“Mandrakesoft would like to alert all users and the software community at large about a recent clandestine attack by proprietary interests through covert adoption of EU Software Patent Legislation. In direct contravention of the recent vote by the European Parliament to curtail Software Patents, the Irish Presidency of the European Union has surreptitiously reinstated unlimited software patent language into the text of a statement to be adopted by the European Council of Ministers on Monday, May 17, without further debate!” Read the article here.
EU Software Patent Legislation: a real threat for Linux and OpenSource
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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EU patent legislation is a real threat to the EU, not to Linux. Linux is a way, more than anything. If the EU wants to slice their own throats, than even I will poar it on them.
I suppose that I shouldn’t care about the EU being able to protect itself. If they chose to destroy themselves, maybe it is telling.
Well, if EU developers are bullied away from working on Open Source projects for fear of legal action this will very much hurt Linux for all.
That’s why Microsoft and others were sweet-talking Irish government agencies. Never miss a trick these people.
Java should not become open source. It is true that Java would indeed improve in some ways if it became open, however Java is tied to a product line, and the GPL has not revealed evidence that it can be used in the commercial vendor GAME.
There is a misunderstanding here. Linux is the PLATFORM. It is meant to be NEUTRAL. That is the purpose of Linux. The EU is in severe danger if they support patents. This is the end of the control of European businesses. They will have no control at all.
Your leaders failed. I direct you to Schwartz because he is someone who understands the environment.
For Dutch people: I am not a supporter of the Dutch socialist party (I don’t even like them
), but they have put a letter/petition online that you can sign electronically, which will be send to “Minister” Brinkhorst.
http://www.sp.nl/nieuws/actie/software/
As I have said before – Open source programers, foundations, and friends of Open source should start filing patents on everything themselves. Set up a major foundation to enforce these patents and control licensing.
This will have two good outcomes. First it will cause a multitude of cross licensing and jamb up the courts with litigation. Which may well lead to a seeing of the light by political types or the courts themselves. This may well lead to an end to this entire mess. Second the foundation can grant a free to open source license and negotiate a restricted commercial license for closed source proprietary software firms. I would say that the only sure way for a proprietary firm to get rights to use foundation held patents would be to accept a clause that says that all patents they hold will become licensed free to open source before they may ship any software base on foundation patents. This will work in both the US and the EU if the EU adopts software patens. If the mess can devlope fast enough in the US courts the EU may well back off before adopting software patents.
we should all simply ignore all software patents.
_but_, give credits where credits is due if you accidently happen to know who “owns” four two lines of code if you didnt created it your own.
As I have said before – Open source programers, foundations, and friends of Open source should start filing patents on everything themselves. Set up a major foundation to enforce these patents and control licensing.
Any idea what a patent costs?!? The avarage filing costs $15000, and big companies patent the most trivial things. You will lose that race big time…
Let’s look at the reality. The GPL does not support patents, therefore open source development is not a “way” if patents are involved. I can not say more. I can only say, do not pass laws that support patents!!!!
The GPL does not support patents
The GPL is not the only, nor the most important open source license.
> As I have said before – Open source programers,
> foundations, and friends of Open source should start
> filing patents on everything themselves. Set up a major
> foundation to enforce these patents and control
> licensing.
That’s exactly the same thought that crossed my mind. Fighting them won’t do any good, we need to use their same tacticts. I believe there’s a lot to be patented by the Open Source world, and I believe there are enough Open Source developers to rise enough funds for this kind of initiative.
There’s a demonstration this friday in The Hague on 14:00.
“That’s why Microsoft and others were sweet-talking Irish government agencies. Never miss a trick these people.”
Source? Microsoft lobbied earlier at september 2003, since a lobby then leaked. I think they haven’t been doing nothing in their lobby efforts between september 2003 and may 2004 since this is important stuff..
PS: Great news for Germany! “Heise has the news: A German politician told demonstrators that Germany will vote against the software patent directive of the Council of the European Union. This is a turn-around, and according to Mathias, who brought this story to my attention, it is the direct result of grassroots lobbying efforts. Germany must never adopt the US system, Elmar Hucko, Ministerial Director in the Federal Department of Justice, said, to cheers from demonstrators. Others at the demonstration pointed out the danger such patents pose to FOSS software. […]” -> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040513125154288
Here’s an example of Cisco’s recent claim on a patent.
http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20040512012809
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3085
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/05/12/0039242.shtml
Here’s a picture which describes a number of 20 patents (counting in USA).
http://webshop.ffii.org
Unless your using Quantum Mathematics and then 1+1= what ever the hell you want it to as it is the observer who determines the result.(-:
primative barbarians brought down Rome let them bring down Microsoft.
