Restrictive Patent Usage

Hello.
  As a computer programmer, I would first like to
thank you for your proposed Royalty Free patents
policy.  Next I must point out a remaining problem.
 
  Your draft policy only requires patents to be
made available royalty-free for a specified
"field of use".  This can create a situation whereby
I may use your standards in only one area of computer
science thus restricting my freedom to write software.

  The software (and documentation) that I write is
released as Free Software (under the GNU GPL).  My
hope is create software that everyone can use for
any purpose be they wealthy or not.

  In order to write Free Software I must avoid the
use of patent restricted technologies.  To allow
me, and the thousands (or millions?) of Free
Software programmers to continue writing software
that makes use of the best technologies, please
consider ammending the draft to require all
patents to be royalty-free without restriction.

Thank you.
Ciaran O'Riordan

Received on Monday, 25 November 2002 20:10:09 UTC