Response from M-Systems

[Richard Stallman]

    >  The lawyer told me that licensing the distribution of a program
    > automatically licenses users to run it.  I was relieved.

    That seems very strange to me - I'd be very interested to know why he believes 
    this.

Lots of things in the law seem strange to non-lawyers.
His answer was a (pleasant) surprise to me, too.

    What I'm trying to say is that software patents are a local issue. 

Local to the United States, the UK, Japan, and maybe a year from now
all of Europe.  It is rather callous to dismiss such a large part of
the computer-using world as "local".


We can offer a company like M-systems certain kinds of cooperation
if they cooperate with our community; we can offer this cooperation
in the context of our relationship with them specifically.
But we cannot make basic global decisions for the sake of
our relationship with one company.


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