Slashdot Mirror
NewsForge On U.S. Advice To EU On Software Patents
An anonymous reader points to Roblimo's "interesting article about how the U.S. sold out to software patents and the EU should as well." Should be of interest to Europeans, forced as they are "to suffer from willy-nilly software development by individuals who have not been screened, approved, and trained by corporate human resources professionals."
OpenOffice.org does have a word count feature, click on File > Properties and then look under the Statistics tab.
Software patents party trends, candidate statements and voting behavior for many European countries (it's a wiki, add your country if you feel it's missing ;)
Yes - this topic will steer my vote! I will vote for Green, here is why and alternatives (for Germany):
In Germany the Greens and the Liberal Party (FDP) both announced to be officially *against* Software Patents. Also the left wing (PDS) is against.
These are the choices I did take into account - in my opinion if you want to be sure and you can live with their other ideas the Greens are the safest choice!
The others do not qualify:
Situation in the SPD (Socialist party) is about 50% pro-SW-Patents and 50% against-SW-Patents. I have the feeling they both want SW-Patents (for their large industry lobby) but likewise not the consequences of them. Since they cannot make their mind up, I need to put by vote otherwise.
For the CDU/CSU (Conservative party) the situtation is even worse, about 70% pro-SW-Patents and 30% against. Most of their MEPs are not well informed and tend to believe the party line (which seems to be mostly dictated by a MEP Wuermling - a strong supporter of Software Patents).
Wuermling also called the EU parliament 'uninformed and confused' (in which he is also a memeber) and praised the councils version of the directive loudly - in my eyes not someone you would want to see as qualified member of the EU parliament.
It is very sad that in the countries I've heard about (France and Germany: I am French but happen to be living in Germany atm), only two parties (the Liberals and the Greens) have a solid European platform. :(
Those are not mainstream as they usually hover between 5 and 10% of the vote. The larger Socialist and Conservative Parties never seriously dealt with Europe in their campaign - it was rather all about bashing the other party on a strictly national basis. No wonder voter turnout is going to be dismal once again
I originally intended to vote for the (German) Liberal Party. Out of habit maybe, since I usually vote for its French sister party, the French Democratic Union (UDF).
Then I saw their voting record on the software patent issue. Screw them, I'm going with the Greens this time.
A previous poster was modded down as offtopic for this, but offtopic it sure was not. Indeed, the Greens are the only party that has consistently opposed any kind of software patents on a European basis. Besides, by voting for the Greens because of software patents, you are also rewarding one of the very few parties that actually care about Europe.
Come to think of it, anyone know what happened to the voting records on the FFII website (http://www.ffii.org.uk/votes/swpat/)?
The URL now returns 404 Errors at this very crucial time!
I personally wouldn't mind software patents if they were truly fundamental breakthroughs or such (RSA cryptography comes to mind)
Chuckle. Take a look at the original RSA patent. They don't even get to the RSA encryptin until the SEVENTH claim. Claim one (the root of the patent) is on the very idea of public key cryptography.
Even once you do get down to claim 7, it's still a patent on the "invention" of doing math. Groan.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.