Slashdot Mirror

heretic9 writes "The European Parliament unanimously rejected the software patent bill recently put before it. Hugo Lueders of CompTIA, a pro-patent lobby group, said that the benefits of the bill had been obscured by special interest groups, which muddied debate about the rights and wrongs of software patents." Meaning, essentially, that the Conference of Presidents got its way.

jopet writes "The EU has amended its draft proposal for a directive on how to handle patents on "computer-implemented inventions'. Several harsh points have been dropped and clarifications on what is patentable at all have been added. Good to see that protests and petitions can make a difference." YHBT. These are the suggestions from June.

Slashback tonight brings updates on iTunes music sharing (the mentioned auction's been pulled), the continuing fight against software patents in Europe, the recently scuttled balloon-record attempt, and more. Read on for the details.

Your ruse, your clever trick. On August 22nd, we reported that OpenOffice.org's OS X version had been delayed for two years.

However, bluethundr writes "Hold the phone! Is it delayed or isn't it? Well, according to this story in the register, it AIN'T DELAYED...just undermanned. Apparently there are only TWO (count 'em! one...aw heck, where was I?) developers working on the OS X development team. Dan Williams (who is one of the two in question) says that 'the Mac version is in a Catch-22: with only two developers, it desperately needs man power. But no one will join the porting effort until they see momentum behind the Aqua port.' Maybe some of the coders among us could lend them a hand?"

Too late for the colonies, help save the mothership. leif.singer writes "While there still is some time left, please consider signing Eurolinux' petition against software patents in Europe." You'll be in good company: vinsci writes "In their news section, FFII has posted a more detailed story: "Within a few days, the petition calling the European Parliament to reject software patentability accumulated 50,000 new signatures.""

Free as in FreeDOS Jim Hall writes "I thought I'd submit this before the news item fell too far down our web page. If you remember about a year ago, Dell was to offer Windows-less PC's, instead pre-installing FreeDOS. You can now order a Dell with FreeDOS (or Linux) ... and have been for a while now. They are pretty nice machines, too (3.06GHz). We have the news item (with links to Dell) at the FreeDOS Project web site."

Nasty worms ought to at least produce spice. The NRC released an alert about worm infections and nuclear power plants. This is a reaction after the SQL-Slammer attacked the shut-down Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January.

Tomorrow is another year. RoadKillian writes "New Scientist reports thats the QinetiQ 1, the record-breaking balloon which was supposed to rise to an altitude of 40km (131,000ft) has ripped during inflation. The weather is unlikely to permit another attempt this year."

When EULAs collide. Yesterday's story about selling a song downloaded from iTunes seems to have an unhappy ending: sideswipe76 writes "As I was watching this auction today, it approached $16,600! Now, if you try and check this link from eBay you get 'invalid item.' Is eBay wussing out just to avoid any legal snafus that _might_ occur? Or did he violate some ebay policy? Thoughts?"

JPMH writes "At last, some quantitative analysis about software patents. This paper by Bessen and Hunt looks at the econometrics of who is being granted sw patents. It finds that far from encouraging innovation, software patenting is associated with firms which have *lower* then expected R&D spending as a proportion of sales (and even lower as a proportion of costs). Also, the companies which are most orientated towards software patenting (ie which have the largest proportion of their new patents in software) are the same companies who for their size are the most aggressive in the area of non-software patenting generally. This suggests that software patents are an unusually cheap and easy option for firms trying to build strategic "patent thickets" around their positions. Software patents have become a substitute, not an incentive, for innovation.
(Note: the key EU parliament committee vote in the debate on new legislation on software patenting in Europe is now expected on 10 June, not May 21. Still time to write those letters)." Read on for some interesting findings from the study.

