This article's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please help improve the article by updating it. There may be additional information on the talk page. (August 2011)

Computer programs, software and patent law
Topics
Software patent Debate Free software List of patents
Treaties
TRIPS Agreement Patent Cooperation Treaty European Patent Convention
Countries
United Kingdom United States
Case law
European Patent Office United Kingdom
Related topics
Business methods
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Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition.^[1] One definition suggested by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is that a software patent is a "patent on any performance of a computer realised by means of a computer program".^{[2][a 1]} The reason why lawyers are reluctant to define "software patents" is that the qualification of a patent application as a request for a "software patent" by itself has no legal effect under current law. For Europe, the only thing that matters is whether there is a "computer program as such", which is not considered an invention under Art. 52 EPC, whatever these words really mean. U.S. patent law consistently excludes "abstract ideas", and further case law has established that software is not excluded in the use because it is abstract but as far as it is abstract, a rule that is admittedly still not very clear.

There is intense debate over the extent to which software patents should be granted, if at all. Important issues concerning software patents include:

• Where the boundary between patentable and non-patentable software should lie;^[3]
• Whether the inventive step and non-obviousness requirement is applied too loosely to software;^[4] and
• Whether patents covering software discourage, rather than encourage, innovation.^[5]

Background[link]

A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, usually 20 years. These rights are granted to patent applicants in exchange for their disclosure of the inventions. Once a patent is granted in a given country, no person may make, use, sell or import/export the claimed invention in that country without the permission of the patent holder. Permission, where granted, is typically in the form of a license which conditions are set by the patent owner: it may be gratis or in return for a royalty payment or lump sum fee.

Patents are territorial in nature. To obtain a patent, inventors must file patent applications in each and every country in which they want a patent. For example, separate applications must be filed in Japan, China, the United States and India if the applicant wishes to obtain patents in those countries. However, some regional offices exist, such as the European Patent Office (EPO), which act as supranational bodies with the power to grant patents which can then be brought into effect in the member states, and an international procedure also exists for filing a single international application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which can then give rise to patent protection in most countries.

These different countries and regional offices have different standards for granting patents. This is particularly true of software or computer-implemented inventions, especially where the software is implementing a business method.

History and current trends[link]

Early example of a software patent[link]

On 21 May 1962, a British patent application entitled "A Computer Arranged for the Automatic Solution of Linear Programming Problems" was filed.^[6] The invention was concerned with efficient memory management for the simplex algorithm, and could be implemented by purely software means. The patent was granted on August 17, 1966 and seems to be one of the first software patents.^[7]

United States[link]

Growth of software patents in US

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents that may be referred to as software patents since at least the early 1970s.^[8] In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972), the United States Supreme Court ruled that a patent for a process should not be allowed if it would "wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself", adding that "it is said that the decision precludes a patent for any program servicing a computer. We do not so hold."^[9] In 1981, the Supreme Court stated that "a claim drawn to subject matter otherwise statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a mathematical formula, computer program, or digital computer" and a claim is patentable if it contains "a mathematical formula [and] implements or applies the formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which the patent laws were designed to protect".^[10]

Due to different treatment of federal patent rights in different parts of the country, in 1982 the U.S. Congress created a new court (the Federal Circuit) to hear patent cases. Following several landmark decisions by this court, by the early 1990s the patentability of software was well established, and in 1996 the USPTO issued Final Computer Related Examination Guidelines stating that "A practical application of a computer-related invention is statutory subject matter. This requirement can be discerned from the variously phrased prohibitions against the patenting of abstract ideas, laws of nature or natural phenomena" (emphasis added).^[11]

The recent expansion of the Internet and e-commerce has led to many patents being applied for and being granted for business methods implemented in software and the question of whether business methods are statutory subject matter is a separate issue from the question of whether software is. There have been several successful enforcement trials in the USA, some of which are listed in the list of software patents article.

Europe[link]

Within European Union member states, the EPO and other national patent offices have issued many patents for inventions involving software since the European Patent Convention (EPC) came into force in the late 1970s. Article 52 EPC excludes "programs for computers" from patentability (Art. 52(2)) to the extent that a patent application relates to a computer program "as such" (Art. 52(3)). This has been interpreted to mean that any invention which makes a non-obvious "technical contribution" or solves a "technical problem" in a non-obvious way is patentable even if that technical problem is solved by running a computer program.^[12]

Computer-implemented inventions which only solve a business problem using a computer, rather than a technical problem, are considered unpatentable as lacking an inventive step (see T 258/03). Nevertheless, the fact that an invention is useful in business does not mean it is not patentable if it also solves a technical problem.

