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Sounds like they've been attempting to destroy software patents, without as much real success as we might like.

No worries, my country will take of it as it did before:

http://thankpoland.info/

Don't forget Poland :)

Very funny but no, as a matter of fact he didn't forget Poland, because you see, Poland is in Europe. In case you didn't notice, Poland is one of the most important forces in Europe fighting against software patents in the European Union. Poland is not only a very important state in EU but is also in the very center of Europe. You might take a look at the map sometimes. Good luck.

Have you signed the letter? I have. It took me five seconds. But there were only 30000 signatures when it was delivered. Slashdot alone has hundreds of thousands of members, for crying out loud! All of us waste time posting idiotic flames in every signle story about software patents, but how many of us have devoted five miserable seconds of our pathetic lifes to actually do something about it? 1%? 0.5%? 0.1%?

What have you done for the democracy, liberty and human rights? Yes, I mean you! If all you do is write on Slashdot then you have done nothing. that's what! People, when will we finally wake up? When will we understand that we, the people, have the responsibility for that failure? When will we understand that we are the ones who have the real power? When will we finally do something instead of bitching all day? When will we finally open our eyes? When?

In any case, regardless of what happens next, the great significance of what Marcinski (Polands minister of science and IT) did will remain.

OVERstating? See this anti software patents online petition. The counter currently stands at 381,846 people/organisations who thought it was important enough to sign their name in protest. There are some more (smaller) online petitions like this. I haven't yet seen ANY online petitions seeking support for software patents.

Then when Poland helped shoot down the proposed directive, a special "Thank you, Poland!" site was started. Last thing I heard, another 25,000 people bothered to put their names on that list.

So 'a huge public concern' is hardly an overstatement.

This is very reassuring to see that software patents nightmare will most likely never happen in European Union where politicians seem to be concerned more with public good than with lobbying, which probably will lead to their abolishment in the United States as well, because American programmers will never agree to be left behind the whole Western civilization even facing quite different priorities of politicians on their side of the pond. This is a great time to sign this letter and start sending snail mail letters to these addresses. If you know of any other place where people can easily voice their opinion on those issues in a way that actual politicians will see them, please post them here. This is a truly great news, no matter if you are a free software believer, an open source pragmatist, or a proprietary zealot. In the end, every programmer has to face the same problems with software patents. It's wonderful to see a bright future and it's quote amazing to see honest politicians acting in the best interest of Their People.

"We all know that OSRM has come out to offer insurance against intellectual property claims for open source software. Recently, we've seen IBM open up 500 patents and SUN up the ante with 1600. But all of these moves are targeted at F/OSS software."

Of course those are targetted at free software, because free software is the main force opposing software patents. Check out who is giving their patents to free software, and then check out who is the main pusher of software patents in EU. What we have to realise is that IBM is not giving us patents just because IBM is nice. IBM wants us to shut up while it is lobbying for software patents in the European Union. Hopefully, we are not fools, and we will see the big picture and understand that it is harmful in the long run. And quite frankly it is harmful for both proprietary and free software developers. It is dangerous for anyone who cannot afford an army of lawyers. IBM will be safe with its proprietary software and with its free software, but your mom and pop's software shop will be always vulnerable. Please people, let's not wet our pants because IBM gave us some miserable patents to keep us quiet. Anyone who remembers WW2 knows that this is hardly a company that does not evil, like Google. Let's wait and see what those patents will give us in the countries that have software patents, and meanwhile lobby against such patents in the countries that don't, as hard as we possibly can. It's also a good idea to sign the Thank you, Poland letter to show our support. There is more info on FSF website. The politicians have to know what we want, and they will do what we want, because they want to get reelected. This is the most important thing to understand in politics. "Hey, look, we've got 50000 letters from around the world from people who are strongly against software patents. We'll have have a lot of support and good publicity if we vote against software patents. Screw IBM." This is how it works, folks. It's time to learn it and it's time to start acting. Don't even waste your time on reading those patents, just lobby against them even if those particular patents are ours (with strings attached, of course), because it doesn't mean that we'll get every IBM's and Sun's patents in the future, and the future is what we need to worry about.

It seems that the right time has come to deliver the Thank Poland letter with all the signatures which have been confirmed so far; right now the most likely date appears to be Thursday this week (January 27). I plan to fly to Warsaw for this, and we'll try to get some significant media coverage. If you think you might be able to help with this, please drop me an email at nb@norbert.ch

Please support our effort to block EU software patents by signing this "Thank You, Poland" letter which will be sent to the proper Polish authorities.

