Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project, has spoken out against European Patent Office plans to extend European patent law to software. The EU wants to draft pan-European legislation to make intellectual property protection consistent across member nations, but Stallman insists that this would be disastrous for the free software community and for developers in general.
There is a push now to make Europe have software patents like the US. If this happens, it could be disastrous for free software (and bad for anyone who wants to develop software in Europe), he told the Freepatents.org web site. He called for developers and other concerned parties to write to European officials: If two countries object to the plan, that will be enough to block the plan.
