On Wed, 3 Feb 93 03:22:54 est, "Noah Friedman" <friedman@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU> wrote:
> >The "commercial market" will be drastically leveled as free applications
> >are published, become known, and "compete" against commercially sold
> >applications.  In this environment, patent law will take an interesting
> >turn and if we're all lucky, software patenting as we know it will
> >cease.
> 
> I fear that proprietary software companies will see software patents (and
> interface copyrights) as a method of preventing free software from possibly
> competing, and will use them heavily if they can get away with it.

Yes, that's my fear also.  Fortunately, many patents are non-basic
and are easy to work around (e.g. Hayes's +++ patent).  But I fully
expect that the proprietary software companies will not hesitate to
use FUD and legal maneuvers to combat free software.