Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy

[Toni Mueller]

Hi,

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 04:09:32PM +0100, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
> With respect to a Recommendation developed under this policy, a W3C
> Royalty-Free license shall mean a non-assignable, non-sublicensable
> license to make, have made, use, sell, have sold, offer to sell,
> import, and distribute and dispose of implementations of the
> Recommendation that:
> 
> [...]
> 
> 3. may be limited to implementations of the Recommendation, and
>to what is required by the Recommendation;

before having read the whole draft:

To me this passage implies that the new policy allows for patents
to go into a standard that would only shift the battlefield by
restricting Open Source implementations of those standards to the
required parts while being forced to leave out the optional parts
a standard may have unless you want to fall under those royalty
claims.

Is this an oversight, am I just reading it wrong, or what the heck
should agreeing to such a clause buy us? I just expect new standards
under this rule to have lots of optional features and a two class
system of applications which only conform to the minimal set, and
those which implement the "full" standard.


Best,
--Toni++


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy

[Francis Whittle]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 2002.12.31 13:44 Bruce Perens wrote:

There's a long discussion below. I'm asking you to do something once
you
read that discussion: Please write to
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
and tell them something like this (please elaborate - everyone
discounts
rubber-stamp comments):

	To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
	Subject: Approve of draft policy - disapprove of software
patenting.

	I request that W3C approve the draft patent policy, because
it's a
	compromise that protects the right of Open Source / Free
Software
	programmers to implement W3C standards.

	I object to software patents, and support efforts to eliminate
them
	at the legislative level.


I hope no-one just went forth and did this

The current draft policy is available at 
http://www.w3.org/TR/patent-policy/
I implore that you all read it before doing anything like the above.
Do take into account everything disccused in the original mail, but
importantly make your own decision.

I'm not suggesting it's in any way wrong (I haven't read the draft
myself yet, and haven't made a decision), but it *is* important in a
democracy such as this that every man reads all the evidence before
making their desicion.

Francis Whittle
PGP public key: http://users.freewebhost.ws/fudje/pgp-key-public
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 


iD8DBQE+EddLY/r9JRihTD0RAnQlAKC7Bt0jXMCfFI6x9c1apgsp6zOsTACeJXTX
GCSgxaIY2XlGTMxN2Soen0s=
=jsvw
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 06:44:08PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:

 > The code that makes use of the patented principle must be under the
 > MIT license, which allows a scope-limited patent license.

 You are asking us to support a proposal that goes against point 6 of
 the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

 From http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-patent-policy-20021114/#def-RF>

With respect to a Recommendation developed under this policy, a W3C
Royalty-Free license shall mean a non-assignable, non-sublicensable
license to make, have made, use, sell, have sold, offer to sell,
import, and distribute and dispose of implementations of the
Recommendation that:

[...]

3. may be limited to implementations of the Recommendation, and
   to what is required by the Recommendation;

-- 
Marcelo


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

A letter to the W3C (was: Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy)

[Emile van Bergen]

Hi,

On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 06:44:08PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:

[SNIP]
> Please write to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and tell them
> something like this (please elaborate - everyone discounts
> rubber-stamp comments):
> 
>   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>   Subject: Approve of draft policy - disapprove of software patenting.
> 
>   I request that W3C approve the draft patent policy, because it's a
>   compromise that protects the right of Open Source / Free Software
>   programmers to implement W3C standards.
> 
>   I object to software patents, and support efforts to eliminate them
>   at the legislative level.

Below you'll find the letter I sent, anybody, feel free to reuse bits
and pieces as necessary.

And thanks,


Bruce,

for the good work, even though it feels somewhat as a phyrric victory.

===

Dear sir, madam,

This is to inform you that as an independent software developer and
computer services provider, I reluctantly support the W3C draft policy
regarding patents in W3C standards, because it preserves some of the
ability of developers of Free Software / Open Source software to
implement W3C standards.

However, I strongly persist that the right to implement internet
standards should never become a limited, tradeable right, affordable
only to corporations whose business model works by restricting the use
on their work and collecting a fee for every distributed copy of their
implementations, so that per-copy patent royalties can be paid.

