Software Patent Madness

[Conrad Knauer]

As seen in the Groklaw News Picks http://www.groklaw.net/newsitems.php

---
    * To: debian-legal at lists.debian.org, "Debian Devel Games"
<debian-devel-games at lists.debian.org>
    * Subject: patents on Frets on Fire, Pydance, StepMania and such games
    * From: "Miriam Ruiz" <little.miry at gmail.com>
    * Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:22:58 +0100
    * Message-id: <4671dd0c0801180222l761730c2ic43761f2ac7976f8 at mail.gmail.com>

Tom "spot" Callaway, from Red Hat, announced [1] that Fedora won't be
including any game of the kind of Frets on Fire, Stepmania, pydance,
digiband, or anything of the kind of DDR or Guitar Hero, due to patent
concerns [2].

"""
Due to patent concerns, we won't be able to include any games in Fedora
which meet the following criteria:

A game where "targets" move across the screen to a predetermined point
or line, where the player hits a button/key/mouse click as the target(s)
crosses that point or line, and gets points.
"""

Any thoughts on that?

Greetings,
Miry

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-games-list/2008-January/msg00022.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-games-list/2008-January/msg00041.html
[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-games-list/2008-January/msg00033.html
---

Software patents must die.

CK