A letter to the W3C (was: Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy)
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 control the
Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy
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 URL: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]
Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy
-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 http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/ 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
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]
Re: Please Help Pass W3C Patent Policy
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]
