Richard Stallman on EU Software Patents

schreibmaschine writes "Richard Stallman writes in The Guardian that the defeat of the EU directive has bought time, but that the pro-patent forces will regroup and try again."

Comments

FFII web site taken down

[alanxyzzy]

IN related news, this ZDNet article reports that the German software company Nutzwerk has obtained a court order taking the FFII's web site offline.

In the meantime, please use nosoftwarepatents.com instead, where you will find more information on the issue.

Re:The world did just fine before their invention

[ZephyrXero]

Agreed, patents aren't really a bad idea in theory... it's in practice that they've become a problem.

Quick and easy ways to solve current patent issues:
1. Make patents only last for around 10 years. This gives the inventor more than enough time to establish themselves as the original.
2. Make corporations have to pay much more than an actual person would be charged to file.
3. Any person or business that files over 5 patents in one year has their filing fees raised expotentially with each subsequent submission.
4. Don't allow patents on concepts and ideas, only something that's actually been produced already.

These won't fix everything, but it's a good start and woulnd't be hard at all to implement. Getting the guys in charge to listen however, is a very different story...