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Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2002 10:25:19 -0500
To: seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org
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Subject: Re: W3C Patent Policy "Minutes" for 10/28 Meeting
In-Reply-To: Seth Johnson's message of Sat, 09 Nov 2002 09:30:53 -0500
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From: Eben Moglen <moglen@columbia.edu>
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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.


