I don't see why you see gzipping as a complex barrier; it's rather trivial to add support for it in terms of code.
And I would have thought that most developers would rather learn a new XML DTD than have to learn an entirely new way of encoding data. If you don't, and you don't like XML, then there's no point in trying to convince you:)
I don't know all the reasons why, but one is that it makes handling SVGs and writing applications that handle SVGs a lot easier. The SVG XML DTD really makes a lot of sense when you think how best to codify an image's structure.
And it's really not a space problem, since you can gzip an SVG (and svgz is becoming a fairly standard format) and make it just as compact as a binary image format.
So you get a nice, open format that makes a lot of sense, and that can be compacted where necessary. Magic.
It's such a pain that IE has such a gigantic marketshare, because if it didn't, we would see a huge migration amongst the web development community towards Mozilla (and derivitives), Opera, Konqueror, etc. which would inevitably, over time, mean a similar migration amongst users.
Unfortunately, I don't suppose developers can afford to ignore IE's lack of support for basic standards like CSS. Damn monopoly.
If only they could, we could finally start to see the web returning to using standardised, open technologies and innovating in a way that will benefit us all. Mozilla has shown us what funky stuff you can do with SVG, CSS and other more current technologies; let's hope web developers start picking these up.
It'd be ironic to see pages that say: "Best viewed in Netscape 7, Mozilla, Opera or better" or "IE users may not be able to use these pages":-)
Did you vote for every Act of Parliament? Oh dude, we really ought to have an annual vote on that, in case people disagree with parts of it. Come to think of it, maybe we ought to have them monthly, just in case people don't like to spend a month being so "undemocratic".
Your comment is right up there with the most ludicrous Euro-sceptic comments I've read. If you want your views represented, go to your local MEPs and make them known. If you're in a tiny minority, and your minority's views aren't compatable with everyone else's (e.g. if you want Britain to leave the EU), then you either just make do with being represented and unhappy, or you leave for a country outside of the EU. That's the way Democracy works in the UK, I'm afraid.
As the author, I'd like to ask you to have a look at my web site, and find out just how ridiculous your post is.
Along with the FFII, I actively campaign with Greenpeace, Drop the Debt (Jubilee), the Trade Justice coalition and the Stop AIDS coalition.
I agree that it is a bit odd to get very worked up about software patents and not about other issues that affect more people in more dire ways, but that doesn't make lobbying for something less pressing wrong. I take the time to campaign on software patents precisely because it is low profile, and important in its way, and if people don't stand out and make a noise about it, it will just slip quietly by.
Your post simply says "It's a shame and discgrace that thpse who are doing all that hard work of writing code and then giving it away are not also doing that hard boring work someone else could do".
Your post is stupid.
Eh?
My post is saying "you can help those who are doing all that hard work of writing code and then giving it away by doing work that you are capable of, freeing those hard working developers up to develop more code".
Moreover, your post implies that developers shouldn't be doing things that non-technical people can do. Why? What's wrong with a developer writing documentation, doing translation work, creating artwork, if he/she wants to?
To be precide, two or three Trolltech employeers work on KDE for Trolltech as well. Trolltech do this because KDE provides such a huge market and massive publicity for their product, Qt.
But yes, you're right, KDE is not made by Trolltech, and Trolltech the company doesn't decide anything to do with KDE.
Kcontrol has seen vast improvements since KDE 3.1, as have a lot of other usability issues.
If you have the time to spare, and good ideas on KDE usability, consider subscribing to the usability mailing list. Even if you can't program C++, you can help discuss usability problems, and so help the developers focus on coding.
For those like myself who can't program in C++, but who can install this alpha version, or any other versions before 3.2 final, there is a lot you can do to help KDE:
* Report bugs. If you find something crashes, doesn't work as you'd expect it to, or there's a feature you think is missing, report it at http://bugs.kde.org.
* Submit documentation. Lots of apps in KDE will have out of date documentation, or none at all. If you understand how to use just such an app, consider writing documentation for it and submitting it to KDE.
* Submit translations. If American English isn't your native language, consider translating the text in applications to languages you feel confident with.
You obviously didn't bother to read why Epiphany started, and why it is being included in GNOME.
