The EU council has decided to pass the heavily controversial patent directives on software without any vote or debate. We reported recently that Linus Torvalds and other European Open Source developers called this the single biggest threat to Free and Open Source software.
Totalitarianism in action.
Fully agree with you Devon.
Europe will be very sorry this…
As I read it … there’s nothing final yet.
Seems that it still needs to go through Parliament.
As far as I know, Belgium, Germany, France, and from the article also Austria and Poland are against. Seems like the Schots are frowning too. So is Finland, I guess.
I still have good hopes that this will never pass into legislation.
Ok … how much exactly did Bill have to pay for this one?
If no one had litigated against Microsoft, they wouldn’t have litigated against anyone else. Until the anti-trust case, Microsoft was quite content to their business in the marketplace instead of the courtroom until Netscape and Sun taught them how profitable using the court could be.
“Microsoft was quite content to their business in the marketplace instead of the courtroom until Netscape and Sun taught them how profitable using the court could be.
”
netscape lost its case. how exactly does that teach MS to be profitable. I wonder how MS gets apologists like this
So much for democracy in Europe! This proves the talking shop nature of these bureaucratic institutions.
Thanks EU, so much for a fair change for european software houses.
Infosoc, software patents and kemicals in food, I think EU already has proven that it doesn’t want the best for the european people.
Should I start learning Norwegian?
talk about hurting small businesses!!!
By hurting them you mean Killing them, right?
🙁
If thats true ill vote NO to the spanish referendum to accept the new european ‘constitution’.
I hope it doesn’t pass the European parliment
Seems that it still needs to go through Parliament.
European parliament has no power to prevent it becoming law. About all the parliament can actually do is determine who stands on the committee that decides whether to make it law or not (That and waste collosal amounts of European taxpayers money of course).
Well, actually, it would be better to accept the constitution, as it grants _more_ power to the parliament ! even if this constitution is not really perfect.. it’s still a step in the right direction. In any ways, it’s an improvement on the current status…
I’m not sure that this will pass in the end (well, I hope..), because now this question of software patents starts to be seen more and more as an illustration of the problems with the EU council vs the Parliament (the only elected body !). More and more politicians are aware of the issues, and more medias reports on it… So I hope it will soon be so blatant that they won’t do it. Don’t forget the recent good news about Poland (they reverted their council vote ! something unprecedent) or the fuss about it in the Dutch parliament…
I really hope that in the end it will be countercarred, because it won’t be pretty for EU programmers if that happend. And FOSS will probably suffers as well.
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
for(;;)
{
printf (“Hello World!
“);
}
}
I got a patent for that
The EP has already stopped it before. That’s why there is the current second reading. They do have the power to stop it again.
This is simply not true, nothing passed, it was put on the agenda, but was withdrawn afterwards …
This is unacceptable. But I wonder if it’ll affect North America too…
http://swpat.ffii.org/log/04/cons1217a/index.en.html
http://kwiki.ffii.org/Cons041213En
> http://swpat.ffii.org/log/04/cons1217a/index.en.html
Great !
it is troubling that Europe, a place that would benefit from embracing open source, is passing laws that might kill it.
Why would europe do that? Bribes? Ignorance?
I love Europe now.
I hate Europe when there was no EU (wars, 14-18, 39-45, hitler, …).
This will kill the software industry in the EU stone dead when it becomes law. Software creaters will either go to the wall, or be bought up by the likes of IBM, Sun and of course, your friends and ours, Microsoft.
I wonder, when software development is effectively dead in the EU, how many of the ministers involved in this travesty will loose *their* jobs as a result.
Suddenly, Canada looks like a very interesting place to live.
The earlier anti-patent posting by Linus, et al contained the comment:
“The average cost of a European patent is in the range from 30,000 to 50,000 Euros, and a company needs a very large number of such patents in order to be able to enter into “cross-licensing” agreements with multinationals that own tens of thousands of patents each.”
Good grief. Why should a patent cost that much? In the U.S. a pro-bono small business applicant can get a patent for less than $1,000. One patent can contain a large number of claims so it certainly is not necessarily true a company needs a large number of patents; nor is “cross-licensing” necesarily the objective.
I visited their advocacy website earlier and found it full of distortions and wild exagerations; and when I took time to write them out I did not receive the courtesy of a reply.
