[RoLUG] Lettera sui brevetti di Linus

[L ben]

questa è da tradurre 
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Luca




Subject: Open Letter on Software Patents from Linux
developers
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 13:31:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds 

Open Letter to 
 the Honourable Pat Cox, the President of the European
Parliament,
 members of the European Parliament:

Dear Mr. Cox,

We have been following with growing concern that
Europe has been
extending patentability to computer programs. Now
European Parliament
is about to vote on a directive that could put a stop
to this
development, or make it worse, depending on how it is
amended by the
Parliament.
 
US experience shows that, unlike traditional patents,
software patents
do not encourage innovation and R&D, quite the
contrary. In particular
they hurt small and medium-sized enterprises and
generally newcomers
in the market. They will just weaken the market and
increase spending
on patents and litigation, at the expense of
technological innovation
and research.
 
Especially dangerous are attempts to abuse the patent
system by
preventing interoperability as a means of avoiding
competition with
technological ability. Standards should never be
patentable! Likewise,
patents should never be used as means for preventing
publication of
information - the whole idea of patents is to provide
time-limited
monopoly in exchange for publication of the invention.
 
Software patents are also the utmost threat to the
development of
Linux and other free software products, as we are
forced to see every
day while we work with the Linux development. We want
to be able to
provide the world with free high class, high quality,
highly
innovative software products that really empower the
users and offer
the best and only real chance to narrow the digital
divide. Please do
not make this harder to us that it already is! In
conclusion, we would
recommend You to vote for such amendments that
 
    * clarify limits of patentability so that computer
programs,
      algorithms and business methods really cannot be
patented as such;
    * make sure that patents cannot be abused to avoid
technical
      competition by preventing interoperability of
competing products; and
    * ensure that patents cannot be used to prevent
publication of
      information.
 
To that end we would suggest following FFII's voting
recommendations
on this directive (see www.ffii.org).

 
	Sincerely,
 
		Linus Torvalds            Alan Cox


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