particular W3 standard is produced by a few primarily American companies, many languages and cultures will be shut out because localization wouldn't be cost effective. This makes the standard less of a world-wide standard and more of an industry consortium.
I recommend one of the following changes:
1. Explicitly spell out the situations under which a RAND license is acceptable. I think the license is acceptable when all components have RF alternatives. For example, a PNG file may be written or read using RAND algorithms-- and the best compression algorithms may even be proprietary-- but PNG files can be written using RF algorithms, while RF PNG readers can read any PNG file.
2. Require that all RAND licenses allow anyone to create a royalty-free open source implementations of the Recommendation, or to release an implementation under such a license.
My second recommendation is probably the more workable. Commercial, closed-source software would still require license payments. By using a restrictive license such as GPL, patent holders could maximize the use of royalty-paying implementations. It would, for example, allow me to prototype my software with a GPL-based library but only sell it using a commercial library. Care must be taken, however, to make sure that the licenses RAND would allow are truly open source and compatible with other open source software.
Again, I thank you for your efforts to make a sound, workable patent policy and wish you luck.
David Leppik
However, certain technologies have been standardized, mostly in cooperation with IETF, but there is also a ISO version of HTML, so HTML is a standard. ISO-HTML is even stricter than W3C's HTML 4.01 Strict.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7373745.html
"The W3C proposal is backed by some of the largest technology makers in the industry. The working group that developed the proposal includes a who's who of technology: Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Apple, AT&T, IBM, ILOG, Nortel Networks, The Open Group, Reuters and Sun Microsystems, along with W3C affiliates."
I work for one of the companies above, and I was a bit upset to see its name attached to all this. I found out who the person collaborating on that document is and called them up. It was interesting to chat with them and find out what exactly the above paragraph means.
The representative of my company to the W3C didn't really seem aware of the backlash until after I told him about it. He stated that he was simply participating in this in an advisory role, not really strongly backing or opposing the proposal. This seems different from what the CNET article says: "The W3C proposal is backed by some of the largest technology makers in the industry."
He simply said that my company's patent lawyers compared this new W3C policy to the policies of other standards group my company's regularly involved in, such as the ITU, and commented that this is similar. Since my company is used to working with ITU and other big standards bodies, they did not find it strange that this W3C proposal is similar to their policies. And that seemed to be the extent of their involvement, they're basically an observer, strictly in an advisory role, he didn't describe us as a "backer".
The statement:
"The W3C proposal is backed by some of the largest technology makers in the industry. The working group that developed the proposal includes a who's who of technology"
... seems grossly overblown and unnecessarily alarming to me after speaking to a person who actually represents one of these companies. Reading that paragraph it seems like a vast corporate conspiracy is supporting this.
On the other hand, he told me that "RAND" is not defined in this W3C proposal any more than in most other standards bodies, and there, the definition is left up in the air and disputes are often settled in court. In addition, the participant I spoke to said that the issue of someone failing to disclose a pattent is a touchy subject right now at the W3C, so I take it there are not clear rules on that. My obvious personal recommendation is that RAND be clearly defined, and that failures to disclose patents be "punished" by making the standard RF.
The problem seems to me more like a lack of precision rather than deliberate foul-play. Speaking of, my company's representative said that this proposal has been posted since August, and not kept secret like some suggested.
If anyone here also works for one of these companies, you may want to call up your own representative, for interest's sake.