Software patents got a bad initial reputation in the U.S. too but to a large degree those startup problems did get resolved. Many of the problems were caused by not having a decent library of “prior art” to compare against.
Don’t fall for these sky-is-falling hysterical arguments. Even brilliant people make foolish comments at times. Get the facts and think for yourself. IMO the EU is certainly capable of implementing a fine software patent system if it wants to do so and the world will not end.
Merry Christmas!!!
I don’t think it will kill software, too many businesses depend on it. However I do thing it could realy affect a lot of things. With such strong nations against it I can’t believe it could pass without atleast some modifications. We’ll see.
I’m patenting the following code:
static int Factorial( int number )
{
if (number > 12)
{
printf( “Aren’t Software patents idiocy??
” );
return( 0 );
}
if (number == 1)
return( 1 );
else
return( Factorial( number – 1 ));
}
Too bad Isaac Newton did not patent calculus, his estate
would be very wealthy today.
the US is not much better. You are either getting screwed the EU way or screwed the US way.
Personaly i would prefere to get screwed somwhere where i can study without tuitions and get free health care.
Hi guys!
Take a look to http://kwiki.ffii.org/Cons041217En“>last . It seems the Patentes issue will be moved to Tuesday, but Monday we will see.
Isn’t all this supported by a majority of the democratically elected national governments?
A house in a relatively civilised country not part of the EU or the USA.
Must be in a not-too-hot and not-too-humid climate.
Preferably near some green and some useful shops.
“Should I start learning Norwegian?”
Well, you should hurry up then before Norway learns European 🙂
Anyway, this is very easy language to learn, i speak it 😉
Okay admittedly she didn’t get elected, but still.
Guess I’ll go and patent the for loop, if statement and printf(“hello world.
“);
#include <unistd.h>
int main()
{
while (1)
{
fork();
}
return 0;
}
If thats true ill vote NO to the spanish referendum to accept the new european ‘constitution’.
So will i, but not based on this alone.
For those who’d like to understand how the structure of law passing works, see this Ogg Theora video: http://www.itcollege.ee/dl/OGG/avaloeng10_2.ogg
… what you sleep with the devil.
Recent years showed a too much increasing level of american influence in Europe, this is no secret. And this one doesn’t come as a surprise either, be it as nasty and evil as it is.
I just am fed up with the “american way” of (c) enforcement, of IP cursades and their stupid and useless patent offices, especially regarding software patents (hell, 2004 has been a pretty wierd year, that’s for sure). I really don’t want to see all that happening to us.
“Step inside my home
That’s a brass toilet tissue holder with it’s own telephone
That’s musical doorbell
It don’t ring, I ain’t kiddin’
It plays america the beautiful and tie a yellow ribbon”
Just another pseudo-totalitarian accomplishment of the Bruxelles €-bureaucrats: what can one expect from an Europe which is almost only the result of big business (and big parties) in action? If Europe were, instead, a confederation of free regions and communes, with a bottom-up (instead of top-down) democracy, such things would happen: we would live in a free world (as in beer or as in freedom, wouldn’t matter anymore), directly managed by people – both individually and socially – at all levels. Sadly, the current Eruope of States won’t bring anything good, IMHO, except a form of “pseudo-post- modern” slavery towards the purely economic globalisation “project” (sic!) – which we can witness day after day, always equal to itself, in its complete lack of perspectives…
I looked the pdf, it’s not there!
What can we do to stop this rubberstambing!
If you know any MPs, now would be a good time to bribe them.
“What can we do to stop this rubberstambing!”
A never-before-seen massive protest-march in Strassbourg by a record-breaking number of people, that’ll wil spoken of for years around the world…
…might perhaps eventually who knows in the long run change something.
… “such things would *not* happen”, of course: i.e., we wouldn’t have servile-authoritarian “accomplishments” by a European government which almost only values €€€ (and $$$), despite the easy populist appearances – excatly as in the US, and elsewhere, for that matter. “Mala tempora currunt”, as the ancients used to say…
Anyone who didn’t vote an anti-epatents candidate in the last european elections only has themselves to blame. If we spent more time discussing the issues in the eu, rather than electing UKIP members in a party lead to election success through the leadership of a clearly racist man then maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation. I can’t really comment on the situation in other countries, but in Britain we have a large populace afraid of europe, and being convinced by a Murdoch lead press that it is a bad thing. For example the EU constitution barely changes anything within the EU, it simply makes life easier for the beaurocrats – this can only be a good thing because they spend more time debating issues such as patents and less time fannying about ammending treaties. But the press seems more interested in telling people that they will loose their national identity through signing up to the constitution! Its a shame that the press chooses to do such a dis-service to the nation on this front.
