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Lobbying For Linux
Telex4 writes "Slashdot has heard a lot lately about why software patents are bad, and the passage of the legislation in the EU. But other than the online demo and a few pictures of the demonstration outside the European Parliament, Slashdotters hear little about the real behind-the-scenes lobbying. I've just put an article up on Newsforge describing and discussing my experiences lobbying inside the Parliament that might shed a little light on what we mortal geeks can do to save ourselves. There are some accompanying photos on my web site for those who like visual aids." (NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.)
I just want to say congratulations for what you have done. Many of us bitch and complain about these issues, but you took time out of your life to do something about it. I just wanted to thank you for that.
The cluelessness amoung MEPs is interesting. I am a firm believer that organizational incompetence is the one unifying factor amoung all political systems. Yet these MEPs are the ones will make the decision on this matter affecting everyone. It makes you wonder how many people in government actually know what is going on even a small percentage of the time.
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
It's that simple.
Don't lobby for Linux. Besides being a FreeBSD user hating to see EU nations ban everything but Linux, it also doesn't do anything to correct the pervasion monoculture in governments. While 100% use of Linux is better than 100% use of Windows, 100% use of anything is still bad.
So lobby for Open Source instead. Lobby for Open Standards. Those will also be much easier to get acceptance.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Time is running out. We will not stop this directive but we can support important amendments filed by some MEPs in order to get a sufficient directive.
p ar tition?ipid=0&ilg=EN&iorig=home&imsg=
l en 0309/index.en.html/ eubsa-swpat0202/plen 0309/kond/index.en.html
a t0202/tech /index.en.html
a t0202/prog /index.en.html
p at0202/itop /index.en.html
Adresses of EU - representatives
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep5/owa/p_meps2.re
personal > telephone call > Fax > letter > email
The directive is called COM(02)92, it will be voted on Wednesday.
Info about Amendments (please directly refer to these, no general texts, the first link is a must read):
http://swpat.ffii.org/papiere/eubsa-swpat0202/p
http://swpat.ffii.org/papiere
It is especially useful to support Mrs. Kauppi against patent radical Wurmling in the conservative group
http://swpat.ffii.org/#wuermeling-pr030919
Background
General:
http://swpat.ffii.org/analyse/index.de.html
Technical contribution (what is really meant, we want a definition in the directive based on the "natural forces" theory):
http://swpat.ffii.org/papiere/eubsa-swp
Program claims (dangerous for web site owners):
http://swpat.ffii.org/papiere/eubsa-swp
Interoperability (support ITRE against Juri proposal)
http://swpat.ffii.org/papiere/eubsa-sw
Don't write to Green party members or EFA as they are convinced yet, focus on Liberals, Conservative(Finnish MEP Kauppi has made good amendments)
and Social democrats
One of the funniest arguments was Wurmling's text who stated that Eolas vs. Microsoft showed best practise for SME. Incompetence and lies rule within the EU parliament. We shall not let patent lawyer interest groups win this battle.
The debate over the use of open-source software is underway, with the ALP adopting a strong pro open-source policy.
It will be interesting to see if they actually do anything about it when the conservatives finally get dumped.
Of all of my local MEPs that I've emailed, Caroline Lucas (Green) has been both the most responsive, and the most supportive of our position. If they were only pro-Euro, they'd get my vote every time...
(Christopher Hume (LibDem) has sent me a number of letters, the most recent of which (16/09/2003) says that "software should not be patentable simply because it is running on generic computer equipment", and goes on to say that they want a Directive to "enforce the original EPC, rather than codifying what has become common practice - and illegal practice - of allowing the patenting of computer-implemented inventions".)
Being unemployed (hence having lots of free time), living in western germany (hence being able to travel to Brussels easily) and being a free software supporter, even with some experience in political work (from being a students representative of various kinds back when life rocked), I'd like to contribute to effective lobbying in the EU. However, the only really serious EU-wide organization seems to be the FSF Europe, and I happen to disagree with the FSF on some major points. (And there's Attac, which I happen to disagree on more points with.) There doesn't seem to be any organized forums for european FLOSS supporters outside the FSF Europe right now, or is there? Maybe something more "Open Source"-related? Is there a way for someone who's experience ranges from writing code over writing press releases to organizing demonstations and legal help for demonstrators to throwing yoghurt at malevolent policemen to effectively contribute, without having to adopt the FFS mantra?
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Organizations that lobby to pass free-software-unfriendly legislation will be shut down immediately after they begin lobbying.
Companies that write software that produces unpublicized data formats will be shut down.
People who review free software and compare it to commercial software, and who point out any sort of disadvantage to using the free software, or any advantage to using the commercial software, will be shot immediately.
Before you troll, just compare with a typical big business/RIAA mode "lobbying" and what this guy has done. He has followed a plain and transperant way and has tried to convince the leaders in a perfectly democratic way for a genuine purpose. On the contray, big business "lobbying" is often non-transperant and undemocratic .They shower millions in to the party fund(and often personal pockets of leaders) and then manage to have totally stupid laws like DMCA.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
Trade issues like IP and patentability are among the roots of wars, famine and poverty. It is a small step from this issue to the availability of cheap AIDS medicines in Third World countries, or the exploitation of Third World farmers by Western control of genetically modified monocultures. If we want to do something about international justice we need to start at home - and that means things we understand better than most. I am not qualified to explain the problems of GM crops to a representative, but I am qualified to explain the problems created by software patents. So that's what I should do. Don't criticise the people trying to bring down the wall with pickaxes because other people are using hammers.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
The headline is crap. It is not even about Open Source but about the future of informations society at large, because shareware programmers and IT giants (see: MS vs. Eolas) are targeted as well.
