Adam Warner wrote in with a few interesting links regarding the
W3C's request for comments on its policy toward patents, including
comments from Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and someone from
Microsoft.
In addition, Eben Moglen also posted a comment, as noted by Chuck
Mead. Writes Professor Moglen:
"I write on behalf of the Free Software Foundation to
oppose the the W3C's adoption of a patent-friendly standards
policy.
The World Wide Web cannot exist as a global and
uniformly-available facility of human society without free
software. Apache, Perl PHP--and literally hundreds of other
immediately recognizable aspects of web technology--have been
outgrowths of the free software production model. Without free
software, the web would be a commercialized outgrowth of a few
proprietary software producers, and it would be incapable of
serving, as it now does, as a force for global egalitarianism.
Because the Web employs no technology not based around
completely open standards, software implementing every single
facility of Web life can be produced in the free software model,
and is therefore available for free modification and improvement
all over the world, supplied at the marginal cost of distribution
to any programmer--no matter how financially constrained--who
wishes to produce new facilities and opportunities for users."