A summary of the developments concerning patentability of computer programs under the European Patent Convention is given in (see G 3/08) as a response of the Enlarged Board of Appeal to questions filed by the President of the European Patent Office according to Art. 112(1)b) EPC.

United Kingdom[link]

United Kingdom patent law is interpreted to have the same effect as the European Patent Convention such that "programs for computers" are excluded from patentability to the extent that a patent application relates to a computer program "as such". Current case law in the UK states that an (alleged) invention will only be actually regarded as an invention if it provides a contribution that is not excluded and which is also technical. A computer program implementing a business process is therefore not an invention, but a computer program implementing an industrial process may well be.

Japan[link]

Software-related inventions are patentable. To qualify as an invention, however, there must be "a creation of technical ideas utilizing a law of nature"^[13] although this requirement is typically met by "concretely realising the information processing performed by the software by using hardware resources".^[14] Software-related inventions may be considered obvious if they involve: the application of an operation known in other fields; the addition of a commonly known means or replacement by equivalent; the implementation in software of functions which were previously performed by hardware; or the systematisation of known human transactions.^[15]

Other countries[link]

In India, a clause to include software patents was quashed by the Indian Parliament in April 2005.^[16]

In Australia, pure or abstract methods of doing business are not considered to be patentable, but if the method is implemented using a computer, it avoids the exclusion for business methods.^[17]

In New Zealand computer programs are to be excluded from patentability under a 2010 Patents Bill, but guidelines permitting embedded software are to be drafted once the bill has passed.^{[18][19][20][21][22]}

In the Philippines, "schemes, rules and methods of performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers" are non-patentable inventions under Sec. 22.2 of Republic Act No. 8293, otherwise known as the "Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines."

In South Korea, software is considered patentable and many patents directed towards "computer programs" have been issued.^[23] In 2006, Microsoft's sales of its "Office" suite were jeopardized due to a possible patent infringement.^[24] A ruling by the Supreme Court of Korea found that patents directed towards automatic language translation within software programs were valid and possibly violated by its software.^[24]

In South Africa, "a program for a computer" is excluded from recognition as a patentable invention by section 25 of the Patents Act.^[25]

Canada defines "Computer-Implemented Inventions" in Chapter 16 of the Manual of Patent Office Practices. A computer-implemented invention must fall under "within one of the five categories found within the section 2 definition of "invention", namely art, process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter" to be considered for a patent.^[26]

Purpose of patents[link]

For the U.S., the purpose of patents is laid down in the constitutional clause that gives Congress the power "[t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8). For Europe, there is no similar definition. Commonly four patent justification theories are recognised, as laid down for instance by Machlup in 1958 [2], the include justice to the inventor and benefit for society by rewarding inventors. Disclosure is required in return for the exclusive right, and disclosure may promote further development. However, the value of disclosure should not be overestimated: some inventions could not be kept secret otherwise, and patents also prohibit independent reinventions to be exploited.

There is debate as to whether or not these aims are achieved with software patents.

Proposals[link]

In seeking to find a balance, different countries have different policies as to where the boundary between patentable and non-patentable software should lie. In Europe, a number of different proposals for setting a boundary line were put forward during the debate concerning the proposed Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions, none of which were found acceptable by the various parties to the debate. Two particular suggestions for a hurdle that software must pass to be patentable include:

• A computer program that utilises "controllable forces of nature to achieve predictable results".^[27]
• A computer program which provides a "technical effect".^[28]

In the US, Ben Klemens, a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, proposed that patents should be granted only to inventions that include a physical component that is by itself nonobvious.^[29] This is based on Justice William Rehnquist's ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Diamond v. Diehr that stated that "... insignificant postsolution activity will not transform an unpatentable principle into a patentable process."^{[citation needed]} By this rule, one would consider software loaded onto a stock PC to be an abstract algorithm with obvious postsolution activity, while a new circuit design implementing the logic would likely be a nonobvious physical device. Upholding an "insignificant postsolution activity" rule as per Justice Rehnquist's ruling would also eliminate most business method patents.

Obviousness[link]

A common objection to software patents is that they relate to trivial inventions.^[30] A patent on an invention that many people would easily develop independently of one another should not, it is argued, be granted since this impedes development. Different countries have different ways of dealing with the question of inventive step and non-obviousness in relation to software patents.

Inventive step test in Europe[link]

See Inventive step requirement in Europe and, for instance, T 258/03.

Perceived negative effects[link]

Compatibility[link]

There are a number of high profile examples where the patenting of a data exchange standards forced another programming group to introduce an alternative format. For instance, the PNG format was largely introduced to avoid the GIF patent problems, and Ogg Vorbis to avoid MP3. If it is discovered that these new suggested formats are themselves covered by existing patents, the final result may be a large number of incompatible formats. Creating such formats and supporting them costs money and creates inconvenience to users.

