Slashdot Mirror
Demonstration Against Software Patents in Europe
bram.be writes "On April 14, FFII is organising a
walking demonstration in
Brussels against the legalisation of software patents in Europe, as
well as a legislation
benchmarking conference. Like in August last year, these events will be accompanied by an
online demonstration whereby webmasters are asked to close their websites
in protest. The reason for the renewed protest is that after the
European Parliament voted for a
great directive, it
is now the Council of Minister's turn, whose working party proposes as
'compromise' to simply discard all good amendments and on top of that to
even make program publication an infringement. Already more then 1300 sites participate in the online demonstration. Among them are some big sites like KDE, the GNU Project and the Gimp. Also, on April 15 the European
Greens/EFA group is organising a Euro-LUG
party inside the European Parliament, 'with a view to enhance the
networking among the free software community in Europe [...], to inform
the EP about what free software is, how it works and which ideas lie
behind.' Speakers will include Gwen Hinze (EFF), Jon Lech Johansen
(DeCSS), Georg Greve (FSF Europe and Alan Cox. Prior
registration is mandatory for this event."
Take a look at this demo of things to come w/ software patents:
http://webshop.ffii.org/
And if you're an European citizen, please sign the petition:
http://petition.eurolinux.org/
There is still the lack of a strong corresponding US movement. However US citizens can help us. Mirror http://demo.ffii.org or the other sites, report the event to the media. Write articles, participate in the next WIPO round. Put pressure on your legal department.
And of course you can also organize events in your part of the world, demonstrations at the USPTO or DoJ.
Nobody software professional ever requested that bad old old bureaucratic patent law, the patent lawyers like to sell us. It is not the big against the small ones, it's a patent attorney's conspiracy!
There was no democratic decision ever about software patents in the States.
You mean like last time?
Seriously tho, c'mon Slashdot!. Even a simple banner!
Completely false.
That may have been how patents used to work, but it isn't anymore. The way patents work nowadays is a large company hires a 'research' department, locks them away in a basement and tells them basically: 'patent every single thing you can come up with'. The company does this to build up a patent portfolio which it then uses as munitions for legal wars. That is all. Software development is left to the big guys.
What's more, there are so many patents over software and they will soon be so fiercely defended that it means little guys won't have a chance at all, regardless of whether they want to release it for free or make a buck. You see, the sheer volume of broad patents means it is impossible to know if your small program is violating anything unless you have a massive legal deapartment going through everything for you. Hence, software development is left to the big guys.
And if software patents are supposed to protect the little guy's ideas, can you think of a single recent case where this has happened? A little guy has patented a software idea that has gone on to become very successful and not trampled by large corps? I can't either. If your argument were true we'd have loads of these small companies with patented ideas being very successful.
To further make my point, we also have large companies trading patents. This is not good. The 'innovator' as you like to call them is no longer the person making money off the patent and it allows large companies to buy up large scary portfolios to push other people out of the market. Let's take Microsoft. Recently they bought up a load of OpenGL patents from SGI. This is not good. Microsoft are a company who are trying to push their own 'technology' (Direct3D) over OpenGL. We are near to a position here where OpenGL could have a stop called to it by Microsoft because it owns vital patents.
At one point in the SCO / BayStar / Microsoft / Novell fiacso we (allegedly) had a situation where Microsoft were close to acquiring vital patents over Unix. Can you imagine what would happen if one company held patents over the two dominant operating system technologies? Even though this didn't happen this time, there's nothing to stop it happening in the future. All it would take is a buyout of Novell or Sun for example.
By the way, patents are the reason why Sun got 1.6bil$ from Microsoft. Without patents, Microsoft could have just trample Sun into the ground without bothering to spend a dime.
Why should I care? This is irrelevant. $1b Doesn't even make a dent in Microsoft's finances. It makes no difference. Neither of these two are by any stretch of the imagination a 'little guy'. You think I should be on the side of Sun here just because they're fighting Microsoft? If it were something over antitrust I mgiht be interested, but as it is, it's just two dinosaurs hurling patent portfolios* at each other. It's only lawyers who win here.
* - Patents that have by now been totally seperated from their original 'innovation'.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.