[Gathnet] Efax joins the Evil Empire

[Stuart D. Gathman]

Efax has a patent on "a system to receive faxes and translate to email".  
Never mind that everyone has been doing that since the '80s.  Never mind
that you aren't supposed to be able to patent mere ideas.  Never mind that
the idea is trivial.  And they are suing open source developers with
projects that attach received faxes to an email.

I will be blocking efax.com for all BMS mail customers.  Those who insist
on using their service will have to use another email account. BTW, any
Linux server with a phone line can receive faxes and trivially convert
them to email - until you get sued.  Fortunately, the code to attach a fax 
to an email is truly trivial - a few lines of your favorite scripting 
language.  So developers can simply remove it and it can be "reinvented" 
by those who need it.

If you cancel your efax account, be sure to tell them why.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.