Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation Unite Against Software Patents 105
WebMink writes "In rare joint move, the OSI and FSF have joined with Eben Moglen's Software Freedom Law Center to file a U.S. Supreme Court briefing in the CLS vs Alice case. The brief asserts the basic arguments that processes are not patentable if they are implemented solely through computer software, and that the best test for whether a software-implemented invention is solely implemented through software is whether special apparatus or the transformation of matter have been presented as part of the claims (the 'machine or transformation' test). They assert that finding software-only inventions unpatentable will not imperil the pace of software innovation, citing the overwhelming success of open source in the software industry as proof."
Re:to free or not to free (Score:4, Informative)
You're free to use either one the way you want.
You're free to modify either one the way you want.
One of them, you're free to relicense a fork of the code (even as proprietary) if you want.
The other one, you can know that any code you contribute to it will forever be free.
They are both "free". They are different flavors of free, but they are both free in every way that matters to users.
The *only* difference is in the way you can re-distribute them. That is a licensing (specifically, a matter of the copyright license) issue.
If you claim that BSD, or MIT, or even something like MS-PL are "not free"... well, you're crazy. Also, a prime example of the problems I was talking about at the start of the thread.