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An open letter from Alan Cox
[http://www.linux.org.uk/open.l.html] An Open Letter On Software Patents and EU Election -------------------------------------------------- Most of the time the ability to influence Politicians is remarkably limited. They ignore letters, and often all the major parties reflect only large proprietary interests, ensuring you get CDs that won't play in a car, arrested for helping the blind read protected ebooks and prevented from writing and using software by the patent lobby, intent on locking up technical creativity the same way the soviets locked up the typewriter. In about a week you get an opportunity to send the EU politicians a message they cannot ignore - but sadly only 18% of UK citizens will bother to do so. While most British people would like to ignore the EU, the simple fact is that it is the EU that passed the EUCD, it is the EU that can fight software patents and it is the EU that is currently working to create even more draconian "intellectual property rights" laws. This letter is aimed at the other 82% of hackers, open source enthusiasts, or just people who want the rights to use CD's they paid for fairly and honestly. That little piece of cardboard is your chance to call the EU to account, and thanks to the EU voting system you can make a difference, in fact you count five fold due to the expected low turnout. There are two parties that are fundmanetally opposed to things like Software Patents.The Green-EFA alliance (Green Party, Plaid Cymru and friends) have been fighting the patent fight from the beginning including organising events in Brussels, as well as fighting to make the EU more democratic (to stop unelected Beaurocrats overturning the will of the parliament). The UKIP (UK Independance Party) is opposed on the ground that EU legislation like software patents clogs up British business and harms Britain as a sovereign nation. Unlike our parliamentary elections the EU voting system means it is not a two horse race. To defeat software patents now needs an absolute majority in the parliament. That is going to be hard to achieve, but *you* get to adjust the make up of the parliament, and every vote is going to count. Please, if you were not going to vote, either vote for the UKIP or Green-EFA alliance members. Ideally pick the one of the two that is most likely to win in your area, but if you have philosophical reasons for favouring one of the two (such as a dislike of the EU) please go vote for the one you favour. These are the people who will have to decide how to fix the EUCD, these are the people who will have to decide on Software Patents. Whether you believe in the EU or not, the people you vote for (or the pro patent, pro DRM people who will get in by default if you do not vote) will dictate your future rights. The turnout in the UK is expected to be 18%. That favours anyone who can mobilize and get out and vote. It's a one off opportunity to kick the pro-patent lobby somewhere that hurts. Vote, get your friends and families to vote, get LUGs to vote en-masse. Call out the troops - it's payback time... Alan -- "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -- Gandhi (Log in to post comments)
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 6:54 UTC (Mon) by emlix (subscriber, #14784) [Link] Alan please just shut up. If you wan't to turn away totalitariannon-democratic tyranies away the way to do it certainly isn't to play by their rules.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 7:03 UTC (Mon) by sir_clive (guest, #21963) [Link] Pray tell, what *would* be a right way? Revolution? :-)
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 7:17 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Revolutions seldom work: most often you exchange one tyrant for another. Civil disobedience would be more like it; it worked for Gandhi. I don't know what it might mean in this circumstance, though. Massive public violation of software patents? :P
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 11:01 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " Massive public violation of software patents? "Isn't only in Linux/FOSS, but there are others more serious, i belive, proprietary applications and projects that have software patents inside, some of them well known ones, and there aren't any licences that agree to that use, besides the patent owners complaisence. IMHO, two ways exist to mitigate the problem: 1) The very hard one of stoping software patents, wich could only happen in europe (EU) now (JAPAN have them),... 2) Have a "ENDLESS" Writen Public License to all those patents that there are in Open Code, and that could be adden in context of a Open Standards with the full power of enforceability,... more or less like the IETF and WWW Consorcium but for Open Patents and with full power for enforceability and negociations,... tough job, but perhaps less hard than above, because many Big Corporations, owners of the majority of patents, are now participating, contributing and "taking advantage" of the quality that the Open-Source method has to offer against proprietary bullies... But tomorrow, if IBM for example, gets to be in a financial down, much certainly to happen because business proceed by cicles, it could decide, on a new Darl style management, to collect money from all patents that seem ok now in open source... much, much worst than SCO, because instead of dubious copyrights "we'll" have to deal with registered patents... 3) a full blown "underground" movement of civil desobidience for the continuing of ideas and work sharing... "I belive" no one really wants to "talk about" about an alternetive like this one (obvious!) because it will be almost inevitable!!..., if a patent war breaks loose, and a lot of Open Source projects and independent developers are presecuted and cuted off from normal distribution... Microsoft would not care about a underground movement, not only because their own home and SOHO market is already a huge "UNDERGROUND" for their own Windows and Office software products piracy(the base of their monopoly)... but because it will prevent a lot of distribution of Open Source to entreprises, where the real money is!!...
