The YAAS Foundation Patent Suit

From: Stefan Midjich <[email protected]>
To: Richard Stallman <[email protected]>
Subject: Regarding Hello World
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 16:46:55 +0200

Hello Mr.Stallman

I am representing the Swedish YAAS foundation and we would like to address an important issue that came up last week when our tech crew were going over the source code for your GNU software. It appears that you have been using a patented technique of ours and we can not accept this kind of behaviour. The patented Hello World technique used in many programming languages was found in numerous of your projects source codes.

We are not unreasonable Mr.Stallman, all we demand is 50 000 in unmarked US dollars delivered in a brief case to the dumpster behind McDonalds in Springfield, IL. Failure to comply will result in us taking action and most possibly cutting off a piece of your beard in your sleep and cloning you for fun. We hope that you take upon this as seriously as we do Mr.Stallman and we wish you a good day.

—Stefan at YAAS