Mozilla, Firebird and Galleon are all good browsers, but none of them currently conform with GNOME's HIG, and none want to.
To be a usable desktop environment, GNOME needs a browser that will integrate well with it, and so Epiphany fills this gap.
Honestly, does the user care if there are five different Mozilla derivatives, each for a different desktop environment, when they have the one they want installed? It won't confuse anyone, and it will provide choice to those who might want it.
If nuclear power is the future, I don't want to be a part of it. I can just about accept that nuclear power is a good short term solution for areas where green technologies aren't quite ready, but for the UK, where I live, nuclear power is as redundant and unattractive as fossil fuels.
Nuclear power is horrendously expensive. There is this myth that nuclear power is cheap... let me remind readers that the UK Govt had to bail out the British nuclear industry to the tune of 500m recently, [i]just to keep plants safe[/i]. Left in a marketplace, competing with other suppliers, nuclear is completely uncompetitive. You have the cost of getting the fuel, transporting it securely to the sites, running the stations, storing spent fuel securely, transporting it to a disposal site, and then disposing of it.
Nuclear power is also far from being green. Great, no carbon problems, but what about the waste? We still don't know what on earth to do with it all, and in the UK we are rapidly running out of (legal) dumping grounds.
The waste is also a security risk. Many people seem to believe that nuclear power stations are safe because the core is well protected; well it is, wonderful, but the waste isn't, and if hit by a mortar, crashed plane or any number of other small munitions, it would be spread around a large area, irradiating many millions of people a long time before the meagre provisions of iodine could be distributed, and destroying large areas of farm land. The cleanup costs would be enormous.
Why do we continue to consider this environmental and human disaster waiting to happen, and in some cases happening, when we have much better alternatives?
The UK could get the whole of its electricity supply from offshore wind farms. Contrary to the FUD spread by the nuclear and fossils lobbies, intermittent supply isn't a problem, because we are still so well "endowed" with wind that we could still get our needs several times over. And that's according to Government estimates. We have a huge, very regular supply of wind. We also have docks going down the spout that could be resurrected to drive a new wind industry, creating lots of jobs.
The best excuse I've ever heard for going with nuclear is that wind farms kill birds. Y'know a research graduate at my University studying renewable energy found that the number of birds likely to be killed by turbines was so small that if we're so worried about bird populations, we'd be better off stopping tourism, because tourists already kill more on beaches. Lovely.
This World Nuclear University stinks. It stinks of a lobby becoming desperate, and trying to embrace a scientific community that revels in jokes about green energy because 25 years ago it was a pipedream. Well wake up community, now it's real, and it's time we put nuclear power into the bin of history, along with fossil fuels.
WINE is bad because it will discourage people from writing native applications. Native applications are important because they provide a reason for people to use GNU/Linux or *BSD wholesale, rather than flit between a Free OS and Windows. They also mean more innovation and more investment in Free Software, and more Free Software available. Will The GIMP just drop off the map once Photoshop is reliably supported? Will we no longer see native ports of games, with companies instead hoping that WINE(X) will, at some point, work well with other platforms? Maybe WINE will stop many companies from looking seriously as developing applications as cross-platform from the start, which will hurt users of other platforms like MacOSX, old MacOS, maybe GNU/Hurd, BSDs, etc.
or...
WINE is good because it will fill the application gap until Free Software can catch up. Rather than wait a few years for all the weird and wonderful applications we don't have to appear, WINE will let corporate and home users make the switch straight away and slowly migrate from Windows. WINE will encourage gamers. WINE with winelib will make cross-platform development a sinch in years to come.
I just think you're interpreting the statement too literally...
4. User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer
In the credit card case, you are talking about repetition of a single information transfer, which you will have seen the first time it is sent. If needs be, have an MD5SUM of each transfer so you can be sure it is the same.
There will always be a point between your saying "send it" and the data being sent where the computer could craftily do something to the information, and the only way to be certain about that is to view the source code.
Therefore I think you either have to conclude that this rule is crazy and useless, or that given the correct interpretation and some clever wording in the legal documents it is a very sensible rule.
Your post is more of the same knee-jerk reaction you get in rags like the Daily Mail who delight in bigotry and bias; actually studying the EU might give you very different impressions.
