Patents in software a potential minefield, warns expert
Thursday, 07 November 2002, 20:30 IST
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PANAJI: India should avoid the "minefield" of introducing patents in software, cautions an American expert who is a strong advocate of free and open source software. "Software patents is a very critical issue and I understand the Indian Parliament is considering whether to allow it," Free Software Foundation head Richard Matthew Stallman said at a meeting organized here by the Goa Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Stallman, who has been spearheading a campaign to keep software free and non-proprietary, leading to the development of the GNU/Linux operating system threatening to challenge corporations like Microsoft, warned that patents were not suited to a field like software. "When writing a (software) program, you typically combine different ideas. Anyone trying to develop software unless it's very small or limited in size is going to be stepping onto a minefield," he cautioned. Added Stallman, who began the free software movement in 1984: "This is an issue that is going to affect all software developers. In the US there are already over 100,000 software patents. So that means there are a lot of things we (developers) are not allowed to do." Calling software patents "incredibly dangerous," he said right now the European Union (E.U.) was in the process of taking a decision on this issue. Stallman said countries in the West were better equipped to file patents and also pump in money to fight cases over them. He also underlined the benefits of free and non-proprietary operating systems against and closed-source products, where the critical code that goes into the program is not available to the buyer. Many businessmen appreciate the cost-saving aspects of this operating system while programmers say it offers them wide freedom while also making computing affordable, a critical factor in a country like India. "The way I learnt to be a good programmer was when we worked at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and had the freedom (to tinker with the code). I didn't know enough then. But I could learn because we could work on it. Today free software gives you that opportunity," said the bearded, 49-year-old Stallman. He also noted that two countries, India and Brazil have been showing an "increasing awareness" of the social aspects of computing. Both have been working on building affordable computing solutions and taking IT to the common man in a number of ways, he pointed out.
Source: IANS
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