Conflicts[link]

Computer-implemented invention (CII)[link]

Under the EPC, and in particular its Article 52,^[31] "programs for computers" are not regarded as inventions for the purpose of granting European patents,^[32] but this exclusion from patentability only applies to the extent to which a European patent application or European patent relates to a computer program as such.^[33] As a result of this partial exclusion, and despite the fact that the EPO subjects patent applications in this field to a much stricter scrutiny^[34] when compared to their American counterpart, that does not mean that all inventions including some software are de jure not patentable.

Overlap with copyright[link]

Protection by patent protection and copyright constitute two different means of legal protection which may cover the same subject-matter, such as computer programs, since each of these two means of protection serves its own purpose.^[35] Software is protected as works of literature under the Berne Convention. This allows the creator to prevent another entity from copying the program and there is generally no need to register code in order for it to be copyrighted.

Patents, on the other hand, give their owners the right to prevent others from using a claimed invention, even if it was independently developed and there was no copying involved. In fact, one of the most recent EPO decisions T 424/03 clarifies the distinction, stating that software is patentable, because it is basically only a technical method executed on a computer, which is to be distinguished from the program itself for executing the method, the program being merely an expression of the method, and thus being copyrighted.

Patents cover the underlying methodologies embodied in a given piece of software, or the function that the software is intended to serve, independent of the particular language or code that the software is written in. Copyright prevents the direct copying of some or all of a particular version of a given piece of software, but do not prevent other authors from writing their own embodiments of the underlying methodologies. Copyright can also be used to prevent a given set of data from being copied while still allowing the author to keep the contents of said set of data a trade secret.^{[citation needed]}

Whether and how the numerus clausus principle shall apply to the legal hybrid software^[36] to provide a judicious balance between property rights of the title holders and freedom rights of computing professionals^[37] and the society as a whole,^[38] is in dispute.^[39]

Free and open source software[link]

There is strong dislike in the free software community towards software patents. Much of this has been caused by free software or open source projects terminating^[40] when the owners of patents covering aspects of a project demanded license fees that the project could not pay, or was not willing to pay, or offered licenses with terms that the project was unwilling to accept, or could not accept, because it conflicted with the free software license in use.^[41]

Several patent holders have offered^[when?] royalty-free patent licenses. Companies that have done this include Apple Inc,^{[citation needed]} IBM,^{[citation needed]} Microsoft,^[42] Nokia,^{[citation needed]} Novell,^[43] Red Hat,^[44] Sun Microsystems^[45] and Unisys.^{[citation needed]} Such actions have rarely appeased the free and open source software communities for reasons such as fear of the patent holder changing their mind or problems with some of the license terms.^[46]

In 2005 Sun Microsystems announced that they were making a portfolio of 1,600 patents available through a patent license called Common Development and Distribution License.^[47]

In 2006, Microsoft's pledge not to sue Novell Linux customers, openSUSE contributors, and free/open source software developers over patents^[48] and the associated collaboration agreement with Novell^[49] was met with disdain from the Software Freedom Law Center^[50] while commentators from the Free Software Foundation stated that the agreement would not comply with GPLv3.^[51][52]. Meanwhile, Microsoft has reached similar agreements with Dell, Inc. and Samsung^[53], due to alleged patent infringements of the Linux operating system. Microsoft has also derived revenue from Android by making such agreements-not-to-sue with Android vendors.^[54]

In 2011, Microsoft (who had bought Skype) began issuing DMCA takedown notices versus open-source applications which wished to interoperate with Skype.^{[clarification needed][55]}

Draft versions of the GNU GPL version 3 may also conflict with patents on software by preventing any patent holder who distributes software covered by their patents under the GPL from enforcing those patents against a user.^[56]

Unisys case[link]

In the late 1990s, Unisys claimed to have granted royalty free licenses to hundreds of not-for-profit organizations that used the patented LZW compression method and, by extension, the GIF image format. However, this did not include most software developers and Unisys were "barraged" by negative and "sometimes obscene" emails from software developers.^[57]

Jurisdictions[link]

Substantive law regarding the patentability of software and computer-implemented inventions, and case law interpreting the legal provisions, are different under different jurisdictions.

Software patents under multilateral treaties:

• Software patents under TRIPs Agreement
• Software patents under the European Patent Convention
• Computer programs and the Patent Cooperation Treaty

Software patents under national laws:

• Software patents under United States patent law
• Software patents under United Kingdom patent law

Litigation[link]

Several successful litigations show that software patents are enforceable in the US. See List of software patents for more examples.