This is a really well written, thought out, piece of work. But the only flaw I see is: 4. User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer. (Basically says end-user should see un-encrypted version of what is being sent) If this law would be to put into use, we would have more of a problem with people stealing credit cards.
Why? For the credit card information to be sent from my computer, I must have, at some point, put it in, and so have seen it. By consequently sending this information out many times I am approving of each transfer.
Any legal ambiguities could be avoided easily enough. The thrust of the statement is clear: data processing systems cannot send data over a network without you (potentially, trivially) knowing about it. That is the case on my machine at the moment, and it should be the case on all computer systems.
Because with code in an embedded situation you are patenting a very specific mechanism, a physical invention, which just happens to use software. You're not patenting the software, but the whole invention including the software.
Actually, just being that specific is unlikely to work, since MEPs can then just shrug their shoulders and say: we will cover that particular example in the categorisation process during the readings in parliament.
The MEPs talk in terms of abstractions... the directive is a set of abstractions... the only way to have it changed for the better is to explain why the abstractions are wrong, then using specific examples like ebay, one-click, progress bars, etc. to backup your case.
Having talked to several MEPs in Brussels on Thursday, I'd have to agree that polemics about freedom of speech won't change many MEP's minds.
We particularly need to target the conservatives and moderate socialists (e.g. Labour in the UK), and they are the people who are least likely to be swayed by ideological arguments. They respond to economic studies, threats to small businesses, implementation problems, and other more "concrete" problems.
If you want to contact an MEP, find one who is a conservative in the PPE-DE alliance, and contact him/her as a constituent, telling him/her about how software patents will affect you, and what amendments you would make to improve the directive.
But if code is like music do we really want to encourage a bunch of code that is a blatant rip-off of existing ideas, just re-implemented? Perhaps a balance needs to be sought in short-lived patents.
You misunderstand efficient software development, and the impact of software patents...
Most software is developed on top of other software, or other software ideas. For example, Mozilla is based upon HTML which is based upon HTTP which is based upon TCP/IP, and so on. If you patent a particular peice of software, then you limit the extent to which people can innovate on top of it.
And even if people do develop code that "rips off" existing ideas, we do want to encourage that. Think about MacOS, Windows, KDE, GNOME, and any other desktop environment - they all rip off ideas like "windows", "progress bars", etc. and reimplement them in their own way. Would you prefer it if we only had one desktop environment, protected by patents?
Pure software is meant to be covered by copyright, so that if you want to copy my idea, you have to do all the coding yourself (unless I use a Free license), meaning that essentially you do the same amount of work as me. This is ample IP protection for people who want to make money from software, as the past 40 odd years have shown.
Patents should only apply when the software is applied in inventions that use the natural sciences, not theoretical ones, e.g. in embedded software for a GPS system, but not in generic software like a progress bar, one-click shopping, etc.
It raises awareness amongst geeks, who might not know very much about the subject, let alone that the lobbying and campaigning is reaching a critical point now that the directive is going into Parliament for its first reading very soon.
Doing anything, even if it only reaches a small audience, is better than nothing. We don't have any contacts who will shut down big sites like MSNBC or CNN, so we will have to make do with the sites we can shut down, which, we hope, will still generate more interest amongst those most likely to be affected by the directive.
The campaign is not limited to this web site protest; it is one of many tactics we are using, to some success, to change the EU's mind.
* On wednesday, there was a real demonstration outside the European Parliament in Brussels. This helped raise the profile of our cause in Brussels, and particularly amongst MEPs who will all have hopefully noticed or heard/read about it.
* There has been an on-going petition with over 16,000 small businesses and many more individuals signing it, giving weight to our claims and putting pressure on MEPs
* There has been an on-going lobbying process, intensified this week, writing to, phoning and talking face-to-face with MEPs, trying to convince them of our arguments. I was in the European Parliament lobbying yesterday, and many hackers have been in the building talking to MEPs for some time now. As of yesterday, it looks like we're suceeding in widening splits in the PPE-DE conservative alliance and the PSE socialist alliance, and we've already won over the greens, the far-left socialists and the far-right liberals.
