FSFE-IE June 2005

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23 participants
65 discussions

Pat Cox and Irish support for swpat
by Barry Mahon 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

On Tue, 07 Jun 2005 12:00:17 +0200, <fsfe-ie-request(a)fsfeurope.org> wrote: > > Are the two unconnected, or is there a reason that there seems to be > such hardline Irish support for all-out unlimited software patentability? Of course they are! M$ is a BIG supporter of the Irish Gov. line on this - may even have been the instigator of it, wasn't there a remark on here a while back on who sponsored the Irish EU presidency site? Bye, Barry

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UK copyrights to be extended to 100 years...
by David O'Callaghan 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

Hi All, Saw this on ILUG: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1641428,00.html "The [UK] government wants to extend copyright laws to ensure pop songs are protected for almost twice as long as the current 50 years. It sees the move as a way of generating more money for the record industry, which would use it to discover new talent." The article contains no criticism of this proposal. You can bet that the EU would be happy to "harmonise" this arrangement to other EU members and to other fields of creative activity. Regards, David

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Pro-patent lobby in sticky situation over ice-cream offer
by Teresa Hackett 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

From the A2K list. Teresa -------- Original Message -------- http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39202009,00.htm Pro-patent lobby in sticky situation over ice-cream offer Ingrid Marson ZDNet UK June 06, 2005, 16:50 BST The Campaign for Creativity has tried to tempt European politicians to its cause with free ice-creams, but may have angered an MEP by using his email account to send out the invitation without his knowledge A pro-patent group's plan to attract the attention of European Parliament members with free ice-cream may have landed it in hot water, after a campaign email was sent from an MEP's account without his permission. On Wednesday last week, every Member of the European Parliament and their assistants received an email from Malcolm Harbour, a Conservative MEP for the West Midlands, inviting them to an event held by pro-patent group Campaign for Creativity (C4C) in Brussels. The email, which was signed by Harbour's assistant, Tori Lapworth, encouraged MEPs to get a free ice-cream and show their support for the proposed software patent directive. "Dear Members and Assistants, Yes its true! If you go down to Place du Luxembourg from now until 3pm, you can collect your free ice-cream and support the computer implemented inventions [directive] common position! Hope to see you soon," stated the email, which was forwarded to ZDNet UK by two MEPs. Sources close to the situation told ZDNet UK that Harbour is 'really angry' that the lobbying email was sent from his account. Hugo Shanahan of the C4C was unwilling to comment on Harbour's reaction to the email, but admitted that Harbour was unaware of the email. "We were working with an assistant from Malcolm's office -- he wasn't in the loop and wasn't aware of the message being sent [from his email account]," said Shanahan. Harbour was unable to comment in time for this article. Simon Gentry, the director of the C4C, said the group decided to hold the event to put its point of view across in a less serious manner. "We knew the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) were having a meeting and we wanted to make sure the MEPs heard our side of the story as well," said Gentry. "It was just a bit of fun. We were getting people to come and have a chat about what patents are." He claimed that a "few hundred ice creams" were handed out, but said many of these were probably handed out to passerbys rather than MEPs. Laurence Vandewalle, an adviser for the European Green Party, said the C4C's latest campaign was weak and unoriginal. She claimed that the Green Party and anti-patent advocates have often done informal campaigns, including offering food at a demo two years ago. "I have the impression that the C4C campaign has done a deep analysis of everything that the Greens and the open source community have done, and copied them. The difference is that we do it genuinely, while they do it as a professional campaign without really believing in it, without 'faith'. It is just a business for them. Therefore they just stupidly try to copy us and the result is pathetic," said Vandewalle. The software patent directive is currently being amended by the legal affairs committee (JURI) of the European Parliament (EP). The amendments suggested by JURI will be voted on in a plenary session of the EP in July. For JURI's amendments to be agreed by the EP will require 366 MEPs to vote for the changes — this would represent the majority of the 731 MEPs and is irrespective of absences and abstentions. -- Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs Consumer Project on Technology in London 24, Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX,UK. Tel:+44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252. Mob:+44(0)790 386 4642. Fax: +44(0)207 354 0607 http://www.cptech.org Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA Tel.: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176 Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva 1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 791 6727 _______________________________________________ A2k mailing list A2k(a)lists.essential.org http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/a2k

