(Comment I posted to the W3C Patent Policy Comments list. -- Seth)
Standards are language.
They are the code by which we communicate.
They are means, not ends.
They are a medium. They are a foundation.
They are universals.
The choice the W3C faces as it considers instituting a new policy allowing for patented Internet protocols must be made perfectly clear.
You can either allow restrictions in W3C communications standards, or not.
Unfortunately, we now find the W3C standing at the precipice of an old, inchoate rift that has been carried for some years within the developer community -- even though that rift is of very different origin than the question which the W3C faces today as it considers patents in relation to communications standards. All that is under discussion is the prevention of restrictions from being imposed -- what copyleft happens to also be geared to accomplish. In the present context, we are talking essentially about the freedom of the universal language which W3C standards currently represent. Preventing those restrictions can be accomplished in a very different way here, through a policy for web standards that makes this clear.
This is the choice the W3C confronts, as some have sought to have recourse to the incorporation of patents within W3C standards, and to having the W3C sanction that notion.
The W3C is today free and knows it may stand for the essential principles that Internet standards embody, as the foundation by which information and communications technology serve the advancement of humanity.
Please do not endorse the introduction of patents into the information technologies that serve as the basis for worldwide communication and allow us to apply these standards in our everyday lives. The "field of use" provision would enable restrictions to be imposed on exactly this. This provision should be regarded as an unfortunate stipulation that has inadvertently been added to the policy over the course of a discussion that must have been just as unsettling as many other disputes have been in the technology arena in recent years. But here we are talking about the W3C, about the communications standards that define the web, and about the promises for which this universal foundation provide.
Standards are the code by which we communicate.
They are means, not ends.
They are universals.
They are language.
Seth Johnson