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Poland Blocks European Software Patent Vote, For Now
Anonymous Brave Guy writes "Thanks to the Polish Minister of Science and Information Technology, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, Europe has dropped the current proposal for software patents. He made a special journey to Brussels to withdraw the proposal, basically in protest at the way the patents were being pushed through by the back door. Since the European presidency is about to pass to Luxembourg, this has effectively killed the idea, at least for the immediate future." More at FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure). This means that the promised move to delay actually worked.
This may be only a temporary reprieve, but it could also, quite possibly, be a sign that the tides may be changing in the Council. Let's all hope for the best, and do what we can to make it happen.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
They did break the first version, it was later upgraded with an additional wheel, and that upgraded one was cracked by Turing at Bletchley. A few links: http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/ poles.htm, http://www.armyradio.com/publish/Articles/The_Enig ma_Code_Breach/The_Enigma_Code_Breach.htm, http://www.enigmahistory.org/enigma.html.
This and other Polish contributions to WWII were kept quiet at the end of the war to avoid annoying Stalin, and it was carried into history writing (especially in the UK) for a long time. Too many exaples to mention, the Enigma is but one...
It wasn't always like that. Like many countries that just started developing democracy after 45 years of communism, we had, still have and will probably still have problems with our politicians.
The thing is, Poles were always good at throwing away government that didn't satisfy the citizens, and because of that we have one of most "mature" democratic systems amongst countries east of Iron Curtain.
There was quite big initiative of Open-Source activists (grouped mainly around linux site 7thguard.net) to inform and press Polish politics to use all means possible to stop software patents. While our diplomats screwed some occasions up, this time they've shown (at least, one of ministers of science and informatics) they deserve the payment and power.