Title: A Personal View

As I write this, I am attempting to remove the LZW compression from the thousands of GIF files for the Japanese Embassy's Japanese viewer (which I wrote). This is because both Unisys and IBM hold patents on the LZW compression and decompression algorithm, and are applying them in various countries. Since I am not licensed to use the LZW compression algorithm and I cannot afford a license, I must find a way of avoiding it if I wish to stay legal. Unisys kept this fact quiet until the whole world were doing it, then started raking in the money. The amount of time I am spending on this issue is excessive, particularly close to my final exams, but it is necessary to stay clear (I am staying up all night in order to get it done as soon as possible). If you multiply this time by the number of developers out there then you have a huge global cost.

There is no shortage of opinion on the Web about how software patents are generally handled incompetently and are a threat to freedom of programming, and how, given legal changes that some are pressing for, you will soon hardly be able to write a line of code without violating somebody's patent somewhere (even in Europe and the UK). I will not bother to re-iterate all of this material further. But if you redistribute or use any illegal software, you are also acting illegally, so the time may come when you can never be sure if any program you run is legal, no matter how good the reputation of its originator.

You could keep your head in the sand and simply carry on regardless, taking care to obey any lawyer's notes that come through your door. After all, most infringements are not worth chasing. However, if, like me, your conscience is not at ease with the possibility of being in any way illegal, you may well find that the only feasible solution is to give up computers completely.

That is an extrapolation based on some opinions of legal trends, and it might not get that bad. On the other hand, it might. I am not advocating any campaign (I do not consider myself qualified to influence the authorities), but I am writing this because I do not want anyone to have a false sense of security. What you do today may well be illegal tomorrow. Your future is not at all secure.