* Many web sites have displayed little images or text links to get more petition signatures and raise the profile of the campaign
* Finally, this web protest is aimed at pushing the profile of the campaign even higher, getting many more geeks involved, and hopefully others who come across web sites they visit often and see the protest page. Doubtless few MEPs will see this, but it is raising the profile (as this/. story is doing) which is a very good thing at this critical time
What message is this supposed to send? Why would the EU change its mind because a few sites decided to protest? How does the absence of a few sites hurt the EU? More likely, they'll only hurt themselves.
As somebody who has shut down a GNU/Linux web site he runs, and who was lobbying inside the European Parliament yesterday, let me explain.
This web protest is one part of the picture:
* On wednesday, there was a real demonstration outside the European Parliament in Brussels. This helped raise the profile of our cause in Brussels, and particularly amongst MEPs who will all have hopefully noticed or heard/read about it.
* There has been an on-going petition with over 16,000 small businesses and many more individuals signing it, giving weight to our claims and putting pressure on MEPs
* There has been an on-going lobbying process, intensified this week, writing to, phoning and talking face-to-face with MEPs, trying to convince them of our arguments. As of yesterday, it looks like we're suceeding in widening splits in the PPE-DE conservative alliance and the PSE socialist alliance, and we've already won over the greens, the far-left socialists and the far-right liberals.
* Many web sites have displayed little images or text links to get more petition signatures and raise the profile of the campaign
* Finally, this web protest is aimed at pushing the profile of the campaign even higher, getting many more geeks involved, and hopefully others who come across web sites they visit often and see the protest page. Doubtless few MEPs will see this, but it is raising the profile (as this/. story is doing) which is a very good thing at this critical time
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see why you see gzipping as a complex barrier; it's rather trivial to add support for it in terms of code.
:)
And I would have thought that most developers would rather learn a new XML DTD than have to learn an entirely new way of encoding data. If you don't, and you don't like XML, then there's no point in trying to convince you
I don't know all the reasons why, but one is that it makes handling SVGs and writing applications that handle SVGs a lot easier. The SVG XML DTD really makes a lot of sense when you think how best to codify an image's structure.
And it's really not a space problem, since you can gzip an SVG (and svgz is becoming a fairly standard format) and make it just as compact as a binary image format.
So you get a nice, open format that makes a lot of sense, and that can be compacted where necessary. Magic.
It's such a pain that IE has such a gigantic marketshare, because if it didn't, we would see a huge migration amongst the web development community towards Mozilla (and derivitives), Opera, Konqueror, etc. which would inevitably, over time, mean a similar migration amongst users.
:-)
Unfortunately, I don't suppose developers can afford to ignore IE's lack of support for basic standards like CSS. Damn monopoly.
If only they could, we could finally start to see the web returning to using standardised, open technologies and innovating in a way that will benefit us all. Mozilla has shown us what funky stuff you can do with SVG, CSS and other more current technologies; let's hope web developers start picking these up.
It'd be ironic to see pages that say: "Best viewed in Netscape 7, Mozilla, Opera or better" or "IE users may not be able to use these pages"
Did you vote for every Act of Parliament? Oh dude, we really ought to have an annual vote on that, in case people disagree with parts of it. Come to think of it, maybe we ought to have them monthly, just in case people don't like to spend a month being so "undemocratic".
Your comment is right up there with the most ludicrous Euro-sceptic comments I've read. If you want your views represented, go to your local MEPs and make them known. If you're in a tiny minority, and your minority's views aren't compatable with everyone else's (e.g. if you want Britain to leave the EU), then you either just make do with being represented and unhappy, or you leave for a country outside of the EU. That's the way Democracy works in the UK, I'm afraid.
As the author, I'd like to ask you to have a look at my web site, and find out just how ridiculous your post is.
Along with the FFII, I actively campaign with Greenpeace, Drop the Debt (Jubilee), the Trade Justice coalition and the Stop AIDS coalition.
I agree that it is a bit odd to get very worked up about software patents and not about other issues that affect more people in more dire ways, but that doesn't make lobbying for something less pressing wrong. I take the time to campaign on software patents precisely because it is low profile, and important in its way, and if people don't stand out and make a noise about it, it will just slip quietly by.
