Slashdot Mirror
EU Software Patent Argument to Reopen?
pryonic writes "The Register is reporting that the EU software debate may be reopened by the Internal Markets Commissioner Charlie McCreevy. He has unveiled a public consultation on 'future action in patent policy to create an EU-wide patent system can take account of stakeholders needs.'" More from the article: "Both individuals and businesses are invited to contribute to the consultation which will run until 31 March. In launching the initiative McCreevy said that the European Commission wants to make the single market for patents 'a reality.' He urged individuals and businesses to give their views on how that could be achieved." Groklaw has
commentary on this development as well.
He's an ardent free-marketeer
Nope. Patent monopolies are, by definition, ANTI Free market. McCreevy is a corrupt, evil bastard, plain and simple. Someone should shoot him, and McDowell while they're at it.
I didn't see this mentioned on /. at the time and only found out about it myself just recently, but France may be about to get the worst copyright law in Europe and ban Free/Open Source Software - see here...
SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill proposal pass in the Parliament.
If these clowns won't listen, then it's time to play dirty. What the opponents of this need to do is to frame software patents as a power grab by U.S. corporations over the European market, a way for them to ensure that European innovation is stifled so that Europe will always be beholden to U.S. interests. Then portray these EU bureaucrats as stooges of the giant American corporations.
What this will do is put these guys on the defensive. It changes the issue at hand from, "We need software patents," to, "Wait! I'm not a stooge of the Americans! You aren't listening to my argument!" This may sound like a trivial thing, but it isn't. It changes the entire dynamic from that of these guys pushing ahead with their agenda to them having to explain why they aren't pawns of a foreign country. The ordinary person on the street may not understand what a software patent is, but if you tell them it's being forced on them at the behest of foreign governments and corporations, they won't like it. And before someone chimes in saying that we shouldn't have to play politics this way, that the arguments against software patents are good enough to stand on their own, let me just say this. You're right, but being right won't necessarily win a fight. You also have to be practical, and you have to use every tool at your disposal. There are many times that the side with the right argument loses because it isn't willing to get in there and fight tooth and nail for what it believes in.
Oh, BTW, in case you're wondering, no, I'm not anti-American. In fact, I am an American, but I happen to believe that our patent system is completely corrupt, and I shudder to think that it's being foisted onto any other parts of the world.
These people make me sick: They keep pushing law after law on member states, well aware that the citizen don't want them. It happened that finally countries where there once was a large majority in favor of the EU construction, (The Netherlands, France) rejected the proposed EU constitution. And now they do bussiness as usual. We have an election year in 2007 and if this kind of crap does not stop, I will seriously consider voting for some politician seeking to LEAVE THE E.U.no matter what his other proposals are.
Enough is enough, our french politicians are not very democratic in my view, but these are even worse, and I no longer want to have them ruling my country.
One of those Europeans...
I am an MS employee (although my posting is DEFINITELY my own opinion and has no relation to anything that might be the position of my employer).
I am against software patents, such as they exist today in the US.
I am _for_ government granting artificial protections to people/organizations that create IP, because i beleive that authors, software developers, and musicians deserve to have some say in how money is made from their intellectual property, and it seems necessary to make the model work (at least for pharmecutical companies). These protections should last for a limited time and focus on letting the inventor recoup their development costs, plus a nice profit, and then after the granted time period, the general public freely benefits from the work. I beleive this is called copyright, but its been badly perverted in the US.
It is my claim that Microsoft is not esecially obnoxious w.r.t. software patents. Consideration of history will show that we get sued, via software patents, alot more than we sue others. Our acquisition of patents and patening as much as we can is only reasonable, given the litiguous, absurd software patening environment we're in.
I would expect that we're in favor of software patent stuff in europe because it helps to level the playing field cross-market.
I would _like_ it to be the case that there are no software patents anywhere. We've lost a lot of money due to absurd patent lawsuits (Eolas, for instance).
The final thing to consider is how patents affect F/OSS. This is a hard one for me to have a coherent opinion on. Everybody, no matter where they work, wrote and continues to write software in their free time at home. Nothing is more fundamental than the individual right of creating things.
On the other hand, its frustrating for me to see F/OSS software that is just outright cloning other, commercially developed software. It's frustrating because the work to do design, UI research, feature consideration/development, etc etc was done by a company, and took time and money. Writing the code is a small part of the job of shipping software, and when you're cloning commercial software for F/OSS projects, you only do the coding work, and you're "using" the rest of it without the original people being compensated in any way.
I wrestle with these two opposing positions - i want people to be able to write whatever software they want. I don't want people to be able to clone the work of others (with less effort) and give it away for free [especially for the stated motive of trying to "ruin" the original creator - which is often the case with F/OSS and Microsoft]
I lean in favor of the individual, and my response to corporate anti-cloning interests is along the lines of "i guess you'll just have to out-innovate the cloners instead of resting on your laurels" (which is another concept that originally showed up in Copyright)
I think many people are worried (rightly so) that Microsoft will use software patents to block F/OSS cloning of microsoft products/technologies. I am not sure what all the motivations are, but there are a lot of contributing issues. Yes, we want people to buy our stuff instead of using freeware clones. Yes, we are _required_ to persue possible patent infringers for our patents to remain valid. Yes, there is a software patent industry, that for better or worse, we _have_ to participate in. There are other reasons probalby, and i dont know what mix of them causes what action by us for what project/person "out there".
I've never talked to a single engineer - here or at any place - that is happy with the US software patent landscape. These are all people that get paid to write code, and have healthy at-home projects going.
I think everyone that writes software struggles with "how do i keep my job?" vs "how do i retain the freedom to create whatever i want to?"
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The EU will continue to bring up the issue of software patents again and again until it's finally put through. We can say no 100 times but say yes once and it's done.
It's the same with the constitution, they'll continue to try and put it through for the next decade, the population will say no again and again, until they say yes, and then it's done.
This is how the EU does things.
It's also why I'm moving to Australia in 3 months. It's a joke.
Maybe instead of having to fight back these software patent proposals every year, an EU delegate should propose amending the EU charter to specifically BAN software patents? Seems the pro-patent folks can't take "nay" for an answer.
Maybe there's some subtext that I'm missing, but the article seems unduely alarmist. There's nothing in the EU press release or consultation document to indicate that this has anything to do with Software or computer implemented inventions. The question presented seems to be whether there should be European patents at all.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB