Block the PERA and PREVAIL Act – A major step back for software freedom — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software 13 Nov 2024 1:39 AM (5 months ago)
This article was updated Sunday, November 17 to reflect the delay of the bills Both the vote on the PERA Act, as well as the vote on the PREVAIL Act have been delayed. Both bills are not yet off the table, but there is now more time to take action […]
Transcript: The state of software patents in 2022 with Panos Alevropoulos 25 May 2023 7:00 AM (last year)
Note: This transcript is not a faithful reproduction of Panos’s live talk, but an edited version of his presentation. Many parts were rephrased to correct any inaccuracies and provide a more comfortable reading experience. The video of the original presentation can be found here: https://framatube.org/w/4E282g5j6qrYFQtCGN1iwx Author’s note: This talk was […]
Google’s decision to deprecate JPEG-XL emphasizes the need for browser choice and free formats 12 Apr 2023 11:45 AM (2 years ago)
Google wants to do what’s best for its own predatory interests, not what’s best for the web.
Join the fight against software patents with the revamped campaign site 3 Nov 2021 2:14 PM (3 years ago)
There are many problems caused by the enforcement of patents in the software industry, but it is important to first understand how user and developer freedoms are affected. If you don’t know what End Software Patents (ESP) is about, please read the recent article we posted on the issue of […]
The threat of software patents persists 4 Aug 2021 1:02 PM (3 years ago)
Read this article in Spanish. At the Free Software Foundation (FSF) we have reported extensively on many issues concerning user freedom. In this article, we will reintroduce a problem that has plagued the free software community for many years: the problem of software patents. In the past, we had several […]
Jarek Duda on software patents 19 Jan 2018 8:35 AM (7 years ago)
Jarek Duda is a lecturer in Institute of Computer Science and Computational Mathematics of Jagiellonian University. He has education in computer science (PhD), physics (PhD) and mathematics (MSc), focusing mainly on widely understood information theory. He is mainly known from introduction of Asymmetric Numeral Systems, which are currently replacing Huffman […]
About Microsoft’s patent licence for .NET core 12 Nov 2014 5:17 PM (10 years ago)
Because Microsoft has made it part of their core business to extract patent royalties from distributors of free software (particularly on smartphones), I decided to take a look at the patent safety offered by the licence of the parts of their .NET framework that they’re releasing as free software: Microsoft […]
US Supreme Court reining in software patents 19 Jun 2014 10:21 PM (10 years ago)
(For analysis and info links, see the swpat.org wiki page Alice v. CLS Bank.) “Reining in”. It wasn’t easy to find a term that was both accurate and also vague enough to describe what just happened. The US Supreme Court today published its decision on Alice v. CLS Bank. It’s […]
Is Soverain Software a patent troll? Yes 4 Apr 2014 11:43 AM (11 years ago)
I was reading about the US Supreme Court declining to hear Soverain v. Newegg when I saw someone ask if Soverain Software was a patent troll. I started with Wikipedia’s article on Soverain Software. I’m a big Wikipedia fan, but articles about little-known companies run the risk of getting more […]
Help needed documenting events of May 2013 23 May 2013 10:33 AM (11 years ago)
May brought exceptionally good pieces of news for campaigns against software patents, but I’m stuck studying for law exams. If anyone would like to help, it would be great to have better write-ups about these recent events on the ESP wiki: Update: There’s also a page for documenting part 2 […]