>> Should I start learning Norwegian?
Unfortionatly, Norway is a member of EØS, so when EU says “jump”, the Norwegian goverment jumps. (Even our socalled anti-EU primeminister) In theori, we can refuse to accept the patendirctive, but I doubt we will. (It seems like our primeminister only cares for staying in power, not using it to defend the causes he was elected to)
well this is exactly the way unlimited democracy works. instead of individual freedom all you here is democracy. democracy lead hitler to his power, democracy lead communists to power in my country to rule like they ruled for over forty years. wonder, when we start asking what happened to our freedom during the democratic process:)
The EU is basically a very good thing. Since we have this, we have no big wars in Europe anymore (Yugoslavia I consider to be a regional conflict and post World War 2 events, even today). We have gone from a poor bunch of nations in the beginning of the previous century to a wealthy group of people. Moreover, united we have a word against the USA, Russia, China, Japan and others. The USA must remember that we are greatful for what they did in 44-45 over here, but now they no longer are the authority here. No Mr. Bush, you do not rule here.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of money wasted in burocracy. And, as all politicians are, politicians are sometimes taking the wrong decisions.
It is our task to convince those guys to review their proposal. And we are on a good way. France and Germany are against. Those are 2 of the 3 most influencial countries (3rd is Great Britain, who will not help us in this). They are now backuped by Belgium (we have a score to settle with GB), Poland, Schotland perhaps, Holland perhaps, Finland perhaps.
If we could just push a little bit more in the Southern countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, and Northern countris like Norway, Finland and Sweden, this law is never going to get passed the second review or hearing or however they want to call it.
What a mess this board is today.
will not help as norway is the nation in europe that have put into effect more EU directives then any other european nation, and its not even a full EU member! only other contry that comes close is denmark, and its a full member…
i was a bit interested in EU while it was a free-trade agreement as that could be a win-win for both sides. but now that its turning into a clone of USA im not so sure. basicly they interfer in to many things, and it sounds more and more like they have the interest of the multinationals in mind rather then the diffrent peoples of europe.
i had great hopes that Europe would be a bit more enlightened than some of our national or global governments.
“Why would europe do that? Bribes? Ignorance?”
Both.
The big companies have plenty of cash for bribes, and the ignorant politicians don’t care if the small software companies are destroyed. Small companies can’t pay big bribes.
The worrying thing about software patents is how they will be applied outside the country they are patented in. If, say, a powerstation in Africa is found to be using software which infringes on a patent in the US or EU, will these governments use the same strongarm tactics that they use to support pharmaceutical companies?
I think the bureaucrats making these decisions have either been influenced by big business, or haven’t grasped the implications of software patents. Where does one draw the line in what can be patented? Someone joked about patenting a for… loop, but without very clear guidelines, what is to stop something like this happening?
Software is complicated, and overlaps mathematics – it isn’t as easy as saying a car manufacturer can’t patent the wheel, or an aicraft manufacturer can’t patent the concept of wings.
If this law is passed, the only people guaranteed to do well (as in so much of life these days) are lawyers…
> The EU is basically a very good thing. Since we have
> this, we have no big wars in Europe anymore
Yes because after WW2 we lost our resources to fight another world war.
>… We have gone from a poor bunch of nations in the
> beginning of the previous century to a wealthy group of
> people.
At the beginning of the last century, Great Britain alone rules over about 25% of the world surface (not counting oceans) an 33% of the people. You could count the nations not in the american continent that where no european colony or under heavy europen influence on one hand. Interesting to call that poor.
> The USA must remember that we are greatful for what they
> did in 44-45 over here …
… and the USA must remember that they din’t not free europe on generosity but because german submarines set new york harbour on fire and destroyed their trade ships. The USA was fine with the war as long as they could do their business.
You’re quite correct.
Not to mention that US in 40-45 is not the US that exists today.
