[glug-t] Torvalds and Cox Write Open Letter to the European Parliament's Head Honcho

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 [the] 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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