The Free Software (free as in speech; also sometimes referred to as Open
Source, which is similar) companies such as RedHat and SuSE have proven
that viable commercial business models exist for software development
that do not rely on collecting per-copy revenues or on otherwise
forcibly restricting the use or distribution of their products.

Those models, built on providing services and support using jointly
produced tools, allows people and small companies that do not have the
infrastructure or wish to restrict the use or distribution of their
work to provide the market with useful software, making a good living
in the process.

Programming, more than any other area of engineering, is a discipline
in which individual people and groups that are not necessarily organised
around shareholder-driven enterprise, can be extremely fruitful, to the
benefit of the computing public at large.

Especially in the world of internet software, where all software that
runs the infrastructure ultimately serves to allow as many people as
possible to share the information they wish to share -- a concept that
often conflicts with the desire to control and to raise toll booths, as
necessarily present in shareholder-driven organisations -- does Free
Software form a large part of the few viable, truly interoperable
products that build this infrastructure.

For some reason, commercial products seem to be only temporarily
successful in the internet arena, where the most interoperable and the
most versatile software is preferred. Only a monopoly that can use its
strength in other markets to leverage less interoperable and less
flexible internet software, can conquer any significant piece of this
market with proprietary, single source, controlled use software.

How many proprietary webservers have any market share, other than
Microsoft IIS? How many proprietary DNS implementations? How many
successful proprietary internet mail servers? 

And how many standards for transmitting information that are patent-
encumbered at the software level actually receive any use? ASCII, HTML
and HTTP would have been spectacular failures if the ecosystem of
software components that implement these standards would have been
limited in development due to patents held by commercial entities,
necessarily driven by short term monetary interests, as every company
must ultimately work in the interests of its shareholders.

I strongly object to any legal instrument wielded by groups
that are ultimately driven only to achieve the highest possible return
on investment to restrict the availability of human knowledge and the
freedom to share and work in common interests, except where it brings
more knowledge and more freedom to share. 

Copyright laws may have been such an exception, where some restriction
ultimately produces more -- at least before the DMCA and before the
extension of its time period -- and perhaps the same can be said for
patents. However, patents on internet software can not be seen, not by
any stretch of the imagination, as having been net-productive for the
internet industry or the public.

It is therefore a big mistake in my opinion, for a standards body that
works in the collective interest of the internet community and
everything that it produces, commercially and non-commercially, to
propagate patent-encumbered standards, regardless of license conditions. 

The most flourishing segment of internet software is produced by groups
and individuals that cannot and do not want to 

Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy

[Michael D. Crawford]

Bruce,

Numerous people have posted to the slashdot discussion comments that complain 
that the W3C comment submission software is rejecting their comments because 
clicking the validation link in the confirmation email doesn't work.  It 
appears to be a bug in the W3C's mail server software.  You should look into 
that, and perhaps try to get the comment period extended so people can resubmit 
their comments.

I thought some about the license workaround that you say Eben Moglen suggested, 
and I don't think it's workable.  The allowance for linking to libraries that 
have other licenses that are GPL compatible is meant for allowing GPL'ed code 
to draw upon non-GPL'ed work.

Your workaround doesn't address the case where the new code was created 
specifically for the purpose of making an existing GPL'ed work compliant with a 
web standard.

There is an accellerated plain-file-only accellerated HTTP server in the Linux 
kernel for example.  Suppose I wanted to upgrade the Linux kernel's HTTP server 
to support some new standard, wrote the code in compliance with the W3C's 
patent policies, but licensed my modification to the Linux kernel with the MIT 
license instead of the GPL.  If I distributed my work, even with source, I 
would be in violation of the kernel's GPL and ever kernel developer would have 
standing to sue me because I didn't license my addition to the kernel with the GPL.

Regards,

Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy

[Michael D. Crawford]

Bruce,

I understand your argument, but I have also read the FSF's argument at:

http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/w3c-patent.html

If, as you say, the holders of patents took their toys to play elsewhere rather 
than participating in the W3C standards process, this might actually have some 
benefit.

1. The patent holders wouldn't get their patents stamped with the W3C seal of 
approval.

2. Nothing that can legitimately claim to be a web standard would be encumbered 
in any way by a patent.

Of course #2 only applies to the extent that the W3C maintains its reputation 
as being the one true source of legitimate web standards.