Oh, hang on a sec, I thought you were replying to me... crazy Slashdot hid the troll so it looked that way to me. My apologies :)
Your post simply says "It's a shame and discgrace that thpse who are doing all that hard work of writing code and then giving it away are not also doing that hard boring work someone else could do".
Your post is stupid.
Eh?
My post is saying "you can help those who are doing all that hard work of writing code and then giving it away by doing work that you are capable of, freeing those hard working developers up to develop more code".
Moreover, your post implies that developers shouldn't be doing things that non-technical people can do. Why? What's wrong with a developer writing documentation, doing translation work, creating artwork, if he/she wants to?
To be precide, two or three Trolltech employeers work on KDE for Trolltech as well. Trolltech do this because KDE provides such a huge market and massive publicity for their product, Qt.
But yes, you're right, KDE is not made by Trolltech, and Trolltech the company doesn't decide anything to do with KDE.
Kcontrol has seen vast improvements since KDE 3.1, as have a lot of other usability issues.
If you have the time to spare, and good ideas on KDE usability, consider subscribing to the usability mailing list. Even if you can't program C++, you can help discuss usability problems, and so help the developers focus on coding.
For those like myself who can't program in C++, but who can install this alpha version, or any other versions before 3.2 final, there is a lot you can do to help KDE:
* Report bugs. If you find something crashes, doesn't work as you'd expect it to, or there's a feature you think is missing, report it at http://bugs.kde.org.
* Submit documentation. Lots of apps in KDE will have out of date documentation, or none at all. If you understand how to use just such an app, consider writing documentation for it and submitting it to KDE.
* Submit translations. If American English isn't your native language, consider translating the text in applications to languages you feel confident with.
More can be found at: http://www.kde.org/support
You obviously didn't bother to read why Epiphany started, and why it is being included in GNOME.
Mozilla, Firebird and Galleon are all good browsers, but none of them currently conform with GNOME's HIG, and none want to.
To be a usable desktop environment, GNOME needs a browser that will integrate well with it, and so Epiphany fills this gap.
Honestly, does the user care if there are five different Mozilla derivatives, each for a different desktop environment, when they have the one they want installed? It won't confuse anyone, and it will provide choice to those who might want it.
Go back to your troll cave.
If nuclear power is the future, I don't want to be a part of it. I can just about accept that nuclear power is a good short term solution for areas where green technologies aren't quite ready, but for the UK, where I live, nuclear power is as redundant and unattractive as fossil fuels.
Nuclear power is horrendously expensive. There is this myth that nuclear power is cheap... let me remind readers that the UK Govt had to bail out the British nuclear industry to the tune of 500m recently, [i]just to keep plants safe[/i]. Left in a marketplace, competing with other suppliers, nuclear is completely uncompetitive. You have the cost of getting the fuel, transporting it securely to the sites, running the stations, storing spent fuel securely, transporting it to a disposal site, and then disposing of it.
Nuclear power is also far from being green. Great, no carbon problems, but what about the waste? We still don't know what on earth to do with it all, and in the UK we are rapidly running out of (legal) dumping grounds.
The waste is also a security risk. Many people seem to believe that nuclear power stations are safe because the core is well protected; well it is, wonderful, but the waste isn't, and if hit by a mortar, crashed plane or any number of other small munitions, it would be spread around a large area, irradiating many millions of people a long time before the meagre provisions of iodine could be distributed, and destroying large areas of farm land. The cleanup costs would be enormous.
Why do we continue to consider this environmental and human disaster waiting to happen, and in some cases happening, when we have much better alternatives?
The UK could get the whole of its electricity supply from offshore wind farms. Contrary to the FUD spread by the nuclear and fossils lobbies, intermittent supply isn't a problem, because we are still so well "endowed" with wind that we could still get our needs several times over. And that's according to Government estimates. We have a huge, very regular supply of wind. We also have docks going down the spout that could be resurrected to drive a new wind industry, creating lots of jobs.
The best excuse I've ever heard for going with nuclear is that wind farms kill birds. Y'know a research graduate at my University studying renewable energy found that the number of birds likely to be killed by turbines was so small that if we're so worried about bird populations, we'd be better off stopping tourism, because tourists already kill more on beaches. Lovely.
