Z:gnu-www-ja-stallman-mec-india--297a5a-So you have to use the old ide/en

So you have to use the old ideas that other people have thought of. Nobody is such a genius that he can reinvent the entire field of software and do useful things without learning anything from anybody else. So in effect, those people, the patent holders and their lawyers, they are accusing us of being cheaters because we don't totally reinvent the field from scratch. We have to build on previous work to make progress, and that is exactly what the patent system prohibits us from doing. And we have to provide features that the users are accustomed to and can recognize, or they'll find our software just too difficult to use no matter how good it is.