Mahesh T Pai wrote: > > > 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] > > Will you please explain that? I mean what is likely to happen to > 'undo' the achievements. > > Also, please clarify in what way you expect further support from the > community. (may be, you can tell us a point or two we should tell the > W3C).
Here's a bit from Eben Moglen that might offer some insight. The final vote was contentious, with some as-yet-unnamed participant(s) raising the question of how they could resign from the Patent Policy Working Group. See the very nondescript "minutes" here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2002Nov/0000.html Seth Johnson -------- Original Message -------- Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2002 10:25:19 -0500 From: Eben Moglen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reporting on the W3C for our community raises complex issues for those of us who are invited experts on the PPWG. The group is "member confidential," which means that there's an agreement not to go beyond the public minutes and documents in public statements. But member organizations, of course, assume that they can internally discuss matters at any level of detail they like. Larry Rosen, Bruce Perens and I have been somewhat constrained in what we can say to what is, after all, the equivalent of our organization. With that in mind, I can say that the final decision for an RF-only policy is highly controversial within the WG, which did not reach consensus and which resolved that large question, and several smaller issues, on relatively close votes. Member organizations that disagree with the policy are preparing their formal objections and their presentations to the Advisory Committee. Among the strongest arguments they present is that even a policy requiring technical Working Group members, or even all W3 members, to make their patent claims available RF cannot prevent third-party patents from encumbering standards, and that an organization that can make effective standards must have some method for dealing with the incorporation of patented technology. Therefore, they say, work will simply be done elsewhere than in the W3, and some have gone so far as to say that they think the value of their W3C membership should be reconsidered. A subtext in that discussion is an issue, occasionally heated, about whether the W3C is the creature of its members only, or whether it has a broader public interest to serve, and if so how the activities of the staff and the Director should be understood to serve that public interest. This is perfectly legitimate politics within the W3C itself, which must decide through the votes of its members what to do with the recommendations of the PPWG. It is relevant to the recognition that even the proposed RF policy, which is not everything that the free software movement sought to achieve by any means, is an unstable and controversial deal that may yet fall apart. C-FIT Community Discussion List List Parent: [EMAIL PROTECTED] C-FIT Home: http://RealMeasures.dyndns.org/C-FIT To Subscribe/Unsubscribe: ------------------------------------------------------------ Send "[Un]Subscribe C-FIT_Community" To [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3