Note from the Author: Amazingly, more than three years (!) later this is still an issue and as current as ever. The monopolists are at work again in Europe to try and stop us from producing free software. To read more about this dire situation, use the following link:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html

'The dangers of software patents'
on Sunday 26th Oct 2003 at 2:30pm in
The Large Lecture Theatre
Cavendish Campus
University of Westminster
115 New Cavendish St. London.

If you haven't seen Richard Stallman in action and you live in London then you have really missed a golden opportunity to witness the great man at work. Well... the other half of his work, for lest we forget: he is a programmer and a dang good one at that. He is not only some mad raving hippy prophet.

For this Sunday lecture Richard had a broken arm, an injury which he sustained only on Friday. What courage to still travel to the United Kingdom in order to speak to a crowd of unwilling and unyielding English sceptics and cynics. The speech that he gave was really brilliant. It was a great pleasure and honour to see an enlightened brain ticking over calmly, stirring those who care to listen and understand into action. Stallman himself as a human being presented a stark contrast to the dull and unstimulating, boring audience. It is almost a shame that great visionaries have to waste an extraordinary amount of time and energy preaching to what almost seems to be deaf dillitants.

Richard's message was clear: people who are interested in software production and utilisation, should not be enthusiastic about patents. The myth of the 'little guy' being protected by this type of legislation in reality only serves to promote the domination of the big players in the market place and secure the interest of other parties which are only indirectly involved in software production, like for instance patent lawyers. For Richard it is almost unrealistic for any programmer to want to support such legislation. Again he repeated his desire for Europe not to fall prey to the madness experienced by software developers in the United States. In fact, Europe presently represents
a hope in the world, because if Europe rejects patentability of software, perhaps this would open an opportunity for the US to phase out software patents.

It is very surprising that at the end of the unscripted talk by Richard there were still people in the audience who almost dared to defend patents as something positive. Thankfully Richard put down these sinister views quite firmly. But perhaps it isn't surprising that these views are held by people living in England, since it is the British Government's interest to torpedo the efforts made by rational people and still bring about software patents for Europeans. Ironically, it is the British who always complain about the Europeans and how the British dare not be dominated by Europe, yet, any European should feel that perhaps Europe is better off without the participation of a corrupt British Government.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/intro/index.html
http://www.ffii.org.uk/