But the guy certainly deserves right to test it in real life and try to profit from it
For once and for all: the patent system is not about deserving something or not. The work of a mathematician is no less worthy than that of a mechanic. It's all about economic end results: are patents necessary (or at least beneficial) in a certain area or not in order to stimulate innovation and to prevent an excessive amount of copying (a small amount of imitation is actually healthy, since it helps curb monopolies and keeps the market competitive).
If patents were to be deemed not to have an overall positive effect, than they should be done away with.
That's not entirely correct. It must be unanimous if the Commission does not support their position, otherwise a qualified majority (2/3 majority) is sufficient. That's at least the case with codecision, under which the swpat directive is handled. I don't know about e.g. consultation.
In all EU countries, the government governs on sufferance of the parliament, and the government must adhere to any motions legally passed by the parliament.
No, they don't. See e.g. this page (in Dutch) from the Dutch government.
Translation of the relevant part:
A second instrument of De Kamer (= Parliament) is the motion. In a motion, De Kamer voices an opinion or asks a minister or the whole cabinet to do something, or on the contrary to not do something. Such a statement carries much less weight than an amendment, because it's not binding. A minister can ignore a motion.
Well, the parliament can send the whole government home if they really think it's completely ignoring it's will. Additionally, the vote of the parliament is binding when they have to vote about a law, it's just not binding when they file a motion.
"Respectfully sir, we do like your proposal, but we'd like to make one small change to it. Instead of, say, legalizing software patents... yeah, instead of that, we'd like to have all software patenters drawn and quartered. Not a big change, really..."
It would indeed be funny if the Commission hadn't written in the explanatory memorandum that this was actually the goal: prevent a drift towards US practice, prevent business method patents and whatnot... Same goes for the Council, for that matter. We are actually trying to bring the law into line with what it's supposedly to achieve. Well, maybe that's even funnier in a certain sense:)
It doubt it's the end of capitalism, but it may be signalling the end of the patent system. These pro-swpat extremists are heading on a self-destruct course. We are in fact the ones trying to make it workable and reasonable again. See this nice blog entry on that topic.
Yes, Brinkhorst did vote for swpats. The only reason he could do that was because before the vote, he told the Dutch Parliament that there was a compromise between the Council and the European Parliament with which everyone was happy. When it turned out that was wrong, the Dutch Parliament approved the motion to turn the Dutch vote into an abstention, but that's what Brinkhorst and Van Gennip refuse to do.
Good luck, but is there any way to actually WIN - to kill this off for good? If it becomes law, it will *stay* law, but if not, can't "they" just try again next month?
First of all, no they can't: if the directive is withdrawn, they have to wait at least two years before proposing a new directive. And after that, Poland and everyone else who's now being forced to swallow that hideous Council text would be free to object to it. There's no way such a text could ever again be supported by a qualified majority.
Apart from that, you seem to be missing the fact that we're not arguing for "killing off" the directive. We're trying to change it so that instead of legalising software patents, it forbids them. That's what the European Parliament voted for in September 2003, so that's definitely not impossible to achieve. It isn't a stroll in the park either though.
but everything I have seen seems to indicate that the upper tier of the EU basically ignores the local governments
You misunderstand. It's the local governments (the Council) and their appointed "representatives" (the Commissioners) ignoring only directly democratically chosen EU institution (European Parliament).
Democracy is the only reason it hasn't gone through yet. By having nothing to with it, you give them what they want. I don't think it has much to do with corruption, it's mainly ignorance and panic.
Why panic? Well, there's this "Lisbon Strategy" which is supposed to make the EU the most competitive knowledge economy by 2010. And it's completely and utterly failing. Many politicians have this naive belief that "more patents = more innovation". So allowing companies to get software patents, will automagically increase innovation, they think.
Regarding ignorance: large, successful European companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Philips and Siemens are telling them that they need software patents. They believe them. They also think that those companies represent the "economic majority", that mainly "economically unimportant open source hippies" are against and the SMEs don't know what's good for them.
Slowly, we are educating them. Since we have a couple of million euro's less than the competition, and generally full time jobs as well, it doesn't go as fast as we would want it though.
Brinkhorst is the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs. He's not a Minister of Agriculture and not an EU Commissioner, though he does seem to think he's God. The Dutch EU Comissioner is Neelie Kroes, and the previous Dutch Commissioner Frits Bolkestein was one of the big driving forces behind trying to make software patentable in the EU.
No, because of Occam's razor. We have seen tons of lobbying documents from that club of companies. There was also a fax sent by the "Mission of the United States of America to the European Union", and of course there could be a lot of behind-the-scenes lobbying we don't know about, but I really doubt that the US government is a major reason for the fact that the Council and Commission are so stubborn.
I don't believe in a US conspiracy, especially not in a US political conspiracy. The pressure mainly comes from Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Siemens, Philips and indeed also US companies such as IBM and Microsoft.
These companies claim to represent "the" European IT industry and that they need patents on "computer-implemented inventions" (which generally are pretty much the same as what would be called software patents in the US). In reality, SMEs represent a much larger part of the European economy (both IT and non-IT, and software patentability obviously goes much further than just IT), they are heavily opposed (see e.g. UEAPME and CEA-PME).
The larger companies are of course much better organised regarding lobbying, so it's mainly their voice which is heard at the top levels. Slowly, we are changing this though.