This World Nuclear University stinks. It stinks of a lobby becoming desperate, and trying to embrace a scientific community that revels in jokes about green energy because 25 years ago it was a pipedream. Well wake up community, now it's real, and it's time we put nuclear power into the bin of history, along with fossil fuels.
I'm confused... help me out here.
:)
I installed xine-lib, and gxine, and kmplayer. I haven't installed xine-ui.
I have Xine installed.... without the Xine gui.
I have two different frontends to Xine.
So why do you say:
Until you can seperate the gui out of Xine easily at compile time... Xine cant even compete....
And how do you get moderated up for it?
By the way, I prefer mplayer
Just to save everyone lots of comments... ;-)
:-)
WINE is bad because it will discourage people from writing native applications. Native applications are important because they provide a reason for people to use GNU/Linux or *BSD wholesale, rather than flit between a Free OS and Windows. They also mean more innovation and more investment in Free Software, and more Free Software available. Will The GIMP just drop off the map once Photoshop is reliably supported? Will we no longer see native ports of games, with companies instead hoping that WINE(X) will, at some point, work well with other platforms? Maybe WINE will stop many companies from looking seriously as developing applications as cross-platform from the start, which will hurt users of other platforms like MacOSX, old MacOS, maybe GNU/Hurd, BSDs, etc.
or...
WINE is good because it will fill the application gap until Free Software can catch up. Rather than wait a few years for all the weird and wonderful applications we don't have to appear, WINE will let corporate and home users make the switch straight away and slowly migrate from Windows. WINE will encourage gamers. WINE with winelib will make cross-platform development a sinch in years to come.
Now.... discuss
I just think you're interpreting the statement too literally...
4. User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer
In the credit card case, you are talking about repetition of a single information transfer, which you will have seen the first time it is sent. If needs be, have an MD5SUM of each transfer so you can be sure it is the same.
There will always be a point between your saying "send it" and the data being sent where the computer could craftily do something to the information, and the only way to be certain about that is to view the source code.
Therefore I think you either have to conclude that this rule is crazy and useless, or that given the correct interpretation and some clever wording in the legal documents it is a very sensible rule.
Your statutory rights protect you here.
Your post is more of the same knee-jerk reaction you get in rags like the Daily Mail who delight in bigotry and bias; actually studying the EU might give you very different impressions.
This is a really well written, thought out, piece of work. But the only flaw I see is: 4. User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer. (Basically says end-user should see un-encrypted version of what is being sent) If this law would be to put into use, we would have more of a problem with people stealing credit cards.
Why? For the credit card information to be sent from my computer, I must have, at some point, put it in, and so have seen it. By consequently sending this information out many times I am approving of each transfer.
Any legal ambiguities could be avoided easily enough. The thrust of the statement is clear: data processing systems cannot send data over a network without you (potentially, trivially) knowing about it. That is the case on my machine at the moment, and it should be the case on all computer systems.
Because with code in an embedded situation you are patenting a very specific mechanism, a physical invention, which just happens to use software. You're not patenting the software, but the whole invention including the software.
Actually, just being that specific is unlikely to work, since MEPs can then just shrug their shoulders and say: we will cover that particular example in the categorisation process during the readings in parliament.
The MEPs talk in terms of abstractions... the directive is a set of abstractions... the only way to have it changed for the better is to explain why the abstractions are wrong, then using specific examples like ebay, one-click, progress bars, etc. to backup your case.
For those who are interested, myself and a friend took some photos whilst in Brussels. We were lobbying MEPs in the European Parliament.
h tml
http://www.tomchance.uklinux.net/swpat-brussels.s
Having talked to several MEPs in Brussels on Thursday, I'd have to agree that polemics about freedom of speech won't change many MEP's minds.
We particularly need to target the conservatives and moderate socialists (e.g. Labour in the UK), and they are the people who are least likely to be swayed by ideological arguments. They respond to economic studies, threats to small businesses, implementation problems, and other more "concrete" problems.
If you want to contact an MEP, find one who is a conservative in the PPE-DE alliance, and contact him/her as a constituent, telling him/her about how software patents will affect you, and what amendments you would make to improve the directive.
