Debian Position on Software Patents February 19th, 2012The Debian Project announces the availability of its patent policy for the Debian archive.The Debian Project maintains a critical stance towards software patents: we consider software patents to be a threat to Free Software and an obstacle to the Debian mission of providing an entirely Free operating system for everyone's use. We believe software patents provide no advantage in promoting software innovation and we encourage our upstream authors to object to software patents.At the same time, given the de facto possibility of patenting software-related ideas in several countries around the world, it is...