Similarly in Japan, software patents have been successfully enforced. In 2005, for example, Matsushita won a court order barring Justsystem from infringing Matsushita's Japanese patent 2,803,236 covering word processing software. A Tokyo court ordered Justsystem to pull their product from the market. On September 30, 2005, Intellectual Property High Court of Japan, which was established in April 2005, granted Justsystems' appeal and overturned the Tokyo District Court decision in October 2005.^[58]

Licensing[link]

Total US software patents by class of invention as of 2004

Patenting software is widespread in the US. As of 2004, approximately 145,000 patents had issued in the 22 classes of patents covering "computer implemented inventions". (see table to the right).

Many software companies cross license their patents to each other. These agreements allow each party to practice the other party's patented inventions without the threat of being sued for patent infringement. Microsoft, for example, has agreements with IBM, Sun Microsystems, SAP, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens AG, Cisco, Autodesk^[59] and recently Novell. Microsoft cross-licensed its patents with Sun, despite being direct competitors, and with Autodesk even though Autodesk has far fewer patents than Microsoft.

The ability to negotiate cross licensing agreements is a major reason that many software companies, including those providing open source software, file patents. As of June 2006, for example, Red Hat has developed a portfolio of 10 issued US patents, 1 issued European patent, 163 pending US patent applications, and 33 pending international PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) patent applications. Red Hat uses this portfolio to cross license with proprietary software companies so that they can preserve their freedom to operate.^[44]

Other patent holders are in the business of inventing new "computer implemented inventions" and then commercializing the inventions by licensing the patents to other companies that manufacture the inventions. Walker Digital, for example, has generated a large patent portfolio from its research efforts, including the basic patent on the Priceline.com reverse auction technology. US universities also fall into this class of patent owners. They collectively generate about $1.4 billion per year through licensing the inventions they develop to both established and start up companies in all fields of technology, including software.^[60]

Still other patent holders focus on obtaining patents from original inventors and licensing them to companies that have introduced commercial products into the marketplace after the patents were filed. Some of these patent holders, such as Intellectual Ventures, are privately held companies financed by large corporations such as Microsoft, Intel, Google, etc. Others, such as Acacia Technologies, are publicly traded companies with institutional investors being the primary shareholders.^[61]

The practice of acquiring patents merely to license them is controversial in the software industry. Companies that have this business model are pejoratively referred to as patent trolls. It is an integral part of the business model that patent licensing companies sue infringers that do not take a license. Furthermore, they may take advantage of the fact that many companies will pay a modest license fee (e.g.$100,000 to $1,000,000) for rights to a patent of questionable validity, rather than pay the high legal fees ($2,000,000 or more) to demonstrate in court that the patent is invalid.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Software patents

• Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement)
• Open Invention Network (OIN)
• Patent Commons Project
• Proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions
• Software patent debate
• Piano roll blues

Explanatory notes[link]

1. ^ In 2005, the European Patent Office suggested that a software patent is a patent for a computer program claimed as such, or an algorithm or computer-implemented business method that make no technical contribution.European Patent Office continues to advocate harmonisation in the field of CII patents The FFII are an anti-software patent group and the material associated with their definition of a software patent suggests that the purpose of the definition is to identify patents that should not be granted as a matter of policy.

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (October 2011)

This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (September 2009)

External links[link]

• Software and Business Methods on the WIPO web site
• FFII Annotated Bibliography
• Softwarepatents.eu an introduction to software patents in Europe and Germany (in German)

Economic studies[link]

• Bessen; Hunt (2004), An Empirical Look at Software Patents, http://www.researchoninnovation.org/swpat.pdf  This paper includes a method of identifying software patents that has proved popular with organisations such as the Public Patent Foundation.[3]
• The Software Patent Experiment (PDF) Bessen & Hunt 2004.
• A Review of Bessen and Hunt's Analysis of Software Patents by Robert Hahn and Scott Wallsten of the American Enterprise Institute.
• A Reply to Hahn and Wallsten by Bessen and Hunt, 2004.
• Federal Trade Commission 2003 patent report (PDF file) Also FFII review of FTC report.
• CEP Discussion Paper No 740, August 2006, Strategic Patenting and Software Innovation by Michael Noel and Mark Schankerman, London School of Economics and Political Science

Books[link]

• Patent Failure, James Bessen and Michael Meurer, Princeton University Press, 2008.
• Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software, Ben Klemens, Brookings Institution Press, 2005.
• The Patent Wars: The Battle to Own the World's Technology, Fred Warshofsky
• Information Feudalism - Peter Drahos
• Florian Müller, No Lobbyists As Such (2006). 377 page play-by-play memoir of the story of Florian's part in the campaign over the EU software patent directive.

