blob: 8781a92f8923d7a05dc2b6d2bc482b7a3ea5e0fb (
plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
|
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Vim home page</TITLE>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Bram Moolenaar">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="home page of Vim, the text editor">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Vim,text editor">
</HEAD>
<BODY
BGCOLOR="#CCFFFF"
TEXT="#000099"
LINK="#FF0000"
VLINK="#993333"
ALINK="#999933">
<CENTER><H1>Will Vim still be free next year?</H1></CENTER>
There is a big chance that some company gets a software patent on a method
that is being used in the Vim source code. And then starts a legal battle to
stop the distribution of Vim or wants money for the distribution of Vim (which
would have the same effect, since nobody pays for Vim).
<P>
Even though there might be a big chance to win the battle in court, the cost
of lawyers will be so high that the company probably wins by default.
<P>
Until recently this idea could have been put off as fantasy. The battle that
SCO started shows it's real. And software patents will give a company plenty
of chances to start a legal battle, because the legal stuff involved is much
more complicated than for copyrights. You can find an interesting article that connects the SCO case and software patents
<A target="_blank" HREF="http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-5067526.html">here</A>.
<CENTER><H1>Protest against software patents</H1></CENTER>
Software patents are a threat to open-source software.
<P>
Companies can and will use software patents in an unpleasant way, because they
have money to pay lawyers while open-source software developers don't.
Small companies with a tight budget are also likely to suffer.
<P>
The use of software patents to protect the investments that a company made in
their software is very small. The misuse will be very big, also because
patents can be very vague. There is a big difference with patents on
inventions of other nature, such as mechanical, because software can be
protected by copyright. And a software invention usually doesn't require big
investments. You can think of ten items to patent in an hour (believe me, I
have done it). Applying for a patent is just a matter of paying a patent
attorney.
<P>
The European Governement is going to vote on Software Patents on
September 24th. September 17th there will be a
<A target="_blank" HREF="http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/09/urb-bxl/index.en.html">conference in Brussels</A>. Read about other actions
<A HREF="http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/demo0914/index.en.html">here</A>.
<P>
More information about software patents on
<A target="_blank" HREF="http://swpat.ffii.org/">this page</A>
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.vim.org/index_real.php">Go to the original Vim pages</A>
</BODY>
</HTML>
|