After all, if we were to follow that reasoning I’d still be mad at the Italians for attacking my village in 50BC …
> The EU is basically a very good thing. Since we have
> this, we have no big wars in Europe anymore
Yes because after WW2 we lost our resources to fight another world war.
That’s bull. We’ve grown smarter. We can still make war if we want to, look at the Balkan countries. We’ve just found better ways to keep ourselves busy.
>… We have gone from a poor bunch of nations in the
> beginning of the previous century to a wealthy group of
> people.
At the beginning of the last century, Great Britain alone rules over about 25% of the world surface (not counting oceans) an 33% of the people. You could count the nations not in the american continent that where no european colony or under heavy europen influence on one hand. Interesting to call that poor.
We were poor. We worked our butts off 6 days out of 7, 60 hours per week. We depended on potatoes to keep us from starving (eg. Ireland). We had no electricity, no decent water, no decent heating, … We had no rights for women, unequal rights between the rich and the poor. Okay, we exploited a lot of other countries and people, but back home, no happy sight there …
> The USA must remember that we are greatful for what they
> did in 44-45 over here …
… and the USA must remember that they din’t not free europe on generosity but because german submarines set new york harbour on fire
German submarines never set NY on fire. That’s bull. They did sink trade ships that were going to England, and they did sink (by mistake?) a passenger ship. But, if Hitler had not made the mistake to massacre the jews in his concentration camps, the US would not have interfered. And, if the Russians would have been defeated in Stalingrad, they would not have been a reason either to come over. The US joined WO-II for jewish money and for influence (russians).
@Bram
Not to mention that US in 40-45 is not the US that exists today.
I agree here, but they have not changed that much. They still only fight in countries where there’s business to do. Ask the U.S. to intervene in any country without resources to abuse afterwards, they won’t come. Why do you think the US wastes so much blood in Iraq ?
After all, if we were to follow that reasoning I’d still be mad at the Italians for attacking my village in 50BC …
After all, if we were to follow that reasoning I’d still be mad at the Italians for attacking my village in 50BC …
Euh … I would not compare the Romans with the Italians. After the Roman culture was destroyed, the Italians only gave us pizza and spaghetti.
And for history: we should be glad that Italy joined Germany. If Italy had not attacked, I think, Bulgaria or Greece, where Hitler had to go help Mussolini because the Italians were doing bad, Hitler would have attacked Russia 2 months earlier and they would not have been frozen in the first Russian winter.
Little you know about Italy’s contribution to modern Europe. Go back to school and learn some histroy before speaking of such ignorance. Here’s a little hint the word for you to investigate today is Medici.
Look it up, a simple Google will suffice and then have a look at what they contributed to History. Your country would be nothing of what it is today without these people.
“The USA must remember that we are greatful for what they did in 44-45 over here, but now they no longer are the authority here. No Mr. Bush, you do not rule here.”
And still europe did nothing when bosnians and kosovars where getting slaughtered. The americans did. Whatever their motives were, at least they didn’t turn their backs on those people.
You’re right about that.
On the other hand – While they (the US) think we (Europe) should be able to handle our own (military) affairs, they strongly protest any attempts from some countries in the EU to install a ‘European Army’. “Yes, Europe, you can become stronger so we don’t have to get you out of trouble every time. Not too strong though, we wouldn’t want you to become an equal.”
(I guess we’re digressing)
I’m not at all impressed by the lack of public accountability and undemocratic ruling body in the EU. This absolutely stinks.
It is setback for patent proponents, not our setback. Everything is going on, it is just to Parlament to decide where to go.
This action is great! As it hurts the Councils decision that they are trying to rush it through without discussion, this will piss off the MEPs even more, and remember, its just being passed for the 2nd reading, we got 3 in total to stop it.
And it will be stopped, afaik Denmarks MEPs are against it too, that makes the opponents of the directive Germany, Holland, France, Finland, Denmark, UK, Austria and Poland. There is no way, they can rush this into the books without a fight – this is a very important decision, not rushable.
I just thought I’d elaborate some more on this:
The issue is still in the hands of the Council at the moment. They have not yet transformed the “political agreement” into a proper mutual point of view.
Once the Council comes to that concensus the issue will be handed over to the EP again. Where it will be canned.
Some EPs are trying to call a motion to block the thing at the moment.