Free Software Foundation announces Trend Micro boycott

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) calls on everyone to boycott the products of Trend Micro, a software company that makes proprietary anti-virus software.



The fact is that Trend Micro has filed a lawsuit for patent infringement against Barracuda Networks, which distributes the free antivirus program ClamAV. Allegedly, this program violates the Trend Micro software patent describing virus scan via FTP.

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“In any case, we should avoid using closed programs, but those companies that use software patents for aggression are the lowest among the lowest,” the FSF said in a statement.



Such lawsuits threaten the entire IT community, especially programmers who are working to create free and open source software. There are not many ways that are effective against patent trolls exploiting an imperfect patent system for financial gain. The best way out is to prohibit software code patents altogether. But now, until this is done, a boycott of software is a way of direct and immediate financial blow to such as Trend Micro.



The Free Software Foundation advises delivering information on Trend Micro's aggressive and unscrupulous actions to all potential software customers from this company.