I must admit that I had hoped that European polititians were cleverer then this, or at least more understanding of the implications of this action…
And one of the eariler posters was quite correct, the Irish have been let down in a big way. But then again this is the same government who kept setting up referendums until they got the result they wanted…
I for one think that this is a very dark day for computing for the user, who at the end of this will loose choice as the big boys muscle out the local competition, and the developers who get slapped around for not having the obscene amounts of cash to protect their works from being copyrighted by said companies and effectively being shoved out of the market… We’ve all seen it happen before over the water, now its here.
Stupid Berty (Berty O’hearn [sp?] is the prime minister for Eire), very very stupid.
> The GPL is not the only, nor the most important open source license.
Did he say either of these things? And anyways, the article was about a statement made by MandrakeSoft, who sell a Linux distro, and in the case of Linux, I would say the GPL is the most important license. What’s the point of this being posted here? Don’t like the GPL? Guess what, big deal. I don’t care.
I hope my post gets modded down. It’s in reply to a message that is off-topic and likely to start a flame war.
Some postings on here are better than the articles sometimes (quite often actually) Too bad I always have to scan over and get ticked off at garbage like this.
The US lobby is really strong and the stupid european destroy themself for the US. That’s clever!
But surprisingly Germany is against software patents. But it isn’t clear if this suffice to decline sw patents.
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2004/6810.html
@ PdC:
> we should all simply ignore all software patents…
At least in German law, unless you are developing your software as a company, if you get sued over patent issues you are facing unlimited liability with everything you have. One lawsuit could ruin you for life. Not a position where I would be willing to “simply ignore all software patents”. Your only hope is that all your projects remain so insignificant that no patent holder gives a damn.
@ cirad:
> But surprisingly Germany is against software patents.
That is good, and surprising news. Germany was swinging around on that issue more than once. Looks like the FFII actually made themselves heard on this. Maybe there’s hope…
Patent system leaves country with strong IP protection vunerable to attacks from counrties with weak IP protection and strong centralised governments – eg. China? All they have to do is patent or buy patents for some crucial technologies and then require everyone who wants to use these patents to move production to their countries.
I’ve once heard that Ireland was the biggest software provider of the world.
… Real !
The Irish government has attracted many companies from the SW and computer HW industry, the production of packaged Microsoft software for the whole Europe is done in Ireland ( as well as all the Dell computers ).
There are obvious lobbying from that area. Ireland does not develop softwares, they produce softwares.
Any Irish reader here to tell whether I am wrong ?
[ It is soo sad, Ireland is a great country and I love their trad. music ;-{ ]
Then I was a kid learning medieval history at school about such things like *selling* indulgences (papers that “guarantee” you go to heaven after death) I thought – man, what a dark ages it were, and I was realy happy of thought that those times are gone for ever. What a naive kid I was… Now I can imagine future kid like me in about 400 years reading history books where things like EU Software Patent Legislation in 2004 mentioned and thinking – man what a dark ages it were, phew..
can’t seem to make up their minds. First they decided to use Open Source for Educational purposes, then a week later somebody in another part of the government was saying it was too expensive to use Linux. Wait until Longhorn gets here. Then they’ll know what expensive is.
> we should all simply ignore all software patents…
At least in German law, unless you are developing your software as a company, if you get sued over patent issues you are facing unlimited liability with everything you have. One lawsuit could ruin you for life. Not a position where I would be willing to “simply ignore all software patents”. Your only hope is that all your projects remain so insignificant that no patent holder gives a damn.
It may make a difference whether you’re selling your software or not, but I’m not sure.
I read today on a magazine that the Italian minister of innovation is against software patents and that Italy will be critical about them. chris
There’s one good thing about the EU (imho it’s the only positive…): If one member says no it is no. it doesn’t matter what all the others have voted for.
that’s no longer the case, majority or qualified majority systems are used for votes on several issues. On this issue, a firm veto by one country would be enough to torpedo the bill for now, but that’s by no means certain to happen yet.