"The paper itself is quite technical, with a detailed presentation of the mathematical economics involved, so here are some of Bessen and Hunt's more interesting results (see especially the tables at the end of the paper for more details):

• 69% of software patents in 1995-99 were assigned to manufacturing companies, despite these only employing 10% of programmers and analysts.
• Pure software publishers obtain unusually few patents per $10m R&D, only about a quarter of the rate for the whole economy. (But software services firms, and especially IBM, patent significantly more).
• In the 1980s, when software patents were hard to obtain, firms whose patents were mostly in software had unusally low numbers of patents in total (allowing for their size, R&D spending etc).
• Now this has reversed, and the firms with the largest proportion of their patents in software are those which are also granted the largest number of non-software patents (again, allowing for their size, R&D spending etc).
• A higher proportion of software patents is associated with a reduction in R&D as a proportion of sales, and an even larger reduction in R&D as a proportion of costs.
• Without the substitution of patent activity for research, "thumbnail calculations imply that at the end of the 90s R&D would have been about 10-15% higher" for the economy as a whole."

Alan Cox is one of the world's most famous Linux kernel hackers. Lately he's been speaking out quite a bit on issues like copyright law, software patents, and the future of Linux, and has generally become a bit more politically active, at least in the public eye, than he was in the past. Slashdot interviewed Alan back in 1999. Lots of things have changed since then, but our interview procedure hasn't; one question per post, we send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Alan, and post his answers verbatim as soon as he gets them back to us.

Holger Blasum writes: "The European Commission's proposal for a directive on software patents making software patentable in Europe is announced today (the commission's proposal still will have to pass council and parliament). MSWord's "Author" field suggests that it comes straight from the BSA's director of public policy. See the Eurolinux press release for a brief summary, more details can be found at the FFII website. Or, if you prefer French, zdnet.fr has some coverage too." The EC's site has several webpages about the proposal: a main page, FAQ, and the official copy of the proposal. Comparing the proposal-as-released with the draft obtained by Eurolinux, many sections are identical, some sections are nearly identical and a few sections have been completely rewritten.

physicman writes: "This weekend (3 & 4 Feb.) the first edition of the Open Source and Free Software Developers' European Meeting will be held in Brussels, Belgium. I think it is the first time that such a meeting occurs in Europe and it is very exciting to see what will come out of gathering at the same place people working on very different projects like Fyodor of nmap fame, Jeremy Allison from Samba, Rasterman (Enlightenment) and many others (full list here). Richard Stallman will also give a keynote about the danger of software patents. So, if you're in the neighborhood (for instance at the LinuxExpo in Paris) don't miss the opportunity to talk and hack (yes, there will be a hacking room too) with some of the top developers of the Open Source and Free Software movement!"

hysterion writes: "A recent bill from the French government makes the headlines of the major daily paper Libération. (Translation here.) Currently, French law prohibits DVD sales of any movie during its first 9 months in theatres. While reducing this to 6 months, the bill aims to kill a thriving import market by now including foreign issues -- even if they are not dubbed or subtitled in French. In effect, starting January 1, "any importation of zone 1 DVD or VHS of movies which have obtained a visa of exploitation in French theatres is prohibited." Can they really hope to enforce this? Or will movies eventually have to come out simultaneously in all parts of the world? (Irony: the Secretary of Culture who wrote this bill is also on record speaking against software patents.)" Apparently the law will ban any Zone 1 DVD permanently if the French distributors have, or plan to, show the same movie in French theaters (and presumably release it on Zone 2 DVD some time after that).

Stefane Fermigier writes: "The Patent Office in the UK has just launched its own consultation exercise to determine whether or not patents should be granted for all computer programs and methods of doing business. This is in parallel with the European Commission's consultation exercise and to EuroLinux's meta-consultation. Says Steve Probert, Deputy Director of the UK Patent Office: "If anyone (particularly interested parties in the UK) has any views on this subject, the Patent Office would be very interested to hear them.""

scamp was one of the folks who wrote from Europe with the news that an administrative board for the European Patents Office has voted 10-9 to allow patents for software in Europe. There's still a final conference to be held in Novemeber to ratify the decision - so there's still time to sign the petition against it. The conference in November should be close - the multinationals, US and Japan are applying heavy pressure. BTW, if you can't read German, use the fish.