Keeping Software Free - One Man's Battle Against Software Patents
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| Summary: Hartmut Pilch, a German linguist and translator, runs an
| organization called the Foundation for a Free Information
| Infrastructure [FFII] out of a small office in Munich. Its object: to
| ensure that "basic computer language...[remain] as free as human speech."
| This premise has brought him into direct conflict with some of the
| biggest players in the computer industry, including Microsoft and
| Siemens. Pilch views patents on software as an anathema, since they
| "mean any programmer can be sued at any time". Last July, he and the
| 200-odd members of his lobby group succeeded in stopping the European
| Parliament from enacting a law that would have placed patents on
| computer code -- a surprising result that benefited the few US
| software companies that had publicly opposed software patent law,
| including Red Hat.
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