10 Ways to Combat Software Patents

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 04, 2025

Today the FSF turns 40 and here are 10 things one can do to help us all combat software patents:

Speak to political figures about software patents
Have a chat with fellow developers about the harms of software patents
Help people besieged by software patent lawsuits find prior art
Write articles or blog posts about software patents
Write a program that helps bypass some software patent, i.e. a patent on algorithm, then release it as Free software
Rebut online propaganda by patent lawyers, even directly
Change your online profile to some avatar that objects to software patents (like @zoobab does)
Volunteer to help edit wikis such as swpat.org
Encourage insiders in patent offices to become whistleblowers
Name and shame prolific patent trolls and aggressors

Regarding point (2), remember that software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers. It's a common, shared problem. █

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library: Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time: A rough summary
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted: Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless: how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason): The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems: Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents: software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat...": Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor: Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant: The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun: We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die: Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16: very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones: Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk: Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US: Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents: Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days: Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40: We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025: IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time": Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET): For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad: Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good: we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda): Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People: Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots: For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux": Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm: I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk: Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration: Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released: Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days: It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe: Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025: IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity: They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt: Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed: Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again: Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS): The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power: Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel: What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe: Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary: New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN: Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025: IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash: XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday: A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025: Links for the day