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Bloodcurdlingly pro-swpat speech from Pat Cox, former MEP
by James Heald 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

For whatever reason, the Irish representatives have been taking far and away the most uncompromising line in Council of Ministers' working group of "patent experts". Even more than Germany and Hungary, they are blocking any change, not even prepared to consider even eg RAND licensing for interoperability, never mind patent exemptions. Also notable is this extraordinarily pro-swpat speech by Pat Cox, former MEP and EP president, which was possibly ghost-written by Microsoft front-organisation CompTIA: http://www.softwarechoice.org/download_files/eBusiness_Innovation_PatCoxSpe… Pat Cox at the European Innovation conference, 27 May 2005 Do European lawmakers seriously expect that (digital innovation) will continue apace in the EU if these innovations are to be deprived of economic remuneration? Is this really the moment to squander the fruits of Europe’s knowledge economy and human capital? Will we really invite others to dine on our European lunch free of charge only to pay dearly and later for takeaway dinners? What is being tested in this (CII Patent) decision is no less than a European declaration of intent on the role of IP in e-business and our economic model … source: European Conference on Innovation and eBusiness, speech by Former EP President Pat Cox, Brussels, 27 May 2005 (quotes selected by Hugo Lueders of CompTIA at the EPP-DE group hearing on swpat in the EU parl last week). Are the two unconnected, or is there a reason that there seems to be such hardline Irish support for all-out unlimited software patentability?

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IFSO Wiki updates
by IfsoWiki＠ifso.ie 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

* HashBang McWeeneyTue, 07 Jun 2005 07:00:02 -0000 = Our Next CD = - I've been playing with a considerable amount of "Live CDs";http://www.linux-live.org/ (for my own ulterior purposes) but if I hit on something I'm happy with, I'll make sure to share it with the group. The Page is "here";[wiki:/OurNextCD My thoughts on our next LiveCD] + I've been playing with a considerable amount of "Live CDs";http://www.linux-live.org/ (for my own ulterior purposes) but if I hit on something I'm happy with, I'll make sure to share it with the group. The Page is "here";[wiki:/OurNextCD My thoughts on our next LiveCD] and as Glen suggested, I've transferred over the previous content of this page. - I'm thinking of doing things in reverse, in that instead of stripping down something big, it would be easier to build up something small. + Short version: I'm thinking of doing things in reverse, in that instead of stripping down something big, it would be easier to build up something small. - The current distros I'm entertaining are: - Note: Both Slax and DSL come with scripts for creating your own ISO. - - "Damn Small Linux";http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ can add our customisations to it if we want. - - "Slax";http://slax.linux-live.org/ (Has UnionFS so we can add our own customs (Gnome, Gnome, Gnome!!!!) as well, possibly CramFSs). I'm trying to see how well "Free Rock Gnome";http://gsb.sourceforge.net/ sits on it, although at the moment, it's missing libhowl needed for Beagle. Woops --update (May 24th)... libhowl isn't missing, you just need to go to the dependencies directory and install everything there first, '''BEFORE''' running the install script -Mel - - "ATMission";http://www.atconsultancy.nl/atmission/ is another knoppix, but I'm not sure how tried and tested the "CowLoop" setup is. Additionally, there was mention of whether or not it contained only free software (in our sense). Just read the FAQ and being knoppix based, I expect it has some non-free software, but that would be removed. - - "Ubuntu";http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ AFAIK will be doing a "LiveCD";http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/ubuntu-releases/5.04/ as well and that would make a superb starting point, AND it's available for different archs. The "Beatrix";http://www.watsky.net/ live CD is based on Ubuntu and geared for business. - - My own thoughts on our next LiveCD, is that the base of it should be small enough to fit on a mini (so we're talking 210mb). To this we add either devtools for students or usertoys for home users, again either of these options should fit on another 210mb. If we had a third 210mb disk, we could put our audio, PC and Mac software etc. on that. ... URL: http://www.ifso.ie/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi/McWeeney?action=diff

