🚀 go-pugleaf

I was the author of the questions in the recent Usenix membership
survey about software patents.  In the introduction to that section
of the survey the example that was given was the patent on the
concept of an include file.  The article that I got this information
from was apparently jumping to conclusions.  Richard Stallman has
researched this topic and here are his conclusions:

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   From: rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Richard Stallman)
   
   I traced down the source of the story of a patent on include files.
   It turns out that the patent belongs to IBM, but include files are not
   what it covers.  (At least, I don't think it would cover them.)
   
   The patent is titled "Merging of Documents".  It covers displaying
   part of one document within the display of another, in response to a
   kind of cross-reference.  This is, of course, a basic idea of
   hypertext.  So many hypertext systems would infringe this patent.
   
   This patent might be invalid because of Ted Nelson's book on
   hypertext.  However, it may cost a lot of money to prove this.
   
   The patent number is 4,674,040.  It was issued in 1987.
   
   
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-evi