Whether or not you can patent something has nothing to do where the "invention" was made. Company X can perfectly patents it's stuff in company Y's home country (i.e., European countries can perfectly get and enforce US software patents, regardless of what the outcome of this directive will be).
Let's call a spade a spade. Patents on software, patents on mechanics, patents on business models, patents on tools, patents on architecture, patents on nature -- no matter what type of patent, the core concept is that it is not only possible, but moral and just, to own an idea.
Patents have nothing to do with morality or justice, they're a purely economic tool which can be used by the government where it deems them to be beneficial. Look e.g. here, page 8 of the pdf document near the top.
I'm not convinced that software patents are any more counter-productive and unjust than any other type of patent.
Like prohibition, patent law did not arise because human nature demanded it -- it arose because the powerful elite demanded it.
I'm not sure how you can both argue that they're "moral and just" and they are here "because the powerful elite demanded it". As if the powerful elite only asks for things because they are moral and just.
Another way may be for the ISP to run spamassassin on their outgoing mail servers. The downside is that this increases the load on those servers significantly, of course. It's nevertheless what my university is doing (along with outbound port 25 blocking, which is of course easier to do for a university than for an ISP, since we aren't their customers but their users).
I believe he was trying to say (correct me if I'm wrong) that the developers can't add features that exist ONLY in the right-mouse click menu, because they can't guarantee that the user will be able to get there.
They can always get there (ctrl-click on a one-button mouse has the same effect as right click), but you're correct that it discourages developers to put things only in contextual menus. In general, all functionality is also available through the main menu bar or via buttons or pop-up windows on floating panes.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep.
TinyERP, GPL licensed. Note: home page is in French. And the fact that it's GPL does not mean you can download it for free from the author's website.
If patents were to be deemed not to have an overall positive effect, than they should be done away with.
Translation of the relevant part:
I think that's pretty clear.Well, the parliament can send the whole government home if they really think it's completely ignoring it's will. Additionally, the vote of the parliament is binding when they have to vote about a law, it's just not binding when they file a motion.
They can't, the Dutch government isn't bound by motions from the Dutch parliament.
It doubt it's the end of capitalism, but it may be signalling the end of the patent system. These pro-swpat extremists are heading on a self-destruct course. We are in fact the ones trying to make it workable and reasonable again. See this nice blog entry on that topic.
Yes, Brinkhorst did vote for swpats. The only reason he could do that was because before the vote, he told the Dutch Parliament that there was a compromise between the Council and the European Parliament with which everyone was happy. When it turned out that was wrong, the Dutch Parliament approved the motion to turn the Dutch vote into an abstention, but that's what Brinkhorst and Van Gennip refuse to do.
Apart from that, you seem to be missing the fact that we're not arguing for "killing off" the directive. We're trying to change it so that instead of legalising software patents, it forbids them. That's what the European Parliament voted for in September 2003, so that's definitely not impossible to achieve. It isn't a stroll in the park either though.
Why panic? Well, there's this "Lisbon Strategy" which is supposed to make the EU the most competitive knowledge economy by 2010. And it's completely and utterly failing. Many politicians have this naive belief that "more patents = more innovation". So allowing companies to get software patents, will automagically increase innovation, they think.
Regarding ignorance: large, successful European companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel, Philips and Siemens are telling them that they need software patents. They believe them. They also think that those companies represent the "economic majority", that mainly "economically unimportant open source hippies" are against and the SMEs don't know what's good for them.
Slowly, we are educating them. Since we have a couple of million euro's less than the competition, and generally full time jobs as well, it doesn't go as fast as we would want it though.
Brinkhorst is the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs. He's not a Minister of Agriculture and not an EU Commissioner, though he does seem to think he's God. The Dutch EU Comissioner is Neelie Kroes, and the previous Dutch Commissioner Frits Bolkestein was one of the big driving forces behind trying to make software patentable in the EU.
No, because of Occam's razor. We have seen tons of lobbying documents from that club of companies. There was also a fax sent by the "Mission of the United States of America to the European Union", and of course there could be a lot of behind-the-scenes lobbying we don't know about, but I really doubt that the US government is a major reason for the fact that the Council and Commission are so stubborn.
Possibly, but unfortunately the Council meeting starts at 10, so we don't have much choice.
These companies claim to represent "the" European IT industry and that they need patents on "computer-implemented inventions" (which generally are pretty much the same as what would be called software patents in the US). In reality, SMEs represent a much larger part of the European economy (both IT and non-IT, and software patentability obviously goes much further than just IT), they are heavily opposed (see e.g. UEAPME and CEA-PME).
The larger companies are of course much better organised regarding lobbying, so it's mainly their voice which is heard at the top levels. Slowly, we are changing this though.
As a result, we're organising a demonstration next Tuesday in Brussels. Everyone's welcome!
Whether or not you can patent something has nothing to do where the "invention" was made. Company X can perfectly patents it's stuff in company Y's home country (i.e., European countries can perfectly get and enforce US software patents, regardless of what the outcome of this directive will be).
Another way may be for the ISP to run spamassassin on their outgoing mail servers. The downside is that this increases the load on those servers significantly, of course. It's nevertheless what my university is doing (along with outbound port 25 blocking, which is of course easier to do for a university than for an ISP, since we aren't their customers but their users).
Indeed, in fact it's just restarting :)
I prefer the uncertainty over whether software patents are valid or not to the certainty that they are.