[Patents] W3C: Public review of Patent Policy Framework Last Call

[dmarti@zgp.org (Don Marti)]

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.

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