Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-mec-india--ffbf5d-So, in effect, applying the pa/en

So, in effect, applying the patent system to software focuses on facilitating a thing which is not the limiting factor, while causing trouble for the thing which is the limiting factor. You see the software patents encourage somebody to have an idea, but at the same time they encourage people to restrict its use, so in fact we are actually worse off now in terms of having ideas we could use, because in the past people had the ideas and published them and we could use them, and now they have the ideas and patent them and we can't use them for twenty years. In the mean time, the real limiting factor &mdash; which is developing the programs &mdash; this is hampered by software patents because of other dangers that I explained to you in the first half of this talk.