I was invited by the Singapore Management University to be a participant at a talk by Richard M Stallman of the Free Software Foundation. It was held on November 1st at the SMU Auditorium.

RMS spoke about Free Software and Patents though he did say that it is a very wide set topic that will take a good two hours to cover.

I have to agree that software patents are inherently and that we must guard against this being instituted in Singapore. Alas, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore does not have anything specific to this and I guess it is just as well.

Something to note about this talk – the session following RMS was to be a response to what he had to say and there were to be two persons – one myself and the other someone from the IDA.

What is very telling about the ambivalence of the Singapore government to Free Software (and by extension Open Source) is that the IDA representative “choose not to participate” in the discussion even though his name was advertised everywhere.

Ah, the beauty of a closed mind.