Slashdot Mirror
Software Patent Demonstrations Taking Off
feklee writes "The preparations for the
rally against software patents
on Wednesday are running at full speed. Thanks to announcements in DWN, on KDE, in the Register, and
elsewhere, the Online Demo has already
more than 600 participants such as Savannah
and KDE.de. Now, what about your project?"
And flagboy writes "A group of economists from Europe and the U.S. specialising in patent questions have published a letter to members of the European Parliament calling on them to reject the proposal, accompanied by an analytical paper which casts severe doubts on the reasoning behind the directive and on the methods employed by its proponents." Here's the FFII Press Release.
How many cases of patent cases has there really been throughout the years? In comparisons with the number of patents created each year... almost none. My advice is, don't care. Use the patents as you please... The probability of beeing f***ed over by the legal system is virtually zero.
Never even heard of this patent issue. I followed all the links and nothing really told me why I shouldn't like this thingamajig they're doing. So....tell me...what are people protesting against?
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
Now, what about your project?
I don't have a project, you insenstive clod!
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
fuck I thought all europeans were like Mr. Bean
judging by that site's list of participants, they've got no one who would impress me which leads me to believe this site is a farce set up by al qaeda to pass information on to their sleeper cells who visit that site.
thank you for your time and don't forget to vote for the porn chick in cali!
I didn't think it was possible, but there's a country that has even LESS balls than the US. Does Britain even have elections any more? Maybe the British supreme court picks the parliment, just like the US supreme courts picks the president now. :P
No, I kid. But you should all read "Stupid White Men", by Michael Moore.
Patents in general are entirely anti-capitalistic devices. Their primary purpose is to inhibit competition, by making it illegal to compete.
I don't know where you got that idea - certainly not any of the statute books. In fact, you just made it up. The purpose of patents is to encourage investment in research by providing 1) a mechanism by which a return may be earned on that investment and 2) a mechanism by which organizations and individuals are encouraged to do research rather than wait for someone else to do it then copy it.
Look around the Open Source world. Just the other day, there was a story here in Slashdot boasting about how GNUmeric now had some features of Excel. You see what's happening here? The Open Source community does not innovate - it sees a commercially developed idea then copies it - for the express purpose of hurting the original developer. That's why the Open Source community is anti-patent.
In Soviet Russia, innovation stiffles patents.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.