Papers and presentations[link]

• R Hunt. You can patent that? (PDF file) Overview of the legal history and trends.
• N. Szabo. Elemental Subject Matter (PDF file) How software came to be patentable in the United States.
• François Pellegrini. Analysis of software patentability in Europe Chapter 11 of Software Patents - Legal Perspectives, pages 192-209, 2007. Amicus Books - ICFAI University Press, ISBN 81-314-0653-9.
• Hideo Furutani. Patentability of Business Method Inventions in Japan Compared with the US and Europe (PDF file) Presented at USPTO, Arlington, Virginia (2003)
• Richard Stallman: The Dangers of Software Patents, May 24, 2004
• Alexandre Abecassis: Patenting Software Innovations: A brief overview of the situation in some jurisdictions of interest (PDF file) IEEE Canadian Review No55, pp24–27
• Brian Kahin: The Software Patent Crisis, April 1990, Technology Review

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2009)

Alex Tabarrok speaking at TED in 2009.
Photograph by Bill Holsinger-Robinson.

Alexander Taghi Tabarrok (born 1966) is a Canadian-American economist and co-author, with Tyler Cowen, of the economics blog Marginal Revolution.

Both Cowen and Tabarrok are professors at Virginia's George Mason University and fellows with the school's Mercatus Center. In addition, Tabarrok is director of research for the Oakland, California based think tank the Independent Institute. He is the son of the late Mechanical Engineering professor, Dr. Behrooz (Bez) Tabarrok.

His doctoral studies were done at George Mason University where he received his Ph.D. in 1994.

He has done work on dominant assurance contracts, law and economics and health economics.

External links[link]

• Tabarrok's GMU home page
• Podcast featuring Tabarrok Tabarrok discusses medical malpractice on EconTalk.
• Tabarrok's talk at TED 2009

This biography of a Canadian economist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Richard Matthew Stallman
Richard Stallman at the University of Pittsburgh 2010
Born	(1953-03-16) March 16, 1953 (age 59) New York City, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Other names	rms, St. iGNUcius (avatar)
Alma mater	Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Occupation	President of the Free Software Foundation
Known for	Free software movement, GNU, Emacs
Website
www.stallman.org

Richard Matthew Stallman (born 16 March 1953), often shortened to rms,^[1] is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project^[2] to create a free Unix-like operating system, and he has been the project's lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he initiated the free software movement; in October 1985^[3] he founded the Free Software Foundation.

Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft, and he is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license.^[4] Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents, digital rights management, and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws. Stallman has also developed a number of pieces of widely used software, including the original Emacs,^[5] the GNU Compiler Collection,^[6] the GNU Debugger,^[7] and various tools in the GNU coreutils.^[8] He co-founded the League for Programming Freedom in 1989.

Early years[link]

Stallman was born to Daniel Stallman and Alice Lippman,^[9] in 1953 in New York City. His first experience with computers was at the IBM New York Scientific Center when he was in high school. He was hired for the summer to write a numerical analysis program in Fortran. He completed the task after a couple of weeks and spent the rest of the summer writing a text editor in APL.^[10] Stallman spent the summer after his high-school graduation writing another program, a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM System/360.^{[citation needed]}

During this time, Stallman was also a volunteer laboratory assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University. Although he was already moving toward a career in mathematics or physics, his teaching professor at Rockefeller thought he would have a future as a biologist.^[11]

As a first-year student at Harvard University, Stallman was known for his strong performance in Math 55.^{[citation needed]} In 1971 he became a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, rms (which was the name of his computer accounts). In the first edition of the Hacker's Dictionary, he wrote "'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'."^[1] Stallman graduated from Harvard magna cum laude earning a BA in Physics in 1974.^[12]

Stallman enrolled as a graduate student at MIT, but then ended his pursuit of a doctorate in physics to focus on his programming at the MIT AI Laboratory.

While a graduate student at MIT, Stallman published a paper with Gerald Jay Sussman on an AI truth maintenance system, called dependency-directed backtracking.^[13] This paper was an early work on the problem of intelligent backtracking in constraint satisfaction problems. As of 2003, the technique Stallman and Sussman introduced is still the most general and powerful form of intelligent backtracking.^[14] The technique of constraint recording, wherein partial results of a search are recorded for later reuse, was also introduced in this paper.^[14]

As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects like TECO, Emacs, and the Lisp machine Operating System. He would become an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab, which at that time was funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. When MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed a password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password, with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to re-enable anonymous access to the systems. Around 20% of the users followed his advice at the time, although passwords ultimately prevailed. Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward.^[15]

Decline of MIT's hacker culture[link]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software can be regarded as a consequence triggered by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as stated by Stallman's MIT fellow Brewster Kahle.^[16]

When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in the Scribe markup language and word processing system to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity."^[17] He clarified, years later, that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes is a crime, not the issue of charging for the software.^[18]

In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly-installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be free to modify the software they use.^[19]

