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The concept of patenting software is sound, but the mechanism is prima facie broken. I think this makes your support of RAND untenable, Len. If all patents were good ones, your arguments would be sound, but bad ones backed up by an inefficient and expensive legal process will shut out viable open technologies for no good reason. Can W3C avoid being hobbled by excluding patents? No. But it's not the exclusion of patents that's the problem here; its the threat of mandated royalties on W3C technology by those who really have not contributed to the advancement of the art. I'm afraid the legal profession in this regard is becoming like a Mesoamerican priesthood, contributing nothing but exacting a debilitating toll on the populace nonetheless. The only those at the top of the heap are immune. I'm not against patents, I'm just against bad ones that can't be challenged without incurring terrible expense. I'm not against RAND, once the bad patents are winnowed out.
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