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 7:11 UTC (Mon) by dcoutts (subscriber, #5387) [Link] Huh?So you suggest we don't bother to vote and just sit there and complain that no-one listens to us? The EU parlament is a democratic institution, so voting does make a difference. It's true, that the parlament has to share power with the commission which is not directly elected but the parlament still has a significant role in developing and passing EU directives.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 9:13 UTC (Mon) by cdyson37 (guest, #12102) [Link] ...the parlament still has a significant role in developing and passing EU directives.What, you mean a bunch of people signing a book to get expenses and walking out of the building?
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 15:44 UTC (Mon) by steven97 (guest, #2702) [Link] <soapbox>There is very little democratic about the European Parliament. You can vote for your representatives, who then go sit there for five years with their hands tied because they have no rights whatsoever (not even the right to initiative). And when they finally try to do something, like blocking a very broken financial plan or modifying the patents plan, the European Committee or the Council of Ministers just ignore them or accept the stalemate so they can blame the parliament. I am not going to vote, a European Union like we have now is a farce. </soapbox>
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted Jun 1, 2004 4:59 UTC (Tue) by PhilHannent (guest, #1241) [Link] That is all the more reason to vote.If you don't like the political system then vote to change it voting for the independance party would help you get what you are looking for. Not voting will allow the stalemate to continue. If you are opposed to something then vote against it. People that are given a voice (a little one at that) and choose not to use it because they dont agree with the current system is crazy.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted Jun 2, 2004 10:18 UTC (Wed) by Adamskie (guest, #22004) [Link] Not one side is any better then the other.They both sux. When it comes to human rights.. they know nothing! Though they know how to make money for... THEMSELFS. They do have a hard job... But they still think of nothing but them selfs. Though i guess 90% of man think that way...
But what have you got to lose ? Posted Jun 2, 2004 1:15 UTC (Wed) by guybar (subscriber, #798) [Link] IIUC, your argument is: the EP is powerless, so there's no reason to vote. However, you ignore the probability that the EP will gain some political clout in the future.
mmm troll Posted May 31, 2004 7:16 UTC (Mon) by stuart (subscriber, #623) [Link] Move on, nothing to see here folks.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 7:46 UTC (Mon) by gavino (guest, #16214) [Link] sigh. LWN is usually relatively free of trolls and astroturfers. I hope the trolls can stay away for a bit longer!I agree with Alan's sentiments wholeheartedly.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 9:08 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link] Nice one, Alan. Thanks.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 13:55 UTC (Mon) by Soruk (subscriber, #2722) [Link] Seconded. Alan, you just saved me writing a few letters. I know who's getting my vote now.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 9:21 UTC (Mon) by gedeon (guest, #21965) [Link] What I'd like to know is which parties are opposed to software patents in my country. Is there a list somewhere with such information for each country? I personnally live in Belgium but a list for all EU countries would be quite usefull, I guess.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 9:46 UTC (Mon) by eludias (subscriber, #4058) [Link] - Call for Action II has some signers which might interest you:http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/demands/index.en.html (at "3. Signatories") - For Dutch readers: Please add resources for your own country to this thread!
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted May 31, 2004 9:52 UTC (Mon) by nicolas@jungers (subscriber, #7579) [Link] The www.ffii.org has lot of infos, but for the info you requested here are the results of the _last_ vote (in 2003).http://www.cgce.net/votes/ and for Belgium http://www.cgce.net/votes/country/BE.html regards,
Some candidate positions for Finland Posted Jun 2, 2004 1:40 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] What I'd like to know is which parties are opposed to software patents in my country.In Finland, see EFFI's "vaalikone" (an opinion matching application) at http://www.effi.org/julkaisut/muut/eu-vaalikone-2004.html (in Finnish). Includes positions from MEP candidates (unfortunately not all of them) on SW patents, copy protection legislation and privacy issues. In addition to yes/no positions, informal comments were also solicited form the candidates, although many did not give them. Based on these, some MEP candidates are obviously out of touch with the issue, eg. one clearly confused "software patents" with "software packages". Many others fortunately gave indications of knowing what this is about. The page helped at least me confirm my choice.
If you can't beat em, join em. Posted May 31, 2004 12:09 UTC (Mon) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] While I would prefer that software patents were illegal, in America their likely to stay legal for some time.My plan is to open my software for patenting by third parties. Anyone can patent my GPL software for a one time fee of $5000 and the cost of filing the patent. Of course, they would only be able to sue people who write or use proprietary software, but they could still make a lot of money off that.
