Prof. Dr. ir. Herman Bruyninckx, teacher in an engineering department of a Belgian university, who has been observing the development of patenting for many years, warns that in the software field patents hamper the free flow of ideas, which is one of the basic conditions for progress. Moreover they prevent the formation of spinoffs from university research because they create a lot of bureaucratic obstacles and restrict the proliferation of free software, which allows spinoffs to grow and specialise quickly. Without free software these spinoffs would have to reimplement a lot of basic libraries themselves. Software patenting would be a major civilisational disaster which must not be allowed to happen.

author: Herman Bruyninckx Date of Submission: 2000-10-27 files: bruyninckx.pdf and local copy