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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.

2 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Gee by unterderbrucke · · Score: 0, Troll

    The lady from the Free Software movement is trying to say that the W3C wouldn't allow free software used any more. I doubt it, but too bad I can't read the article since it's filled with still more doublespeak.

  2. WWW and the GNU GPL by Milo+Fungus · · Score: 1, Troll

    It's interesting to think that Tim Berners-Lee at one time was pushing CERN to release all of the code for the World Wide Web (like http and html) under the GPL. He explains in Weaving the Web that some of the vendors seeking to capitalize on the Web (like Netscape) were concerned about the viral nature of the GPL. How much different would the web (and the world) be if the Web were part of the GNU project instead of in public domain? (I realize that releasing under GPL does not make a project part of GNU, but if the Web were GPL'd, would anyone use it outside of GNU?)

    I think GNU is great, but I'm really glad the Web is what it is.