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Software Freedom Day 2005 Update
by Henrik Nilsen Omma 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

Hello, Just sending out an update to our existing teams about what's cooking at SFD. As you can see, we have a new website and wiki up and running and are starting to gather new teams (I sent out an invitation to LUGs around the world this morning). We are now starting to ramp up the activity for 2005 and hope to double the activity level from last year. To help us along we have a generous primary sponsor who will provide up to 15.000 professionally pressed CDs for world-wide distribution! The ISO image is expected in a month's time, which will this year be a single combined CD of Ubuntu Linux Live and TheOpenCD (both in slightly compacted versions). So we hope you'll join us again this year and help the new teams along! - Henrik -------- Announcement sent out today: Hello, Mark September 10th 2005 on your calendar! It is the second annual Software Freedom Day. We will be staging a range of events around the world to raise public awareness of Free and Open Source Software. This is a global grassroots effort, and we invite the Free and Open Source Software community around the world to join in the celebration and help spread the word! Over 70 teams joined the celebration in 2004, organising a range of events at schools, universities and public places. This year, we have every opportunity to grow and make an even greater impact on community awareness. What will happen? ----------------- You may celebrate the day locally however you would like, but we encourage you to engage in some sort of outreach activity to spread the FOSS message in your community. For example, you could organise a seminar or an installfest or simply invite people to meet up in the park for a picnic. If you want to participate, please stop by the SFD website [1] and register a team so that others in your area can find you and hook up. Our website and wiki have pictures and reports from some of the SFD2004 events, so you can get an idea of what worked well. If you participated last year, please join us again, and please share your experiences with the new teams. How does it work? ----------------- As last year, we will prepare special promotional materials for distribution by the SFD teams. In 2004 this included ISO images of a custom version of TheOpenCD and a custom version of Knoppix along with some printed materials. Due to our budget constraints we were only able to produce CD covers while the local teams did a great job of burning their own CDs and copying materials. This year we will create a single CD containing both a Live Linux image and some Windows-FOSS for this purpose. We have funding from our primary sponsor for up to 15.000 of our custom CDs shipped out to 150 teams world-wide! We In addition, other supplies (such as t-shirts and balloons) will be available, but the quantities and distribution process of these items is not yet determined (depends in part on the availability of additional funding). By June 15th we will provide a simple supply request form where established teams can request CDs and possibly other materials for SFD. Be sure to get in your application for supplies before the July 1st deadline so we can get the supplies produced and distributed in time for the event. What can I do? -------------- The best way to participate is to start forming a SFD team and start planning local celebrations. Make sure you register as an official team [1] so you can apply for sponsorship of materials. We also need help with lots of things on the global level: Writing: We would appreciate well-written articles about SFD or about FOSS in general that can be submitted to local media or distributed on the day. Form letters that can be sent to schools, businesses government organisation, etc. will also be useful. Material Design: We have some artwork already, but we need designs for the SFD 2005 CD labels and covers, as well as T-shirts, balloons, stickers, or even temporary tattoos! If you or your friends have some artistic inclinations feel free to pop into the SFD Forums to share your ideas and your work. Donations: SFD funds cover the costs of material and logistics support that we provide. The more funds we have available, the more material and logistical support we can provide for teams world-wide. So don't feels shy about donating :) Any surplus funds can be used for advertising in the week before the event. Donations can be made online at the SFD website. Getting in touch ------------------ Please stop by our forum or join #sfd on freenode IRC. We have set up a temporary mailing list here [2] where people can hook up, but we will provide more regional lists as the needs arise. Best wishes and happy Software Freedom Day 2005! - The SFD Team [1] http://softwarefreedomday.org/ [2] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/theopencd-sfd2005

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IFSO Wiki updates
by IfsoWiki＠ifso.ie 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

