Editing League for Programming Freedom (section)

{{short description|Organization}}
[[File:League for Programming Freedom (liberty icon).png|thumbnail|right|Logo of the LPF]]
'''League for Programming Freedom''' ('''LPF''') was founded in 1989 by [[Richard Stallman]] to unite [[free software]] developers as well as developers of [[proprietary software]] to fight against [[software patent]]s and the extension of the scope of [[copyright]]. Their logo is the [[Statue of Liberty]] holding a [[floppy disk]] and [[Magnetic tape data storage|tape spool]].

Among other initiatives, the League started the "Burn all [[Graphics Interchange Format|GIF]]s" campaign in opposition to the actions of [[Unisys]] in enforcing their patent on [[Lempel-Ziv-Welch|LZW]] compression used by [[CompuServe]] when creating the image format.

The League produced a newsletter, ''Programming Freedom'',<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://progfree.org/Newsletter/newsletter.html |title=Programming Freedom, the Newsletter of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) |publisher=League for Programming Freedom |website=Progfree.org |access-date=2011-10-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727190452/http://www.progfree.org/Newsletter/newsletter.html |archive-date=2011-07-27 }}</ref> in 11 issues from 1991 to 1995. These primary source materials chronicle the work of the organization.

The single event that had the most influence on the creation of the League was [[Apple Computer|Apple]]'s lawsuits against [[Microsoft]] about supposed copyrights violations of the [[look and feel]] of the [[Apple Macintosh|Macintosh]] in the development of [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://emerson.emory.edu/services/gcc/html/Look_and_Feel.html|title=Chapter 1: Protect Your Freedom---Fight ''Look And Feel''|access-date=2023-05-02}}</ref> After the lawsuit ended, the League went dormant, to be resurrected by those who were increasingly troubled by the enforcement of software patents.

In September 2009, LPF President Dean Anderson sent a notice<ref>{{cite web |url=http://progfree.org/return.html |title=Letter to Former Members of LPF |author=Dean Anderson |author2=LPF Board of Directors |publisher=League for Programming Freedom |work=Progfree.org |date=2009-09-15 |access-date=2011-10-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111006164520/http://progfree.org/return.html |archive-date=2011-10-06 }}</ref> to former members announcing the return of the LPF and reviving its membership, with plans for an election on 12 May 2010.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://progfree.org/2010-Annual-Meeting.html |title=Notice of Annual Meeting |publisher=League for Programming Freedom |work=Progfree.org |access-date=2011-10-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111006164601/http://progfree.org/2010-Annual-Meeting.html |archive-date=2011-10-06 }}</ref>{{Update inline|date=June 2022}}