I acknowledge that the patent holders might get a standard issued with all sort 
of encumbrances by some other body.  But encumbered standards happen all the 
time.  I think there is some safety in the knowledge that Free Software would 
not get written that uses the patents, and that would help the encumbered 
standards to fail.

After reflecting on it for a little while, I feel it is better for Free 
Software that implements a restrictive patent not to exist at all than to exist 
with the encumbrances the proposed policy would require.  There are other 
things people can do with their computers, things for which patent-free Free 
Software would spring up, thus assisting the market failure of the patents. 
That might not be the case if there were Free Software that implemented a patent.

Respectfully,

Mike Crawford

--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy

[Bruce Perens]

To All Members of the Free Software and Open Source Community,

For the past two years, I've been working on the W3C patent policy on
your behalf, to make it safe for Free Software to implement W3C standards.
Now, I'm worried that we could lose that fight, not because of the patent
holders, but because of our own community.

There's a long discussion below. I'm asking you to do something once you
read that discussion: Please write to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
and tell them something like this (please elaborate - everyone discounts
rubber-stamp comments):

To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Approve of draft policy - disapprove of software patenting.

I request that W3C approve the draft patent policy, because it's a
compromise that protects the right of Open Source / Free Software
programmers to implement W3C standards.

I object to software patents, and support efforts to eliminate them
at the legislative level.

Now, to the discussion.

Three representatives of the Free Software / Open Source community:
myself, Larry Rosen of the Open Source Initiative, and Eben Moglen of
the Free Software Foundation, worked on the W3C patent policy for two
years. We spent between 1/8 and 1/4 of our time on the project for all
of that time, participating in many face-to-face meetings and conference
calls. Across the table were some companies that, I feel, wanted to
"farm" their own patents in W3C standards and would have erected
lucrative "toll-booths" to collect royalties from every implementor of
web standards. If they had their way, we would have been locked
out.

We got you the best deal we could get. It's not everything we want,
and it can't be.

The proposed W3C patent policy grants a royalty-free right for everyone
to practice patents that are embedded in the standard by W3C members who
own those patents. It prevents "patent farming", the biggest problem
that faced us. The problem is that the right is limited - it only
applies to code that actually implements the standard. This is called a
"field-of-use" limitation. The problem for the Free Software community
is that other uses of the patent in our code would be covered by royalties.

I object to software patents entirely, and most of you do as well. Why,
then, did I (on your behalf) approve of a policy containing that
limitation, and why am I asking you to support it?

The answer is simple. Patent holders won't continue their membership
in W3C if that membership forces them to give up their patent rights
for non-standards-related applications. They will instead move their
standards-making activities to other organizations that allow them to
charge patent royalties on the standards. And we will have lost.

It comes down to what we can compel people to do, and what they won't
stand for. The patent holders want the W3C brand on their standards,
and will give up something for that. If we ask them to give up more,
they'll do without the W3C brand, and we have no way to control what
standards organization they move to. If we wish to fight software patents
outside of standards, I think our only choice is to do so at the legislative
level.

The field-of-use limitation presents special problems regarding the GPL,
because the GPL disallows a field-of-use-limited patent license. There is a
work-around for this. The code that makes use of the patented principle
must be under the MIT license, which allows a scope-limited patent
license. That may be linked into GPL code and distributed. I'm less than
comfortable with this, but my discomfort arises from the basic injustice
of software patents. A work-around is the best we can do in this case.

FSF, by its tenets, was bound to protest the field-of-use-limitation.
I respect that protest, as it is rooted an a belief that I share - that
software patents are fundamentally wrong.  However, if the Free Software /
Open Source community comes out against the W3C patent policy, and the
patent holders who want unlimited rights to charge royalties come out
against it, just who will speak for it? The result will be that W3C
will fail to give final approval to the policy, and we will not even have
the limited protection from software patents that we've won. Thus, I
have to ask you _not_ to do what FSF asks this time. Of course, this
disagreement does not diminish my respect of FSF, and I will continue
to work with them as I have on many projects for years.

Thus, I'd like you to write that email now. Thanks!

As always, please feel free to call me to discuss this at 510-526-1165
(California time) or write me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] .

Thanks

Bruce Perens


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]