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Yes, let's do this by numbers. One vote per company. In the blue corner we have almost two thousand companies (Coral Cache)...

By the way, the database there is quite interesting. I never bothered to find out that Kapersky Labs was a German company, for example (and that they even care about legal malware).

Jones and others' talk of "hypocrisy" and "treachery" is childish and ignorant. If they think that their facile SCO-hating and witch hunting as the clown Darl McBride inexplicably attempts to bash his company's brains out against the wall of IBM is somehow doing more for FLOSS than Marten Mickos has, they are completely deluded.

The domain ffii.org is currently offline, due to a hoster who did not have the nerve to research a baseless threat letter sent by Nutzwerk's lawyers.

The FFII.org machine is not offline.

For instance you can still view

http://www.economic-majority.com/

I recommand to everybody in Europe to come to this Conference:

June 29th 2005 - Conference in the European Parliament
http://economic-majority.com/konf050629/

Or at least register to the Support Form at:
http://economic-majority.com/index.en.php

Now it's time to do something, or it will be too late.

Sincerely,

Hervé Fulchiron
Zinside - Provider of Open Source Solutions
http://www.zinside.com/

I recommand to everybody in Europe to come to this Conference:

June 29th 2005 - Conference in the European Parliament
http://economic-majority.com/konf050629/

Or at least register to the Support Form at:
http://economic-majority.com/index.en.php

Now it's time to do something, or it will be too late.

Sincerely,

Hervé Fulchiron
Zinside - Provider of Open Source Solutions
http://www.zinside.com/

"Many" is not the same as a "substantial percentage",

and "building a business around a patent" is not the issue at al

All I'm saying is that many companies have taken this route and for very legitimate reasons - tax incentives and to aid in achieving funding. Many startup sotware companies need to gain the support of venture capital funds and / or early stage investors if they want to survive, and if patents help attract them, then thats what you do. If they enable you to pocket cash tax free too, all the better.

Of course, if software patents are enforceable, you're generally better off with such patents than without them. And you're right about the tax advantages, but even companies who take advantage of that are not necessarily in favour of software patents.

Software is a business, not a game. There are risks in every business of course, but a good patent search is a small investment to make if you are investing time and money in a project.

And if you're a closed source company, other companies can even patent the stuff you have done after your program is brought to market, since that doesn't count as a publication of the algorithm.

The point is simply that from a small business perspective, in the general case (I'm not claiming there aren't any exceptions) software patents pose much more risks than advantages.

"Many" is not the same as a "substantial percentage",

and "building a business around a patent" is not the issue at al

All I'm saying is that many companies have taken this route and for very legitimate reasons - tax incentives and to aid in achieving funding. Many startup sotware companies need to gain the support of venture capital funds and / or early stage investors if they want to survive, and if patents help attract them, then thats what you do. If they enable you to pocket cash tax free too, all the better.

Of course, if software patents are enforceable, you're generally better off with such patents than without them. And you're right about the tax advantages, but even companies who take advantage of that are not necessarily in favour of software patents.

Software is a business, not a game. There are risks in every business of course, but a good patent search is a small investment to make if you are investing time and money in a project.

And if you're a closed source company, other companies can even patent the stuff you have done after your program is brought to market, since that doesn't count as a publication of the algorithm.

The point is simply that from a small business perspective, in the general case (I'm not claiming there aren't any exceptions) software patents pose much more risks than advantages.

My favourite site:

http://www.economic-majority.com/testimony/index.e n.php

And in the EU, they call it an economic majority.

If so: Why not support http://www.economic-majority.com/ with your company?