Richard Greenblatt, a fellow AI Lab hacker, founded Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) to market Lisp machines, which he and Tom Knight designed at the lab. Greenblatt rejected outside investment, believing that the proceeds from the construction and sale of a few machines could be profitably reinvested in the growth of the company. In contrast, the other hackers felt that the venture capital-funded approach was better. As no agreement could be reached, hackers from the latter camp founded Symbolics, with the aid of Russ Noftsker, an AI Lab administrator. Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper, who then left the AI Lab. Symbolics forced Greenblatt to also resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting the lab's community. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers.^[20]

Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to share with their neighbor and to be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He maintains that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are antisocial and unethical.^[21] The phrase "software wants to be free" is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy.^[22] He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value, and not merely for pragmatic reasons such as possibly developing technically superior software.

In February 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983.

GNU project[link]

Richard Stallman in 2003 at the opening ceremony of NIXAL (a GLUG) at Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Calcutta, India

Stallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPANET mailing lists and USENET.^[23]

In 1985, Stallman published the GNU Manifesto, which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix. The name GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix." Soon after, he started a non-profit corporation called the Free Software Foundation to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman is the nonsalaried president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in Massachusetts.^[24] Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft, a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. It was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License, and in 1989 the first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of the GNU system had been completed. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor (Emacs), compiler (GCC), debugger (gdb), and a build automator (gmake). The notable exception was a kernel. In 1990, members of the GNU project began a kernel called GNU Hurd, which has yet to achieve the maturity level required for widespread usage.

In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, used the GNU development tools to produce the Linux kernel. The existing programs from the GNU project were readily ported to run on the resultant platform; most sources use the name Linux to refer to the general-purpose operating system thus formed. This has been a longstanding naming controversy in the free software community. Stallman argues that not using GNU in the name of the operating system unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project and harms the sustainability of the free software movement by breaking the link between the software and the free software philosophy of the GNU project.

Cover picture for O'Reilly Media's book Free as in Freedom

Stallman's influences on hacker culture include the name POSIX^[25] and the Emacs editor. On UNIX systems, GNU Emacs's popularity rivaled that of another editor vi, spawning an editor war. Stallman's take on this was to canonize himself as St. IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs^[26][27] and acknowledge that "vi vi vi is the editor of the beast," while "using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance".^[28]

Around 1992, developers at Lucid Inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked the software into what would become XEmacs.^[29] Technology journalist Andrew Leonard has characterized what he sees as Stallman's uncompromising stubbornness as common among elite computer programmers:

There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in a world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns.

—Andrew Leonard, Salon.com^[30]

Activism[link]

Richard Stallman giving a speech on "Free Software and your freedom" at the biennale du design of Saint Etienne (2008)

Stallman has written many essays on software freedom and since the early 1990s has been an outspoken political campaigner for the free software movement. The speeches he has regularly given are titled The GNU project and the Free Software movement,^[31] The Dangers of Software Patents,^[32] and Copyright and Community in the age of computer networks.^[33] In 2006 and 2007, during the eighteen month public consultation for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, he added a fourth topic explaining the proposed changes.^[34]

Linus Torvalds has criticized Stallman for what he considers "black-and-white thinking" and bringing more harm than good to the free software community.^[35]

Stallman's staunch advocacy for free software inspired the Virtual Richard M. Stallman (vrms), software that analyzes the packages currently installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and report those that are from the non-free tree.^[36] Stallman would disagree with parts of Debian's definition of free software.^[37]

In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free on-line encyclopedia through the means of inviting the public to contribute articles.^[38] The resulting GNUPedia was eventually retired in favour of the emerging Wikipedia, which had similar aims and was enjoying greater success.^[39]

In Venezuela, Stallman has delivered public speeches and promoted the adoption of free software in the state's oil company (PDVSA), in municipal government, and in the nation's military. In meetings with Chávez and in public speeches, Stallman criticised some policies on television broadcasting, free speech rights, and privacy.^[40][41] Stallman was on the Advisory Council of Latin American television station teleSUR from its launch^[42] but resigned in February 2011, criticizing pro-Gaddafi propaganda during the 2011 North Africa uprisings.^[43]

In August 2006 at his meetings with the government of the Indian State of Kerala, he persuaded officials to discard proprietary software, such as Microsoft's, at state-run schools. This has resulted in a landmark decision to switch all school computers in 12,500 high schools from Windows to a free software operating system.^[44]

After personal meetings, Stallman has obtained positive statements about the free software movement from the then-President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam,^[45] French 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal,^[46] and the president of Ecuador Rafael Correa.^[47]

Richard Stallman giving a speech at WSIS-2005

Stallman has participated in protests about software patents,^[48] DRM,^[49][50] and proprietary software.

