ZDNet: Beware of the Internet Toll Booth

"The penultimate step in a yearlong battle over patents on Internet standards came last week, when the World Wide Web Consortium Patent Policy Board voted to recommend a royalty-free policy.

"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) draft recommendation has not yet been published. After public comments are solicited, the draft will be presented to the organization's director, Tim Berners-Lee, and an advisory board representing all of the consortium members. Large patent-holding companies may present a dissenting minority report, but Berners-Lee and the board are likely to approve the royalty-free proposal.

"As one of the three representatives of open source and free software on the patent policy board, I welcome the new recommendation. Developers of the Apache Web server, the Linux kernel and GNU system, and other popular free software will continue to be able to implement W3C standards in competition with proprietary software.

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