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BMUG, Inc. 	Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
      .     .     .     .     .     .     .    Berkeley Chapter
_______________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Judi Clark, 549-2684 (BMUG), 261-3718 (direct),
fax: 261-1869 (direct), or e-mail judic@well.sf.ca.us
May 20, 1992

Special Interest Group on Freedom, Privacy and Technology
A public forum co-sponsored by BMUG and CPSR/Berkeley

The Great Software Patent Debate!

Lotus sues Paperback Software, then sues Borland. 
Apple sues Microsoft and Hewlett Packard. Xerox sues Apple. 
Ashton-Tate sues Fox Software. They all had good ideas, so 
Microsoft bought Fox and Borland bought Ashton-Tate.

When you were growing up, did you ever want to be a famous 
inventor, owning a patent that would make you rich beyond your 
wildest dreams? Did you count the cost of the lawsuits to maintain 
your licensing rights and fend off others making similar claims in 
those dreams? Will we ever run out of free, usable code; code that 
hasn't been patented by someone?

Software patent proponent Paul Heckel goes head to head with 
Dr. Richard P. Gabriel, of the League for Programming Freedom to
discuss the realities of software patents.

Paul Heckel, author of the  book "The Elements of Friendly 
Software Design" (Sybex books, second edition, 1991) and owner 
of HyperRacks, Inc., pioneered the card and stack computer 
metaphor. He developed Zoomracks, which is recognized as a 
predecessor to HyperCard by Apple Computer (among others), who 
licensed his patents.

Dr. Richard P. Gabriel is Chief Technical Officer and principal 
founder of Lucid, Inc, a Unix software company specializing in 
object technology. He is a regular columnist for AI Expert. His 
research accomplishments include the first high-performance 
supercomputer Lisp system, the definition of the Common Lisp 
language, the Gabriel Benchmarks for measuring Lisp system 
performance, the design and implementation of Qlisp (the first 
compiler-based parallel Lisp implementation), assisted with the 
definition of the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), and the 
architecture of Lucid's integrated programming environment. 
LISP (as a language specification) is in the public domain.

The Special Interest Group's next meeting is Sunday, May 31, 
1992, at 2:00 pm. The monthly meetings are free and open to the 
public. The group meets on the last Sunday of the month at the 
BMUG office, 2055 Center Street, Berkeley -- a half block from 
the Berkeley Bart station.