“A longtime Linux user hopes a petition will convince British
Telecom to back off its claim of having a patent on
hyperlinks.”
“Rick Collette, a Unix system administrator and Webmaster of the
Linux community site deepLinux.com organized the petition Friday,
after hearing that British Telecom was suing Internet service
provider Prodigy on BT’s claims that it should be compensated for
the use of hyperlinks.”
“Just think of the impact it could have on anybody’s day-to-day
life,” Collette says of BT’s claim. “I don’t know if anybody can
grasp how big this is. This could affect the way we do business —
this could affect everybody.”
“Collette says he’s not sure what he hopes the petition will
accomplish, short of the unlikely event that BT will back down from
its claims. He plans to give the petition to Prodigy, as a show of
support, and he plans to distribute it to as many media
organizations that will listen — “online, offline, it doesn’t
matter, just anybody and everybody.”