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Flash: EU Software Patent Legislation:


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Guest anon

Mandrakesoft would like to alert all users and the software community at

large about a recent clandestine attack by proprietary interest through

covert adoption of EU Software Patent Legislation.

 

In direct contravention of the recent vote by the European Parliament to

curtail Software Patents, the Irish Presidency of the European Union has

surreptitiously reinstated unlimited software patent language into the

text of a statement to be adopted by the European Council of Ministers

on Monday May, 17th, without further debate!

 

The new text, if adopted, will extend Software Patents to every piece of

software, including computer programs, data structures, and process

descriptions. This will directly harm most software firms and all Open

Source projects unable to pay patent licensing tribute, and amounts to

an appropriation of the public domain by proprietary interests. A

direct beneficiary will be a new class of pure patent companies without

any real business or contribution to employment, which will use the

threat of litigation to extort payments.

Of note is that a sponsor of the Irish Presidency is Microsoft,

currently building a large patent portfolio. If the Software Patent

text is adopted, Microsoft may use this patent portfolio against Linux

and other Open Source projects.

 

Mandrakesoft would like to forewarn and mobilize its users and the

software community about the very real threat of such a law. Please

contact the media, your political representatives, and your government,

and urge them to vote against unlimited Software Patents and to revert

to the previous European Parliament position.

 

For further information please see the following links:

http://swpat.ffii.org/journal/04/cons0507/...7/index.en.html

http://kwiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn

 

Mandrakesoft Online Team.

 

Admins note

This forum is just for announcements, I am sure many of you wish to discuss this news so please open a topic on this subject in the Everything Linux forum.

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