Slashdot Mirror
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.
It was quite a surprise, and thanks God - it is done. Of coarse, they (we know who they are) will try again and again, but in fact that they lost it second time, so I think they will eventually run out of arguments if they will try it next time.
:)
Thanks to open source, free software and small IT business advocates and lobbies who made it happen, everyone who tried to provide insightful information to diplomats and goverments.
Thank you
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I for one am grateful to our Polish voting overlords.
It's about time one of the countries in Europe had a government with a spine. I'm from the UK and ours doesn't, unless it's about introducing draconian ID card measures without listening to anyone and ignoring any consultation it required and dismissing it as irrelivant.
Go POLAND!!!
I hate to accuse them of posting the story three times, because I know they work very hard to make sure it's only posted twice.
PS Actually, I don't think I'll have time to read it today, can you please re-post the story tomorrow, so I don't have to dig through the "previous stories" link?
Hell, sign it even if you don't live in Poland or the EU at all.
Well, let's hope they have more influence on software patents than they've had on greenhouse gas emission reductions and foreign policy.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Intriguing. So this is what they mean by government for the people. I've never seen that before (being a citizen of government for the big corporation).
Uh, I think you forgot about the Battle of Warsaw , where Poland really saved Europe!
"Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road to worldwide conflagration." - General Tukhachevsky, Red Army, 1920.
It has come to my understanding that the Dutch government has been making an aggressive (but futile) push for software patents. I feel the need to apologize on behalf of the Dutch people, and I hope that ere the next elections arrive, everybody will see our prime minister Balkenende and his cronies for the bastards they really are and vote them into oblivion.
First of all, European companies can obtain software patents in the US, thereby effectively eliminating possible competition from that part of the world, while establishing a market in the EU. Once these companies make the move over, they've got their protection through the USPTO racket scheme.
Second. US companies respecting the software patents of other US companies will not be able to develop products based on these patents (unless cross-licensing is in place), quite obviously. This will give them a huge disadvantage when trying to bring products to Europe: they won't be able to use particular techniques their local competitors in EU markets will be able to use, and all stuff they have protection for over in the US can be copied by this local competition.
So my guess is that when US companies are starting to hurt from this both inside the US and outside of it, there's going to be some reconsideration of patent law.
Even though people pull jokes and Poland's not really been any of the 'top ranked' countries in the west (or the east for that matter); I have never been prouder of being polish!
Saying that a country does stupid things (ie polution) does not mean you hate the country... It simply means you do not agree.
Ironicly the 'with us or against us' attitude is one of the things the stereotype-american is well known for (and often hated)....
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Don't forget Poland & Jan Sobieski III in 1683 at Vienna -- Europe could be Islamic today!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna
"At about 5 in the afternoon, four cavalry groups, one of them German-Austrian and the other three Polish heavy cavalry (Hussars), 20,000 men in all, charged down the hills led personally by the Polish king.
In the confusion, they made straight for the Ottoman camps, while the Vienna garrison sallied out of its defenses and joined in the assault. In less than three hours, the battle was won, as the Turks beat a hasty retreat to the south and east. Although no one realized it at the time, the entire war was won that day, as well. The Ottomans fought on for another 16 years before giving up, losing vast territories in the process."
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
I'd ask you to stop giving my country and it's people a bad name, but clearly you're insane.
For the rest of the world, not -every- American thinks that efforts to remain sovereign, avoid bad policies being shoved down your throats , and follow democratic principles makes you an enemy of freedom.
Thanks Poland for making the world a little bit more democratic. Clearly we all still have a lot of work to do.
I remember as a child in the 70's that Polish jokes were a lot more popular. The US always had a lot of Polish immigrants and if you don't know Polish, their names appeared pretty weird to us. They also tended to work a lot of jobs like coal mining where you don't have to have a college degree to be there. ...
