W3C (www.w3c.org) has just released the Last Call Working Draft of its patent policy (http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-patent-policy-20021114) for "Last Call" review.
Some of you may remember that an earlier draft of that policy provided for the possible payment of "reasonable and non-discriminatory" (RAND) royalties in order to practice W3C specifications. That dreadful prospect is no longer in the policy. The draft policy now provides that all patents necessary to implement W3C specifications must be "royalty-free" (RF). If this draft is adopted by W3C, all specifications published by W3C can be implemented by anyone, anywhere, without payment of royalties. This is a major victory for open source. The open source community was represented on the Patent Policy Working Group by Eben Moglen, Bruce Perens and Larry Rosen. The community now needs to be heard supporting this policy so that it is not undone during the public input and W3C Advisory Council phase. Address your comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED] We hope that this RF policy will be adopted by other standards organizations around the world. /Larry Rosen -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