* HashBang McWeeneyMon, 06 Jun 2005 07:00:02 -0000 = Our Next CD = - I've been playing with a considerable amount of "Live CDs";http://www.linux-live.org/ (for my own ulterior purposes) but if I hit on something I'm happy with, I'll make sure to share it with the group. + I've been playing with a considerable amount of "Live CDs";http://www.linux-live.org/ (for my own ulterior purposes) but if I hit on something I'm happy with, I'll make sure to share it with the group. The Page is "here";[wiki:/OurNextCD My thoughts on our next LiveCD] I'm thinking of doing things in reverse, in that instead of stripping down something big, it would be easier to build up something small. URL: http://www.ifso.ie/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi/McWeeney?action=diff * HashBang McWeeney/OurNextCDMon, 06 Jun 2005 07:00:02 -0000 URL: http://www.ifso.ie/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi/McWeeney/OurNextCD?action=diff

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IFSO Wiki updates
by IfsoWiki＠ifso.ie 04 Jun '05

04 Jun '05

* MalcolmTyrrell IfsoBookmarksSat, 04 Jun 2005 07:00:02 -0000 * [http://www.fsf.org] - The Free Software Foundation * [http://www.fsfeurope.org] - The Free Software Foundation Europe * [http://www.ffii.org] - The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure + * [http://www.omslnet.org/] - The Global Organisation for Free Software Free Software in Business * 2005-04-18 [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/18/oss_gains_in_europe OSS gains business ground in Europe] @@ -46, +47 @@ Reports on the Use of Free Software: * [http://www.bridges.org/software_comparison/report.html An analysis of the use of FOSS in public computer labs in Africa] + News articles on the Use of Free Software: + * [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4602325.stm Linux in Brazil] + URL: http://www.ifso.ie/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi/IfsoBookmarks?action=diff * DavidCathcart IfsoMeetingLocationWiFiSat, 04 Jun 2005 07:00:02 -0000 ||Mssrs Maguire 1-2 Burgh Quay Dublin 2||??|||| ||Ocean Bar Millennium Tower, Charlotte Quay Dock Dublin||??|||| ||Odessa Club 13 Dame Court Dublin 2||??|||| - ||Ron Blacks Dawson Street Dublin 2||Yes Free||3.6.05 17:55 Bought a drink ad they gave me a few free [http://www.bitbuzz.com bitbuzz] vouchers, upmarket and noisier than mehaffies (music playing)|| + ||Ron Blacks Dawson Street Dublin 2||Yes Free||3.6.05 17:55 Bought a drink and they gave me a few free [http://www.bitbuzz.com bitbuzz] vouchers, upmarket and noisier than mehaffies (music playing), lounge upstairs possibly quieter|| ||Searsons Upper Baggot Street Dublin 4||??|||| ||Sin E 14 Ormond Quay Dublin 1||??|||| ||The Bailey Duke Street||??|||| URL: http://www.ifso.ie/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi/IfsoMeetingLocationWiFi?action=diff

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Re: [Fsfe-ie] 2005-06-20 or 06-06? JURI vote
by Malcolm Tyrrell 03 Jun '05

03 Jun '05

Adam Moran <adam(a)webarchitects.co.uk> wrote: > I have a chance of meeting Diana Wallis MEP ( along with other SMEs ); > she sits on the JURI. > > I've just checked the FFII site [1] and have noticed that the JURI are > to vote later this month, but wonder what this vote is about ? > I think you intended to include a link, probably this one: http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatFuturEn which mentions a JURI vote on either the 6th or the 20th(!?). A complete guess, but perhaps they'll vote on whether to support Rocard's amendments. Malcohol. _________________________________________________________________ eircom broadband is now up to four times faster than before. Phone 1850 73 00 73 or visit http://home.eircom.net/broadbandoffer

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Brazil and Free Software
by Malcolm Tyrrell 03 Jun '05

03 Jun '05

A colleage told me that the BBC World Service had a radio program dealing with Brazil's adoption of Free Software this morning. Here is the corresponding article (I guess): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4602325.stm Interesting reference to the "Global Organisation for Free Software". I hadn't heard of it: http://www.omslnet.org/ "The aim of the new organisation is to encourage greater cooperation and the sharing of ideas among governments, businesses and individuals within the developing world." Good luck, Malcohol. _________________________________________________________________ eircom broadband is now up to four times faster than before. Phone 1850 73 00 73 or visit http://home.eircom.net/broadbandoffer

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FSFE-IE June 2005