Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-mec-india--151e7a-Now, sometimes a feature gets/en

Now, sometimes a feature gets patented. In that case, you can avoid the patent by taking out that feature. In the late 80's the users of the word processor XyWrite got a downgrade in the mail. That word processor had a feature where you could define a short word or sequence as an abbreviation. Whenever you typed in that short sequence and then a space, it would turn into a longer expansion. You could define these any way you liked. Then somebody patented this, and XyWrite decided to deal with the patent by removing the feature. They contacted me because in fact I had put a feature like that into the original Emacs editor back in the 70's, many years before this patent. So there was a chance that I could provide evidence that would enable them to fight the patent.