Software patents and free software
Software patent
Debate
Free software
List of patents
TRIPS Agreement
Patent Cooperation Treaty
European Patent Convention
Canada
United Kingdom
United States
European Patent Office
United Kingdom
Opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem.
Community leaders such as Richard Stallman,Alan Cox,Bruce Perens, and Linus Torvalds and companies such as Red Hat, and MySQL, and community groups such as FSFE,IFSO, all believe that patents cause problems for free software.
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Wikipedia