Apparently while I was attending the BEAWorld and VMworld conferences in San Francisco this week, the pretty blue globe we call home kept on spinning, particularly where GPL v3 is concerned. On Wednesday an interview with Mr. Richard Stallman -- President of the Free Software Foundation -- was published in PC World Australia, from which I'd just like to reproduce a few choice quotes: Regarding the battle between Apparently while I was attending the BEAWorld and VMworld conferences in San Francisco this week, the pretty blue globe we call home kept on spinning, particularly where GPL v3 is concerned. On Wednesday an interview with Mr. Richard Stallman — President of the Free Software Foundation — was published in PC World Australia, from which I’d just like to reproduce a few choice quotes: Regarding the battle between Microsoft and Open (or as Richard puts it, “Free”) Source community: Stallman: Nobody knows who will win this fight, because the outcome depends on you and the readers. Will you fight for freedom? Will you reject Windows and MacOS and other non-free software, and switch to GNU/Linux? Or will you be too lazy to resist? On GPL v3’s goal of protecting the rights of all users of all versions of a program to use that program for free: Stallman: Torvalds says he rejects this goal; that’s probably why he doesn’t appreciate GPL version 3. I respect his right to express his views, even though I think they are foolish. However, if you don’t want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him. For any sentential logicians out there, this last sentence might make more sense as “If you value your freedom, don’t follow him.”Such rhetoric aside, what struck me the most about this interview is Stallman’s views concerning intellectual property and software patents. Basically, he believes that Microsoft and other “big businesses” are threatening not so much for how they treat the open source community but because they seek to control software in a way that circumvents trivial things like software licenses — that is, software patents.You don’t have to look very far to see that US Patent law allows virtually any process, description or vague idea to be stamped as a legally enforceable piece of property. Microsoft does own the smily face, you know. 🙂 With companies like IBM winning more than 3,000 patents per year (leading the industry for more than 13 consecutive years), you might imagine an “idea crisis” on the horizon, where our world begins running low on totally unique, patentable ideas — that is of course unless anything can be patented. Apparently, the folks at the Patent Office can’t feel that way, as they’re now asking for “peers” to evaluate patents. Sheesh. To be fair IBM and others have pledged a number of patents to the Open Source effort. They are aware of the issue, but these donations really amount to a drop in the bucket comparatively. Anyway, I think Stallman’s ideas, though at times inflammatory, are definitely worth a few minutes, perhaps while you put those finishing touches on your “Mouse Pad for Lefties” patent submission. Open Source