News flash: Career politicians, like every other human, are not experts in everything.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
This may be slightly offtopic, but it relates, I believe, so here it is.
..(code)... Then: (code)" A real If statement can be more complex than this, of course, since it can take any set of arguments that can be reduced to a boolean true or false. (alternatively, the 'EAX' and 'EBX' may be the reduced values created by C and dropped into the function call.) At this, it may be obvious to anyone who has coded assembly that you can make the same statement basically by replacing JZ (jump on zero) with JNZ (jump on not zero), and switching the two blocks of code. This would not count as patentable, in my opinion.
Software (code) is a lot like music. Its really complicated in the end, but the pieces that it is made up of (chords, phrases, arpeggios, melody lines, etc) can be very simple. In fact, basic chord progressions are reused so many times it borders on the ridiculous. In the same way, certain pieces of code are re-used in a similar form many times. If someone can get a software patent on smallish pieces of code, like getting a copyright on a phrase of music, you could skewer a lot of people for royalties.
Similarly, if you could copyright a general form of music, whose parts are somewhat understood, but nonetheless vague enough that someone could write it without trying to, you could again swim in royalties.
There is, fortunately, in music, a rule against this. But in software it seems that the line may be fuzzy. What we really need is a length-of code range for copyrights.
For instance (As mentioned in one of the articles linked to) it would have been unreasonable for Mozart to say, patent the Symphony. Not to say that some musician might want to try to. Likewise, it would be unreasonable to patent something as wide-reaching and ambiguous as 'one-click shopping'. Patents, to my experience, are usually rather complex, so that people will know if they are using it or not. A detailed description is given, so that there is NO confusion. This rule MUST apply to code as well.
In like terms, it would stupid for Mozart to patent, say, the first phrase from '10 Variations' (the melody is identical to 'Twinkle, Twinkle, little Star'.) how many written pieces of music have used the note progression 'C C G G A A G'? Well, I'm not going to look it up. But as a musician should know, the notes Db Db Ab Ab Bb Bb Ab' are analogous to the original progression. So, then, if you consider that as well to be the same melody (it is) and thus under the patent, you can get the idea of what kind of ridiculousness would ensue.
In software, you likewise should not be able to patent significantly minor parts of code. Heck, the size of the patentable pieces should probably relate to how complex they are a combination of the basic parts of a programming language. I mean, eveyone can see that you can't patent an 'if' statement in C. After all, you aren't the first person to make up the If statement and how it is implemented in machine code. If, however, you created a new 'If' function in assembly, could you patent that? I would think that would depend on how complex a combination of machine instructions you need to produce your statement.
Why is that? Well, generally, you would have to consider the chances that someone else writing an 'If' statement would produce the exact same pieces of code you have by accident. If there were, for instance, 1000 machine instructions required to create an If statement (obviously not, but stay with me) and there were a large number of different combinations of commands that would produce the effect (there could be, in fact, but more later..) then your more efficient If statement would be patentable.
But say, for instance, that there are about 5 lines of assembly required to make this 'If'. Basically something to the effect of "Test EAX EBX
JZ Then
So, I think that software patents should be:
1. Clear and unambiguous. A patent's viability should be judged on whether someone could be under the umbrella of the patent eas
This isn't a redundant post; I just set my threshold to 6.
Id you know a European language it is very helpful if you could translate part of the thing on Sunday. (Erik needs this by monday morning. There are persons working on it, help is needed help for it, subscribe to the translations mailing list and the info page for more info).
Once doing that whetted your appetite for coming to Strasbourg (there is a demo), help is also appreciated of distributing this inside the parliament (write to europarl ATt ffii DOtT org or call +49-174-7313590, sleeping between 1 am and 9 am CET).
Also note that before there are some supporting events in Greece, Stuttgart and Berlin.
By making it about free software you weaken the argument, it isn't just about Linux, FreeBSD, or Apache - it is about all software developers that can't afford a large patent portfolio, and it is about all software consumers.
Just to echo what others have said, you are an inspiration to us all - even those of us not directly involved with the European Union (from Texas here - :)
Bravo - well done!
I am afraid it will take the man in the street getting hit by a two-by-four in the forehead before real grass roots pressure can be brought to bear on these issues. Unfortunately, by then, the internet and software development as we have known it may have gone the way of the Dodo...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
It's simple marketing: See the penguin. He is happy. Use Linux, and you will be happy.
Happy penguins to all, and to all a good night.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Of course, the main factor here that helped is that the positions of the MEPs were not formulated to win campaign contributions from lobbyists.
In the "land of democracy", the chances that a handful of people can actually get people to listen without massive campaign budgets are a lot smaller.
As I've said, though the EU has done some very wrongheaded things with respect to legislation and technology, the odds on getting them to stop doing them may be considerably better than in the USA if individuals will organize and put in their time and individual-scale money to . . . do something. The war isn't lost there yet. Perhaps it won't be.
The one point that I think based on the article didn't get made as strongly as it should be is that NOT passing software patent bills gives the EU an advantage the USA with respect to individual and small business contributions to technology of the sort that leads to businesses that provides jobs and that the EU can tax.
Remember that the committments of legislators to follow the lead of the US aren't as strong as that of US legislators who got campaign contribution from interested multinationals, i.e. except for a few, I'd guess that a great many are willing to listen to reason if the reason is put in terms that they can understand.
Props to the people who lobbied on behalf of us all.
Tech Public Policy stuff