Talk on The Danger of Software Patents" by Richard Stallman

dublin | sci-tech | event notice Monday May 17, 2004 13:50 by T

Monday 24th May at 7:30pm

Richard Stallman will be giving a talk titled "The Danger of Software Patents" in Dublin on the 24th of May at 19:30, organised in association with the Dublin University Internet Society (TCD Netsoc).

The venue will be the MacNeill theatre, which is located in the Hamilton building at the east end of TCD (near Pearse St. dart station). There is a nominal charge of €3 for those not in TCD, which can be paid at the door. Addmission is free for IFSO members.

Richard Stallman will explain how software patents obstruct software development. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas. They restrict the development of software, so that every design decision brings a risk of getting sued. Patents in other fields restrict factories, but software patents restrict every computer user. Economic research shows that they even retard progress.

Richard Stallman (RMS) founded the Free Software movement in 1983 when he announced the GNU project. He went on to found Free Software Foundation, write the GNU GPL, popularised "copyleft" licensing schemes, and is the original author of GNU Emacs, the GNU C Compiler, the GNU Debugger, and many other Free Software packages. He's currently on a six week tour of EU states to encourage people to work within the political system to prevent software innovations becoming patentable.

Richard Stallman's website can be found at: http://www.stallman.org/