English [en]

For thirty years, the Free Software Foundation has been seen as a guiding light for the free software movement, fighting for user freedom.

Help keep our light burning brightly by donating to push us towards our goal of raising $450,000 by January 31st.

$450k
314k so far

Software Patents That have Harmed Free Software

[Please repost this widely, anywhere it's appropriate.]

We would like to collect information about cases where free software has been harmed by software patents-that is, cases where a free program has been withdrawn from use or interfered with, or where a feature was taken out or never written in the first place, because of the danger of a patent.

We hope to use this information to argue against the system of software patents wherever possible.

If you know of such a case, please write to <patent-examples@gnu.org> and tell us what happened.

Ideally we would like to know the name of the program, its developer's name and email address or other contact information, what happened to the program, and the patent number. If you know those things, please include them in your report. But if you don't have all of that information, please write anyway and tell us whatever you know. For instance, if you can tell us how to contact the program's developer, we can probably get the rest of the information from the developer. If you can tell us just the program's name, we may be able to find the developer. We may write back to you to try to get more details; any leads for getting more details are also welcome.

The information collected so far is available.

Thanks.

[FSF logo] “Our mission is to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of Free Software users.”

The Free Software Foundation is the principal organizational sponsor of the GNU Operating System. Support GNU and the FSF by buying manuals and gear, joining the FSF as an associate member, or making a donation, either directly to the FSF or via Flattr.

back to top