Let's Limit the/Effect/of Software Patents, Since We Can't Eliminate Them * BY RICHARD STALLMAN * 11.01.12 * 6:30 AM Patents threaten every software developer, and the patent wars we have long feared have broken out. Software developers and software users -- which in our society, is most people -- need software to be free of patents. The patents that threaten us are often called "software patents," but that term is misleading. Such patents are not about any specific program. Rather, each patent describes some practical idea, and says that anyone carrying out the idea can be sued. So it's clearer to call them "computational idea patents." The U.S. patent system doesn't label patents to say this one's a "software patent" and that one isn't. Software developers are the ones who make a distinction between the patents that threaten us -- those that cover ideas that can be implemented in software -- and the rest. For example: If the patented idea is the shape of a physical structure or a chemical reaction, no program can implement that idea; that patent doesn't threaten the software field. But if the idea that's patented is a computation, that patent's barrel points at software developers and users. [...] Continua qui: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/richard-stallman-software-patents