If you can't beat em, join em. Posted May 31, 2004 22:07 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Patents don't work like that. If you invented it, you have to get the patent.An alternative is to build up a GPL patent pool: patent every interesting feature of your GPLed application, then license the patent for free use in GPLed applications, and then cross-license the patents with others in exchange for them adding their patents to the list of GPL-licensed patents. Some organization would need to be empowered to handle the cross-licensing; if enough patents could be obtained, the threat from outfits like Microsoft could be greatly reduced, as anyone producing software would need access to these patents to stay in business. They would need to deal. However, there would be no protection against lawyer-only shops that own patents; they wouldn't need to cross-license. I don't particularly like this strategy -- it's a huge problem for non-copylefted software. Perhaps anyone could be allowed to use a patent in the patent pool if full source is provided to all recipients and the recipients have all the rights the DFSG talks about. That, however, would have the effect of imposing copyleft on the non-copyleft world: you'd lose your patent license if you try to take the app proprietary. I'm afraid that the reason this scheme would be unlikely to work is that a sizable patent pool would have to be accumulated in a way that one organization could aggressively manage it. If it's decided to license patent X to Microsoft in exchange for patent Y, then some other free software project that needs patent Z instead will object.
If you can't beat em, join em. Posted Jun 1, 2004 1:15 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] > If you invented it, you have to get the patent.I don't think you're a lawyer, but you may be right. Perhaps, I could let the third-party get the patent in my name and then relicense it to them. > An alternative is to build up a GPL patent pool That's not a viable alternative because no one in the Free software community has any cash and most people aren't organized enough to use the patent pool effectively in any case. In my scenario, you would only patent things when you have a good chance of making money through licensing or law suits. It's funny to me... You would think that Microsoft would be opposed to software patents since they have lost millions of dollars because of bogus software patents. Instead of trying to fix the patent laws they are taking advantage of them to hurt the competition. I think that if enough people adopted my plan, Microsoft would realise that the patent laws were broken and lobby to have them fixed.
If you can't beat em, join em. Posted Jun 1, 2004 10:55 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] "...has any cash and most people aren't organized enough to use the patent pool effectively in any case."The commercial part of the community coul finance that,... and that include IBM, HP, SGI, Red Hat and more... of whom i think there could easly come more than enough money... ... and organisation wouldn't have to be that meticulous, because a patent pool its only a defensive mechanism.
If you can't beat em, join em. Posted Jun 1, 2004 10:35 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " However, there would be no protection against lawyer-only shops that own patents..."True, but you can agree that that could be much more easily "turned arround", or "overcomed" because those smaller "lawyer" shops, generaly only have a couple of patents, as could be easily understandable i belive, and even many of those could crap or with "prior-art",... but above all... "Lawyer only shops will never prosecute the typical Open source unware of patents, software developer, because there isn't any money on them... ...and a lawyer-only shop cost a fortune to maintain, and can only be feasible if there is a cash-cow of some sort that pour money in. Like in the Microsoft with SCO case.
hmmm... i would like a world without software patents also,... but the above argument its only a speculative scenario of possible drawbacks,... If an Open Body responsable for that pool achieves that leveling power, than Microsoft in view of the patents nature as to cross-license or lose the right to them... than software patents will cease to be a threat.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted Jun 1, 2004 5:36 UTC (Tue) by minichaz (subscriber, #630) [Link] I have been searching for a party for which I could vote in the European elections that clearly opposes software patents. I can not bring myself to vote for the UKIP party as I do not agree with them on many other issues. However, I would gladly vote for the green party if I could find somewhere where they clearly stated their policy regarding patents. Anyone know where this would be? I can't find anything about it on their website at all.Agree or disagree with Europe, anyone who doesn't vote at all is a fool. Nice letter Alan, thanks. Cheers,
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted Jun 1, 2004 7:52 UTC (Tue) by j_heald (guest, #15398) [Link] An official position adopted by the Green party MEP group in the European Parliament can be found at:http://www.greens-efa.org/en/documents/detail.php?id=63&lg=en Strictly speaking, the Green Party of England and Wales has never considered software patents at party conference, and is not bound by the position of the MEP group, so technically has no policy on the subject. This independence is very important in the minds of some candidates. In practice however, the elected Green/Plaid/SNP MEPs have been in the forefront of the campaign against software patents, and the Green party has put significant political resources behind it.
An open letter from Alan Cox Posted Jun 3, 2004 7:32 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] And in principle the UK Liberal Party also opposes software patents, but its MEPs voted consistently for them at the first reading: http://www.ffii.org/~bkaindl/votes/country/UK.html (red is 'bad' votes, green is 'good' votes from the FFII perspective, liberals is ELDR) It's not clear if this is due to being ill-informed/confused or something more dastardly. Certainly the greens are the safest vote (or UKIP if you realy can't stand the EU). I'll be asking mine (Liberal) in person tomorrow in Cambridge what the hell he thinks he's playing at (having writen sensible-sounding things to me before the vote then voted for unlimited patentability when it came to the crunch, against party policy. I'm deeply unimpressed. More details here: http://www.ffii.org.uk/uk_meps.html The important thing to remember for those who are anti-EU (and thus presumably pro-UK) is that the UK Govt is massively pro-swpat and has been driving this process from the beginning. It takes (so far) very little notice of lobbying from SMEs like myself. The EU has been a paragon of democracy in comparison.
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