Optionally, you can also indicate your country of citizenship, and/or add a personal message to Wlodzimierz Marcinski, Poland's Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Science and Information Technology, who spoke out at the EU Council meeting to prevent the software patents disaster.

--> http://thankpoland.info/

I would recommend taking another minute to sign the Thank You for the previous effort to kill these patents. It requires you to validate your email address to give the petition more weight.

(I am posting as AC to not be accused of Karma whoring, and I really think this post should be modded up.)

CowboyNeal wrote: "Poland, if you help us out again, I pledge to never, ever forget you."

PLEASE! Don't ask Poland on Slashdot! Contact the people who have helped before! They are not reading Slashdot!!!

There should be at least one link added to that story:
http://www.fsf.org/thankpoland.html

The Free Software Foundation writes: "We are placing the "Thank you, Poland!" banner at the top of the main page to thank the Undersecretary of State at the Polish Ministry of Science and Technology, Wlodzimierz Marcinski. This is in response to him blocking the European software patent vote on 21, Dec 2004, making him single-handedly responsible for keeping Europe software patent-free."

We should not only remember Poland, but we should remember the name of the person responsible for the last blocking of the European software patent vote, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, and even more importantly let him know what we think which is easy, read on.

There are links on the FSF website and info on how to send your letter to Polish Embassy, but there is also an easier and faster way to get your voice heard. There is a website http://thankpoland.info/ - The undersigned wish to express their sincere thanks to the Polish government for their action to remove the "A-item" of adopting the "Software Patent Directive" from the agenda of the Agricultural Council meeting on December 21, 2004. It would have been a horrible mistake for the European Union to adopt this "Software Patent Directive". - just enter your name and optionally add a short message, and it will be printed and sent to the Polish Ministry of Science and Information Technology with flowers. This takes five seconds.

Search Google for the name of Wlodzimierz Marcinski:
Wlodzimierz Marcinski
Wlodzimierz Marcinski (orig. spelling)
if you know to learn more, and find more open letters, or his CV - we don't have a lot of politicians in the US who have studied mathematics and who are actually professional programmers, do we? In Poland they do.

Remember that if the Polish Ministry of Science and Information Technology knows that they have the support of the whole world, they will do it again, I guarantee. Of course the best way is to send your own snail mail letter, but even your signature on the thankpoland.info letter is extremely important. Thank you.

Now that the software patent proponents have failed rushing, sneaking and cheating software patents into the EU, maybe we can get the existing law, which the european patent office has been ignoring, cemented and enforced: "Computer programs aren't patentable" and neither are math, logic and art that blend to create them. Need still to communicate with our politicians and educate/inform them; why deterministic computer software is different from physical areas of science and technology where actually novel inventions can be made, etc...

The parliament opposed the attempts by the majority of the council and the commission to introduce software patents. And some people from Poland apparently saved us europeans from their ultimate attempt - Thank you, Poland .

If the rest of the world decides against software patents, the US would eventually benefit, too, because it would have to abandon or at least reduce the legal parasitism and extortionism from their software industry to stay competitive.

Yes, and it's not too late to show your gratitude either by adding your signature and any comments to the "Thank Poland" letter. People on Slashdot so often advise writing letters to bureaucrats in order to complain, it's nice to able able to thank them for getting it right once in a while.

(If you'd like to see your name, rather than just the slashdot nick, in the Credits section of the page, you'll need to tell me your name :-)

I have a friend who's from Poland, but he's been away from writing anything in Polish for six years, so I think it's probably better if someone else does the translation and I ask my friend only to double-check the translation for accuracy.

-- Norbert Bollow (contact information here)

Another possible interpretation is somebody, or some group of people, was so peeved by slashdot having linked to the website that they decided to DDOS slashdot by posting hundreds of AC comments all conveniently posted in this "problematic story" about software patents. How childish...

EU readers please Thank Poland!

http://thankpoland.info/

Mark

You can sign a letter to thank the Polish government.

Here is the transcription of the speech. Also, there is a website which has an open letter to send greetings to the polish government: thankpoland.info

Merry Christmas Europe !!!! (pfiu! ;)

Send a thank you note Here