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Torvalds And Cox Write EU Parliament On Patents
replicant_deckard writes "Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox have sent an open letter to the members of the European Parliament. They ask for strict limitations to software patents, argue for open standards and ask the members of the parliament to follow FFII's voting recommendations. Vote on the controversial software patents directive will be on Wednesday and it is expected to be a very close one. Well, do you believe these guys have any impact in Brussels?"
Daer UE,
Patanst r teh suckzorz!!!! Say ON TO TEHM!!!
Loev,
Anonimouse cowerd
I understand that one can patent a process for doing something, but one can also patent an end-product. A program is an end-product of the source code used to compile it, so wouldn't software patents, in effect, cause the much feared "functionality similarity" disputes to become more substantive in the legal system?
Esoteric reference.
Before you start the main purpose and body of the letter you might explain why you are a crediable person to listen to. If they aren't particularly technically inclined then they may have no idea who you are. Tell them who are are, why you are important, and why they should listen to you. Without that, you usually loose your influence.
-Foxxz
Well, do you believe these guys have any impact in Brussels?
I don't know - how big a check are they including with their letter?
Now im all for this non-violent, direct action stuff, but if Linus and Alan are going to around defacing patents, im not sure i understand the relevance of 'EU Parliament'.
Perhaps it would be better to stick with the classics, "Linux and Alan woz ere" or "Linux rules OK?" for example.
So in this case, the only question is whether it can be amended to address our concerns - it will almost certainly pass one way or the other.
Dream on! Your brand of apathy is exactly what we don't need right now. If the large software vendors can change the law to what suits them, then they can certainly stop us from changing it back in 5 years. This is our best, and possibly our last real chance to stop the damage being done to immigration by the unholy alliance of intellectual property lawyers, keen to milk the industry for legal fees, and the monopolists of the software industry, keen to let IP lawyers milk their smaller competitors dry.I think it should be pretty clear by now (given the passage of the EU version of the DMCA, among other things) that the EU parliament and other European governments are very much in the pockets of corporations just like the U.S. government is. It's more a matter of degree than anything else.
That's why I don't think we who value our basic liberties have much time left. Others might ask why I haven't moved (I live in the U.S.), without realizing that there really isn't any place on the globe worth moving to. As far as I know, there isn't a single government on the planet that cherishes liberty and works towards maximizing that for its people. And even if there were, chances are most people wouldn't be able to go there anyway because of strict immigration laws.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Linus has always maintained his reputation as a simple hacker-- someone not concerned with politics but rather technology.
.sig
This is the second such letter bearing a Torvalds
Is this the start of a new (albeit, not necessarily bad) trend of more coders voicing their opinions on IP law and its current state of affairs?
Anyone who doesn't understand technology (or anything else for that matter) gets defensive about it as their first reaction when someone dissagrees with them.
Being steadfastly wrong has more PR value for politicians than being corrected by authorities on the subject, because the general public doesn't understand technology much better than the politicians, so how do they know who's right? Much better to shout about how right you are than to defer to another.
Anyway, im not sure i really understand the issue here. IANAL, so i don't really get why something that's copyrighted would also need to be patened, except as amunition for more IP wars.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
The second most significant problem is that they give them a hyperlink to indicate what they can do to address these issues. They need to SPELL OUT what an MEP can do to help the anti-swpat cause. This means saying "this URL contains a list of amendments which are essential if this proposal is to protect competition and innovation in the European software industry".
Every additional second it takes for an MEP to figure out a) Why they should agree with you? or b) Given that they agree with you, what do they do? costs us votes.
I agree that software patents are a bad idea and I would like to do something to stop Europe from having software patents.
However, I'm not a citzen of the EU.
I don't expect politicians to care about the opinions of those who can't vote in their country.
But perhaps someone with more knowledge of the situation can suggest a way for me and other Americans to help.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find the grammar, scanning and structure of this letter as very, very poor indeed?
Not only is there no explanation as to who the signatories are but also a number of the sentences scan very badly indeed.
I realise that LT is not a native English speaker, but really, it doesn't come across as very well thought through IMHO...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
First, the interaction between patent law and antitrust law needs to be adjusted. If you have a dominant market position, you should't be able to use a patent to prevent interoperability with your de-facto standards. This is an antitrust issue because it's only a big problem when someone has market dominance. Interoperability with Microsoft Word is important. Interoperability with AbiWord is not.
This is not totally out of reach politically. Current antitrust law in the US and the EU arguably support this position, but enforcement is hard. A bright-line standard would help here.
Second, it needs to be clearly established that Government-mandated standards (ANSI, ISO, DIN, EU) preempt patents unless patent holders object prior to the issuance of the standard. The government standards organizations should be directed to adopt policies preventing the use of patented technology in standards unless the patent holder waives their rights under patent for all users of the standard.
Finally, "business method" patents seem to have been a mistake. However, the first one (4,346,442, the Merrill Lynch Cash Management Account, attaching a credit card to a brokerage account) has already expired.
These things do time out, and soon enough that it matters. The GIF patent has expired. The RSA patent has expired. The SyncSort patent has expired. All those technologies are still in use.