B.3 What to do?

(This section is copied from the GCC manual, by Richard Stallman.)

To protect our freedom from lawsuits like these, a group of programmers and users have formed a new grass-roots political organization, the League for Programming Freedom.

The purpose of the League is to oppose new monopolistic practices such as user-interface copyright and software patents; it calls for a return to the legal policies of the recent past, in which these practices were not allowed. The League is not concerned with free software as an issue, and not affiliated with the Free Software Foundation.

The League's membership rolls include John McCarthy, inventor of Lisp, Marvin Minsky, founder of the Artificial Intelligence lab, Guy L. Steele, Jr., author of well-known books on Lisp and C, as well as Richard Stallman, the developer of GNU CC. Please join and add your name to the list. Membership dues in the League are $42 per year for programmers, managers and professionals; $10.50 for students; $21 for others.

The League needs both activist members and members who only pay their dues.

To join, or for more information, phone (617) 492-0023 or write to:

League for Programming Freedom 1 Kendall Square #143 P.O. Box 9171 Cambridge, MA 02139

You can also send electronic mail to league@prep.ai.mit.edu.

Here are some suggestions from the League for things you can do to protect your freedom to write programs:

• Don't buy from Xerox, Lotus or Apple. Buy from their competitors or from the defendants they are suing.

• Don't develop software to work with the systems made by these companies.

• Port your existing software to competing systems, so that you encourage users to switch.

• Write letters to company presidents to let them know their conduct is unacceptable.

• Tell your friends and colleagues about this issue and how it threatens to ruin the computer industry.

• Above all, don't work for the look-and-feel plaintiffs, and don't accept contracts from them.

• Write to Congress to explain the importance of this issue.

  House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property 2137 Rayburn Bldg Washington, DC 20515 Senate Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights United States Senate Washington, DC 20510

  (These committees have received lots of mail already; let's give them even more.)

Express your opinion! You can make a difference.