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Act Now To Sidestep A W3C Patent Pitfall

Posted by timothy on from the this-is-not-the-santa-clause dept.

Jay Sulzberger, Corresponding Secretary of LXNY (New York's Free Computing Organization) writes with a report on the ongoing fight over patents in Web standards. "In the past two years the Free Software Movement has moved W3C, the Official Standards Body of the World Wide Web, from a proposed patent policy, which would have, in future, denied us our present right to full and free use of free software to build the Web, to a policy intended to guarantee that free software may be used without fear of patent encumbrances. This move is an important victory for us. But the present proposed policy on patents has a bug that is worth fixing. The mechanism of the bug is non-obvious, except to people who have studied the GPL and certain other free software licenses. It is a bug that, if the proposal is made an official standard, would allow for patent encumbrances to be laid on certain free software in circumstances where today no encumbrance is allowed." Read the rest of Jay's commentary (below) on this devil in the details.

Here is what the Free Software Foundation says on its front page about this bug:

"The W3C 'Royalty-Free' patent policy proposal does not protect the rights of the Free Software community to full participation in the implementation and extension of web standards. Please read more on this issue and send a comment to the W3C."

Part of the effort that moved the W3C to its present position was a furious outpouring of comments in opposition to the original proposal of the Englobulators:

The fix needed right now is a small fix. But the W3C must again be reminded with what jealous vigor we guard our right to build our Web the way we have built it down to this day, using free software. The bug appears in Item 3 of Section 3, titled 'W3C Royalty-Free (RF) Licensing Requirements,' of the present proposal.

This Item allows for a supposedly free grant to use a patent to be so restricted that a piece of Web infrastructure software might be encumbered if used for some non-Web use. Since the GPL does not allow such encumbrancing, GPL-ed Web software re-purposed for non-Web use could not be legally freely redistributed. Please read the Free Software Foundation's page on this bug.

Here is the official Last Call for Comments.

If you write a comment in your own words, for repair of the bug, it will help. I shall write in, and I shall argue against adoption of the buggy sub-section. I shall also suggest an extension of the deadline for comments.

4 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Oy Slashdot! by The+Bungi · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This sudden interest in the W3C and open standards and unencumbered software and patent free and, etc. etc. is quite interesting.

    Considering you intentionally block the W3C validator

    I can't help but think that's about the stupidest thing /. has ever done (though I may be wrong). I mean, what's the point? Lame jokes about the crappy output of your Perl scripts got you down? How about fixing it instead??

  2. Re:GPL is the bug. by XaXXon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Jesus christ..

    I hate being Mr-RMS-protector and GPL-Anti-Basher, but the amount of bad "information" and people throwing completely unrelated things around infuriates me.

    As some others have tried to say, this has nothing to do with the GPL putting the idea in some sort of "forced distribution" form as the author of the original comment would have you believe.

    The GPL doesn't put restrictions on the distribution of ideas, only their implementations.

    Here's an analogy as I see it:

    Say I'd patented the idea of drawing pictures on a computer screen, and up until now the web (and computers in general) were only text base. Yes I'm stretching, but go with me for a second. I want to put pictures in a W3C standard, but I don't want to give up my right to charge money for my one-handed picture-viewing slideshow program. I submit it to the W3C standard and say "It's okay for people to use my patented idea for free for web applications." Now someone goes and makes a graphics-enabled web browser and distributes it under the GPL. Someone else then takes that GPL code and turns it into a GPL'd one-handed slideshow program -- a right the GPL affords them. Suddenly they are in violation of my patent. But the original author of the graphical web browser didn't break my patent, and the person who modified it into the slideshow program didn't disobey the license on the web browser..

    And that's the problem being addressed as I see it. Note how it has nothing to do with the GPL "virally infecting" the patented idea?

    Next time, read the article (and perhaps the GPL) before getting on your little pedastal. Thank you, please drive thru.

  3. Re:Rationale for NOT submitting a comment: by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The right place to make a stink is with governments. We've gotten the best policy that we can get from W3C without having the members walk off to another organization that lets them do what they want with their patents. I worked on this policy for two years (somewhere between 1/4 and 1/8 time), along with Larry Rosen of OSI and Eben Moglen of FSF, and got the best deal I could for the community. Let's please not blow it.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  4. Making a stink with the government by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There are a number of points I would make with any government that will listen. They aren't necessarily standard-specific. They are:

    • Many issued US software patents have significant prior art that should invalidate them
    • Patents are supposed to describe the invention. Many of them are poorly written or are deliberately written to be obtuse or over-general, and thus fail to describe the invention. Try reading some of them.
    • The 20-year term is too long for the software industry, in that there is no quid-pro-quo for the public - a patent is no longer useful by the time it enters the public domain.
    • Is mathematics discovered or invented? Isn't software mathematics? Is mathematics really not an invention, and rather a discovery of the way the world works? In other words, should the patent belong to the Deity who created the mathematics of the universe (tabling argument regarding whether or there's a deity or the universe just happened).
    • Isn't software just an application of the general-purpose computer, which is old enough to be unpatentable?

    I could write more, but you get the picture.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.