So I'm guessing that 1) weird names that aren't pronounced (in English!) like they are spelled 2) make mistakes when they speak English, like dropping definite articles, because their language doesn't have these features 3) work manual labor jobs like coal mining
that all of these things led to the idea that Poles were "stupid". It seems to me that things changed with the crackdown on Solidarity in the 1980's and ever since then, I haven't heard as many Polish jokes. Americans had a lot of sympathy for Poles because they viewed them as freedom loving people who were forcibly imprisoned in a system (Communism) that they didn't want. I think that Americans have a favorable view of Poland in general and honestly don't think they are stupid people.
It seems that all kinds of people in America have jokes about various subgroups depending on where they live. I had a guy from Minnesota tell me a Swedish joke, which really wasn't all that funny to me because I live in Georgia and we don't have a history of large scale Scandinavian immigration here like they do in Minnesota and some states near it. I've had relatives from Texas tell me "Aggie" jokes, which are jokes about Texas A&M University. These jokes mean nothing to me and they aren't all that funny. Maybe Polish jokes originated in places like Pennsylvania or Illinois, where there was large scale Polish immigration over the years.
The US has to get their patent system in order or it will collapse. The only real purpose for the patent system with software is to employ lawyers in the software business and to harass innovative companies competing with larger companies. Both are counterproductive in developing computer technologu and for that mater mankinds development.
The EU wants to develop their software business and do not want to let the likes of Microsoft come in and stifle growth with legal harassment. Even if you do no infringe, the mere fact a small company or individual is legally challenged is enough to put them out and under. The EU is doing it right by not letting in US legal problems into their system. A good recent example is how long and how far can SCO go before someone puts the execs in jail for extortion? Or perhaps the SEC for stock manipulation.
And since most software patents can find their root in previous works or ideas developed in public universities and not really inside the business they originated in, most are fraudulent patents. Patents were meant to protect the original developing company from infringement. Microsoft didn't invent windows, XEROX/PA did. MIT did X before Microsoft had an OS. So So by rights, any patent on Windows by Microsoft is derived work and not an original invention. These patents should be rejected.
Unless Canada and the US revise the law, I figure in 3-5 years most of our software will come from EU, India or China. Want a software development job, go to EU, India or China. Poland has the right idea, it will develop and keep their people at home.
Well, our Dutch minister Brinkhorst unfortunately still hasn't changed his vote, although our own parlaiment has voted against software patents. I did send an e-mail last spring to his party's office that his behaviour on this subject was a mayor reason for me to no vote on his party in the last european elections.
According to himself he's just afraid to lose face by changing his vote. But I think there's more to it. Any dutchies reading this, please let then know they are loosing votes over this issue.
http://www.d66.nl/contact
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Donate free food here
Poland hasn't forgotten the debates, either - they've pulled out of Iraq. What kind of America makes Poland look like compassionate conservatives?
--
make install -not war
The software patent decision was twice undemocratic, first the parliament was ignored, second it was passed through the council of ministers by trickery.
No matter what you think of software patents, everyone should be happy that someone in EU thinks democracy is worth taking serious.
Funny that it should be one of the new members, given the "superior" attitude most of the old members take.
You make an insightful point and I sure hope you are right, but the EU never had software patents, so surely this pressure existed before as well? If so, it doesn't seem to have had any success...
... recall the graphcal story earlier today).
... if Europe, Japan, China, and India can hold out against US pressure that long.
Software patents have indeed existed for quite some time in the US. However, they have only been actively used in litigation recently (though they have had chilling effects via the threat of litigation for much longer
However, I can think of at least one instance where the lack of software patents abroad changed the political and corporate landscape in America: PGP Encryption. PGP was written at a time when the export of basic encryption software was banned in the US (it had to be printed in book form, then shipped overseas, and typed into a computer by volunteers over there). To make matters worse, the RSA algorithm was patented in the United States (but nowhere else). The software was exported in book form, made available on the net, and used widely both inside and outside the US. Had software patents existed in Europe at the time, it is likely that those making PGP available in Europe would have been sued, not so much as a means of stopping the patent violation, but as a means of enforcing America's "no encryption for them damn foreigners" policy through the back door of patent litigation...with the result that we'd all probably still be browsing with trivially crackable 40-bit encryption today.
