Occasionally a small company benefits from a patent, if its product is so simple that it escapes infringing the large companies' patents and thus being forced to cross-license with them. And patent owners who develop no products, but only squeeze money out of those who do, can laugh all the way to the bank while obstructing progress. But most software developers, as well as users, lose from software patents, which do more to obstruct software progress than to encourage it. People used to call free software an absurd idea, saying we lacked the ability to develop a large amount of software. We have refuted them with empirical fact, by developing a broad range of powerful software that respects users' freedom.
Software patents threaten to do that.
The time to take action is now. And please take time to help. The European Patent Office, used by many European countries, has issued quite a number of patents that affect software, which were presented as something other than software patents. The change now being considered would open the door to unlimited patenting of algorithms and software features, which would greatly increase the number of software patents issued. Copyright 1999 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article is permitted provided this notice is preserved.