From dmarti@zgp.org  Mon Aug 27 02:56:18 2001
From: dmarti@zgp.org (Don Marti)
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 18:56:18 -0700
Subject: [Patents] W3C: Public review of Patent Policy Framework Last Call
In-Reply-To: <20010826220401.A26231@avendo.de>
Message-ID: <20010826185618.A5083@zgp.org>

begin Holger Blasum quotation of Sun, Aug 26, 2001 at 10:04:01PM +0200:

> http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-patent-policy-20010816/
> 
> For a layman, it seems to be quite balanced, but I am wondering what 
> "reasonable, non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing terms"
> eventually mean for open-source software. 

It's pretty weak language, and in practice, it means that patent
holders can set license minimums high enough to shut out any
developer organization under a certain size.

Bad news for small-scale proprietary software developers as well as
for most types of "Open Source" organizations.

-- 
Don Marti      What do we want?  Free Dmitry!  When do we want it?  Now! 
http://zgp.org/~dmarti                      Free Dmitry: http://eff.org/
dmarti@zgp.org      Free the web, burn all GIFs: http://burnallgifs.org/        


