Personally, I am curious to see whether we could bring a class action
suit against the United States government under the arguement that
software patents, in their current state, violate a Free Software
programmer's freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is a gauranteed
human right and is supposed to be stronger legally than a patent, which
is a tool of convenience. I think it is arguable that many programmers
are as dedicated to the creation of Free Software as any religious person
is to their chosen method of worship.
E
On Sat, Mar 20, 1999 at 12:24:20PM +0100, J.H.M. Dassen wrote:
> This may well be of interest to SPI, or indivual readers of this list -
> please keep discussion of it on gnu.misc.discuss.
>
> Ray
>
> From: ps@cam._nospam_.org (Pierre Sarrazin)
> Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
> Subject: A steering committee for the LPF?
> Date: 20 Mar 1999 00:20:57 -0500
> Organization: League for Programming Freedom
> Lines: 34
> Sender: ps@CAM.ORG
> Message-ID: <7cvb7p$at1@ocean.CAM.ORG>
>
> Since October 1998, I have been maintaining the website of the League
> for Programming Freedom at <http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/>. On this site,
> there is an email address where people can write to offer their help.
>
> A number of people have offered to help, but unfortunately there is no
> defined agenda for the LPF. The League has no formal organization
> right now and I am limiting myself to the role of a webmaster.
>
> I am posting this article here in hopes of starting a discussion among
> people who would be interested in forming a steering committee for the
> LPF. These people would have to decide what they specifically want to
> do to obtain the abolition of software patents by the
> U.S. Congress. The LPF also opposes user interface copyrights, but
> since a major 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision, this problem seems to
> have receded for now (see the website for details).
>
> The job of the committee would be to define a strategy to eventually
> convince Congress of outlawing software patents. Recent news about
> Microsoft's patent on style sheets and Sightsound's threats against
> MP3.com (regarding patents over downloading audio over a network) may
> provide arguments to convince lawmakers that software patents should
> be abolished as soon as possible before they become an intolerable
> impediment to the software community. A letter-writing campaign might
> be a good start; I could post the results on the website.
>
> Greg Aharonian's Internet Patent News Service has published some
> issues about the two patents I mentioned:
> <http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/patents.html#IPNS>
>
> The front page of the LPF website shows an index to the article
> "Against Software Patents", which is a very good read for anyone who
> wishes to have a reminder of why software patents are a threat.
>
>
>
> --
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-- ___________________________________________________________________ Ean Schuessler Director of Strategic Weapons Systems Novare International Inc. A Devices that Kill People company *** WARNING: This signature may contain jokes.
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