[Trisquel-users] Re : Automation, free software and moral duty

[lcerf]

You absolutely want the software you write under a copylefted license,  
probably the GNU GPLv3+. A competitor that would like to build similar robots  
running proprietary software would then have to rewrite everything. Assuming  
it is much work, it probably won't and will end up improving your software.  
Improvements that must be distributed under the same license. It has nothing  
to do with patents and everything to do with copyright (well, copyleft).

A patent should not impose any restriction on the software. It should purely  
deal with the hardware.