But if code is like music do we really want to encourage a bunch of code that is a blatant rip-off of existing ideas, just re-implemented? Perhaps a balance needs to be sought in short-lived patents.
You misunderstand efficient software development, and the impact of software patents...
Most software is developed on top of other software, or other software ideas. For example, Mozilla is based upon HTML which is based upon HTTP which is based upon TCP/IP, and so on. If you patent a particular peice of software, then you limit the extent to which people can innovate on top of it.
And even if people do develop code that "rips off" existing ideas, we do want to encourage that. Think about MacOS, Windows, KDE, GNOME, and any other desktop environment - they all rip off ideas like "windows", "progress bars", etc. and reimplement them in their own way. Would you prefer it if we only had one desktop environment, protected by patents?
Pure software is meant to be covered by copyright, so that if you want to copy my idea, you have to do all the coding yourself (unless I use a Free license), meaning that essentially you do the same amount of work as me. This is ample IP protection for people who want to make money from software, as the past 40 odd years have shown.
Patents should only apply when the software is applied in inventions that use the natural sciences, not theoretical ones, e.g. in embedded software for a GPS system, but not in generic software like a progress bar, one-click shopping, etc.
It raises awareness amongst geeks, who might not know very much about the subject, let alone that the lobbying and campaigning is reaching a critical point now that the directive is going into Parliament for its first reading very soon.
Doing anything, even if it only reaches a small audience, is better than nothing. We don't have any contacts who will shut down big sites like MSNBC or CNN, so we will have to make do with the sites we can shut down, which, we hope, will still generate more interest amongst those most likely to be affected by the directive.
The campaign is not limited to this web site protest; it is one of many tactics we are using, to some success, to change the EU's mind.
/. story is doing) which is a very good thing at this critical time
* On wednesday, there was a real demonstration outside the European Parliament in Brussels. This helped raise the profile of our cause in Brussels, and particularly amongst MEPs who will all have hopefully noticed or heard/read about it.
* There has been an on-going petition with over 16,000 small businesses and many more individuals signing it, giving weight to our claims and putting pressure on MEPs
* There has been an on-going lobbying process, intensified this week, writing to, phoning and talking face-to-face with MEPs, trying to convince them of our arguments. I was in the European Parliament lobbying yesterday, and many hackers have been in the building talking to MEPs for some time now. As of yesterday, it looks like we're suceeding in widening splits in the PPE-DE conservative alliance and the PSE socialist alliance, and we've already won over the greens, the far-left socialists and the far-right liberals.
* Many web sites have displayed little images or text links to get more petition signatures and raise the profile of the campaign
* Finally, this web protest is aimed at pushing the profile of the campaign even higher, getting many more geeks involved, and hopefully others who come across web sites they visit often and see the protest page. Doubtless few MEPs will see this, but it is raising the profile (as this
What message is this supposed to send? Why would the EU change its mind because a few sites decided to protest? How does the absence of a few sites hurt the EU? More likely, they'll only hurt themselves.
/. story is doing) which is a very good thing at this critical time
As somebody who has shut down a GNU/Linux web site he runs, and who was lobbying inside the European Parliament yesterday, let me explain.
This web protest is one part of the picture:
* On wednesday, there was a real demonstration outside the European Parliament in Brussels. This helped raise the profile of our cause in Brussels, and particularly amongst MEPs who will all have hopefully noticed or heard/read about it.
* There has been an on-going petition with over 16,000 small businesses and many more individuals signing it, giving weight to our claims and putting pressure on MEPs
* There has been an on-going lobbying process, intensified this week, writing to, phoning and talking face-to-face with MEPs, trying to convince them of our arguments. As of yesterday, it looks like we're suceeding in widening splits in the PPE-DE conservative alliance and the PSE socialist alliance, and we've already won over the greens, the far-left socialists and the far-right liberals.
* Many web sites have displayed little images or text links to get more petition signatures and raise the profile of the campaign
* Finally, this web protest is aimed at pushing the profile of the campaign even higher, getting many more geeks involved, and hopefully others who come across web sites they visit often and see the protest page. Doubtless few MEPs will see this, but it is raising the profile (as this