Free software

Free software is software which can be used, copied, redistributed, and whose source code can be viewed, modified, and also redistributed.

"Free software" is not a subtopic of software patents. All types of software development carry the risk of patent infringement. The reason these two topics often appear together is that, firstly, the free software community is very active and vocal in campaigning against software patents, and secondly, software patents threaten a general freedom that free software users value: the freedom to participate in software development.

The term open source is a near-synonym. Patents affect the freedom that users and developers have when dealing with software. Patents don't affect "openness", so ESP Wiki should use the term "free software".

Why free software groups should be involved

The free software movement says that everyone should be allowed to modify and redistribute the software they use. Software patents interfere with this because they can add legal risks and costs to software development and distribution.

Patent grants in 2005

IBM promised, for 500 of its patents, not to use them against free software.

Sun and Nokia subsequently made promises that were so narrow in scope, they were qualified as "empty" and "next to nothing", respectively, by Richard Stallman.

See also

• Harm to standards
• Patent clauses in software licences
• Richard Stallman
• Patent promises - many of which are somewhat focussed on free software

External links

• The Free Software Definition
• Wikipedia: Software patents and free software
• CALIU: Patents Threathen Free Software
• Operating systems will be developed by lawyers not programmers, Pete Loshin, 2006
• fedoraproject.org's comments about swpat and media codec policy
• June 2009: Microsoft seeks $50 per copy of Xandros GNU/Linux (plus itWire coverage)
• "Effects of Software Patents on Free/Open Source/User Innovation", slides / video (works with Gnash)
• Ubuntu's patent policy

Free software harmed by swpats

• gnu.org: Examples of Software Patents that hurt Free Software
• FireStar Software has filed a patent infringement suit against Red Hat, claiming that Hibernate infringes US Patent 6,101,502
• VideoLan and related projects are threatened
• The Fedora GNU/Linux distribution can't ship Moonlight
• VirtualDub
• Freetype fonts: Freetype & Patents
• The photo-mosaic plugin for the GNU Image Manipulation Program
• Chris Blizzard, Mozilla's chief innovation officer "software patents reduce innovation"
• Red Hat removes "fill series" functionality from OpenOffice.org spreadsheets