Protesting against proprietary software in April 2006, Stallman held a "Don't buy from ATI, enemy of your freedom" placard at a speech by an ATI representative in the building where Stallman works, resulting in the police being called.^[51] ATI has since merged with AMD Corporation and has taken steps to make their hardware documentation available for use by the free software community.^[52]

Stallman has also helped and supported the International Music Score Library Project in getting back online, after it had been taken down on October 19, 2007 following a cease and desist letter from Universal Edition.^[53]

After the death of Steve Jobs, Stallman wrote the following eulogy:

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die — not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.

Richard Stallman using his Lemote machine at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai before his lecture on 'Free Software, Freedom and Education' organized by Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu (FSFTN).

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.

—Richard Stallman^[54]

Stallman's remark stirred up accusations of being in bad taste, while Eric S. Raymond, author of Cathedral and the Bazaar, summarized that Stallman's statement was not personal, but was simply criticizing walled gardens.^[55]

Stallman's only computer is a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor) which he chose because it can run with 100% free software even at the BIOS level, stating "freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for the sake of a more convenient computer."^[56] Lemote is a joint venture of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an institution of the State Council of China.

Stallman has suggested that the United States government may encourage^[57][58] the use of software as a service because this would allow them to access users' data without needing a search warrant.^[59][60][61]

Terminology[link]

Richard Stallman gets into his St. iGNUcius avatar at Techniche, IIT Guwahati, India

Stallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about the world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He untiringly asks people to say free software and GNU/Linux, and to avoid the terms intellectual property and piracy (in relation to copyright). His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of the importance of terminology are a source of regular misunderstanding and friction with parts of the free software and open source communities.

One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agree to use his terminology throughout the article.^[62] Sometimes he has even required journalists to read parts of the GNU philosophy before an interview, for "efficiency's sake".^{[citation needed]} He has been known to turn down speaking requests over some terminology issues.^[63]

Stallman rejects a common alternative term, open source software, because it does not call to mind what Stallman sees as the value of the software: freedom.^[64] Thus it will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom.^[65] Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are software libre and unfettered software, but free software is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term "proprietary software" rather than "closed source software", when referring to software that is not free software.

Stallman repeatedly asks that the term GNU/Linux, which he pronounces "GNU slash Linux", be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the Linux kernel. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer."^[63] He claims that the connection between the GNU project's philosophy and its software is broken when people refer to the combination as merely Linux.^[66] Starting around 2003, he began also using the term GNU+Linux, which he pronounces "GNU plus Linux", to prevent others from pronouncing the phrase "GNU/Linux" as "GNU Linux", which would erroneously imply that the Linux kernel is maintained by the GNU project. (See: GNU/Linux naming controversy)

Stallman argues that the term intellectual property is designed to confuse people, and is used to prevent intelligent discussion on the specifics of copyright, patent, trademark and other laws by lumping together areas of law that are more dissimilar than similar.^[67] He also argues that by referring to these laws as property laws, the term biases the discussion when thinking about how to treat these issues.

These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. Copyright law was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas — a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying.^[68]

An example of cautioning others to avoid other terminology while also offering suggestions for possible alternatives, is this sentence of an email by Stallman to a public mailing list:

I think it is ok for authors (please let's not call them creators, they are not gods) to ask for money for copies of their works (please let's not devalue these works by calling them content) in order to gain income (the term compensation falsely implies it is a matter of making up for some kind of damages).^[69]

Personal life[link]

Stallman has devoted the bulk of his life’s energies to political and software activism.^[70] Professing to care little for material wealth, he explains that "I've always lived cheaply ... like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do."^[71]

Until around 1998, his office at MIT's AI Lab was also his residence.^[72] He was registered to vote from there. Nowadays he has a separate residence in Cambridge not far from MIT.^[73] His position as a research affiliate at MIT is unpaid.^[74]

In a footnote to an article he wrote in 1999, he says "As an atheist, I don't follow any religious leaders, but I sometimes find I admire something one of them has said."^[21] Stallman often wears a button that reads "Impeach God".^[75][76]

Stallman chooses not to celebrate Christmas, instead celebrating "Grav-mass" on December 25. The name and date are references to Isaac Newton, whose birthday falls on that day on the old style calendar.^[77]

When asked about his influences, he replied that he admires Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ralph Nader, and Dennis Kucinich, and commented as well: "I admire Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, even though I criticize some of the things that they did."^[78] Stallman is a Green Party supporter,^[1] and a supporter of the National Initiative proposal.^[79]

