[Zope] W3C and the Promotion of Fee-based Standards for the Web

[kapil thangavelu]

On 16 August 2001 the W3C made public a proposal to substantially change 
their patent policy framework. Amongst the changes is support for a new 
licensing model (called RAND) that legitimises the W3C's role in developing 
and promoting standards that could require the payment of royalties. This is 
a substantial shift in the philosophical direction of the W3C and should be 
of extreme concern to anyone who values being able to implement W3C standards 
in a royalty-free manner. In particular this has profound implications for 
the support and implementation of future W3C standards by the free software 
community. It is likely to extinguish free software development and 
deployment in the areas where the payment of royalties is required. 

full story with options for action here

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-30-001-20-NW-CY