[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Software Patents: Help Us Win in the Europarl!]

[Tomasz Wegrzanowski]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 10:20:27AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
> Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
> presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.  
> 
> Suppose the next political protest we're asked to participate in is
> pro-war?  Or anti-war?  Or whatever.  Taking sides is something that
> all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but
> Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.

Well, software patents may be dangerous to Wikipedia as a project.
We could have become target of legal action by Unisys, or Fraunhofer,
or somebody else with weird patent. Maybe they'll patent wiki ?
Or hyperlinks ?