Instead, PGP being loose in the world, and a dozen non-American encryption companies taking advantage of the lack of patents on RSA outside of the US, and the lack of competititon from US companies hamstrung by both the software patent on RSA and the governments "don't export encryption on pain of FBI interrogation" policy, led to the collapse of said policy.
The patent expired a few years later, but by then the point was largely moot, as a number of better algorithms had been developed in Europe and, as Europe had no software patents, were available for all to use freely.
Software patents, and the lack of them, played an important, if not dominant, part in these events, and as a result we no longer have dumbed-down "international" versions of our browsers, and gnuPG is available to everyone all over the world.
Now software patents are being used more and more in litigation, and the pressures the grandparent describes are beginning to be felt by American companies. The pro-patent lobby knows this, and they know they only have a limited amount of time to get software patents imposed on Europe, or these pressures will reach a sufficient point to wake up American corporations to the fact that patents, and software patents in particular, are not in their best interests.
I suspect 5 years will be enough for this to run its course
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
how can the logical sequence of mathematical ideas and expressions be patentable? If it is, let me be the first to patent the "algorithm" which is defined as a sequence of equations, decisions and other programming structures that is used to manipulate inputs and outputs.
Being able to patent software is just ludicrous - this means that unless you want to do something brand-spanking new in code, you will probably be infringeing on something even if you've never seen someone elses code. Let's say, for instance, you want to write some software that makes shopping lists and tallies the total cash you will spend - you'll get nobbled by M$ cos they've patented Excel and they have lawyers with liberal interpretations of the claims to do with a spreadsheet program.
Brings me in mind of something I was taught a long wile ago - programming is the creation of sequences of expressions. Something to think about...
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
Actually, for the first time in a few years I'm really proud to be Polish.
Unfortunately, here the story ends as Barnes and Noble found out.
I'm not agreeing that he is troll per sé. Granted, at first I thought so too, but usually trolls don't do that much effort to give understandable responses. It is difficult to see the difference between someone having an oposite view, and believing it and strongly advocating it, and trolling. Being called a troll myself occasionally, I think I have some rights to claim this. :-)
As for slashsoup:
"Society has concluded that the net effect of patents on technology is positive, not just less negative. Why is it that you think the net effect on software is negative? "
Actually, no. Society has not concluded this at all. Governments of the 18th and 19th century thought that it would have a positive effect, and in some fields where the incremental nature is less (such as farmaceuticals) this might be true. It's worth noting, however, that australia in the 80ies examined the influence of patents, and found that, overall, patents did *not* do what they were supposed to do. They recommended abolishing it, but ofcourse, foreign pressure and worldwide inertia because of the common use of patents excluded that.
So, it's not because it's "so good" that it should and is being kept alive; in many fields it would stimulate progress much more if patents weren't there. In the field of software, however, it becomes more obvious (due to the incremental nature of softwarepatents) how outright negative this is. Also, more and more studies about this topic have been done, and almost all (at least the non-corporate sponsored ones) have shown that softwarepatents do more harm then good.
Now, you can lament and say 'then all patents in all fields should be abolished', and maybe many should, indeed, at least those where the benefits do not outweigh the advantages. But the fact is, we do not, as yet, have the same inertia that already is established for patents in other fields, at least in europe. And it seems to me, it's illogical to expect europe to create a bad patentlaw, because others have allowed bad patentlaws.
I'm all for a grand, scientific and independend research into the advantages and disadvantages of softwarepatents (and maybe other fields as well), and if they reach their stated claims/goals...and then base the decision solely on this. But ofcourse, in reality you have politics, money and lobbying, so..fat chance that happening. Thus, we are left with the strong indications that independend research thusfar *has* shown us, and logical reasoning to consider what is best for europe, as a whole (which means in an economical sense; for SME's, because more then 80% of the workforce in Europe is concentrated in those, and not big foreign softwarecompanies).
So you see, though you might feel you have an inate right on a softwarepatent, that is really not the issue. It's what is best for society, and best for europe. In both instances, research and logic dictates it's a *NO* for softwarepatents.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---