Still, the lump of coal Stallman dished up didn't just have Amazon's name on it. Here's what Stallman had to say about the evils wrought by patents in the software industry.
Software patents are among the biggest dangers to our community.
Software patents are dangerous even to the software privateers, the ones who try to privatize software by making it non-free. The thing is that programs are very complicated, big things, and that means there's lots of stuff in them that could infringe somebody else's patent. Considering how many steps you have to take to get across, the chances of getting through unscathed are pretty slim. Under the US Constitution, the justification for having a patent system is to promote progress. That's the official purpose of having a patent system at all.