Stallman recommends not owning a mobile phone,^[80] as he believes the tracking of cell phones creates harmful privacy issues.^[81] Also, Stallman avoids use of a key card to enter the building where his office is.^[82] Such a system would track doors entered and times. For personal reasons, he generally does not actively browse the web from his computer; rather, he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox, claiming to limit direct access via browsers to a few sites such as his own or those related to his work with GNU and the FSF.^[83][84]

In a lecture in Manchester, England on May 1, 2008, Stallman advocated paper voting over machine voting, insisting that there was a much better chance of being able to do a recount correctly if there was a paper copy of the ballots.^[85]

Stallman enjoys a wide range of musical styles from the works of Conlon Nancarrow^[86] to folk;^[87] the Free Software Song takes the form of alternative words for the Bulgarian folk dance Sadi Moma. More recently he wrote a take-off on the Cuban folk song Guantanamera, about a prisoner in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and recorded it in Cuba with Cuban musicians.^[88] He also enjoys music by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and Weird Al Yankovic.^[89]

Stallman is a fan of science fiction, including works by the author Greg Egan.^[90] He occasionally goes to science fiction conventions^[28] and wrote the Free Software Song while awaiting his turn to sing at a convention. He has written two science fiction stories, "The Right to Read" and "Jinnetic Engineering".

Along with his native English, Stallman is also fluent enough in French and Spanish to deliver his two-hour speeches in those languages, and claims a "somewhat flawed" command of Indonesian.^[91][92]

Honors and awards[link]

Stallman receiving an Honorary doctorate from National University of Córdoba, Argentina.

Stallman has received the following recognition for his work:

• 1986: Honorary lifetime membership of the Chalmers University of Technology Computer Society^[93]
• 1990: Exceptional merit award MacArthur Fellowship ("genius grant")^[94]
• 1990: The Association for Computing Machinery's Grace Murray Hopper Award "For pioneering work in the development of the extensible editor EMACS (Editing Macros)."^[95]
• 1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology^[96]
• 1998: Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award^[97]
• 1999: Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award^[98]
• 2001: The Takeda Techno-Entrepreneurship Award for Social/Economic Well-Being (武田研究奨励賞)^[99]
• 2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow^[100]
• 2002: United States National Academy of Engineering membership^[101]
• 2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel^[102]
• 2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta.^[103]
• 2004: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería del Perú.^[104]
• 2007: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.^[105]
• 2007: First Premio Internacional Extremadura al Conocimiento Libre^[106]
• 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote.^{[citation needed]}
• 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia^[107]
• 2008: Honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, in Peru^{[citation needed]}
• 2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University^[108][109]
• 2011: Honorary doctorate, from National University of Córdoba.^[110]

Selected publications[link]

Stallman has written and been the subject of several books, including:

Papers in technical and academic journals

• Stallman, Richard M; Sussman, Gerald J (November 1975). Heuristic Techniques in Computer-Aided Circuit Analysis. CAS-22 (11). IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems. 
• Stallman, Richard M; Sussman, Gerald J (1977). Forward Reasoning and Dependency-Directed Backtracking In a System for Computer-Aided Circuit analysis. Artificial Intelligence 9. pp. 135–196. 
• Richard Stallman, Reevaluating Copyright: The Public Must Prevail, Oregon Law Review 75(1) 1996.
• Stallman, Richard M (2009). Viewpoint: Why "open source" misses the point of free software. Communications of the ACM 52(6). pp. 31–33. DOI:10.1145/1516046.1516058. 
• Stallman, Richard M (2010). Is digital inclusion a good thing? How can we make sure it is?. 48. Communications Magazine, IEEE. pp. 112–118. DOI:10.1109/MCOM.2010.5402673. 

Manuals

• Stallman, Richard M (1981). EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable, Self-Documenting Display Editor. Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory publication. AIM-519A. 
• Stallman, Richard M (2002). GNU Emacs Manual. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-85-X. http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/. 
• Stallman, Richard M; McGrath, Roland; & Smith, Paul D (2004). GNU Make: A Program for Directed Compilation. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-83-3. http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/. 

Selected Essays

• Stallman, Richard M (2010). Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, Second Edition. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 978-0-9831592-0-9. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf. 

Biography

• Williams, Sam (2010). Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 978-0-9831592-1-6. http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/faif-2.0.pdf. 
• Stallman, Richard M. (1999-11-01). The Right to Read. [S.l.. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1981. Retrieved 2012-05-11. 

Stallman has four topics that he has spoken on often:^[111]

• The GNU project and the free software movement, March 3, 2006
• The Dangers of Software Patents, May 24, 2004
• Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks, April 19, 2001
• The GNU GPL, and GPLv3, April 1, 2007

See also[link]

Free software portal

• Hacker ethic
• History of free software
• League for Programming Freedom
• Lisp Machine Lisp
• Revolution OS
• 9882 Stallman

References[link]

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