FSFE-IE January 2006

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Patents are back on the agenda
by Paul O'Malley 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

Here they go again, http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/indprop/patent/consultation_en.htm Regards, Paul

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FSO Meeting: Tuesday 17th January, 2000h, Mahaffey's Pub
by Malcolm Tyrrell 16 Jan '06

16 Jan '06

This Tuesday is the third Tuesday of the month, so our regular IFSO meeting will happen in Mahaffey's Pub: http://www.ifso.ie/images/mahaffeys.png Topics are likely to include GPLv3 (which will also be discussed on this list) and the IFSO AGM. Good luck, Malcolm. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Photos NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 8p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

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Any businesses there got quotes for a GPLv3 PR? (+ notes on PR content)
by Ciaran O'Riordan 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

For a press release on Monday about the GPLv3, it would be good to have a quote or two from any Irish businesses who are using the GPL or a lot of GPL'd software. If any business owners/managers feel like saying something along these lines: "Our businsess is based on software that is mostly licensed under the GNU GPL. The GNU GPL makes a level playing field for businesses and we're looking forward to participating in the public process of reviewing it." or: "The GNU GPL is the cornerstone software license of businesses like ours which are based on Free Software. It ensures that we can commercialise our activities and build value on top of existing software and that we are free to innovate where our customers want. I don't expect any changes in the goal of the GNU GPL, but I look forward to the year-long review of possible improvements". Let us know. Most of the press release can be written before seeing a copy of the GPL: * The GPL is a license that guarantees freedom, a level playing field, equal access, no barriers to entry for development or distribution of the software * The GPL is by far the most widely used free software license * The GPL has to work across national and continental borders and has been held up in court * It is being updated so as to do the same thing it's always done, but the current legal and technical environment, which is different from 15 years ago, means a review is timely * We're very happy that this version can be written in a process which includes Irish stakeholders * The document being released is only a draft for public comment, it is not final and there will be a year-long consultation - the launch is for the consultation process and a draft, not for the actual license. We don't know at what time the draft will be available, but probably around evening time in Ireland. I've added some more to the gplv3 webpage: http://www.ifso.ie/projects/gplv3.html -- Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org ___________________________| http://ciaran.compsoc.com/fsfe-fellowship.html

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New fsfe-ni list, and Jan 19th meeting for GPLv3 discussion among other things
by Ciaran O'Riordan 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

There's now a free software mailing list for Northern Ireland: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-ni And there will be a meeting on January 19th in Belfast. The meeting is both the monthly meeting of the Belfast GNU/Linux users group, and a discussion on the first public draft of GPLv3 which will have been released three days earlier. I'll be coming to the meeting straight from the GPLv3 launch conference, so I can report on that. The time for the meeting has been set for 19h00. The location isn't finalised, but it will be somewhere central in Belfast, probably near to Queen's University Belfast. I'll send the info to fsfe-ni as soon as I have it, and probably here too. Other topics for the meeting are MythTV, and organising a free software event for March (probably the 16th). The mailing list was set up after a number of meetings and discussions in December where people noted that Northern Ireland was lacking a central point for inter-group communication. -- Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org ___________________________| http://ciaran.compsoc.com/fsfe-fellowship.html

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What info should go on a GPLv3 webpage for IFSO?
by Ciaran O'Riordan 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

I'm making a webpage for the GPLv3 on www.ifso.ie at: http://www.ifso.ie/projects/gplv3.html But before I start adding waffle to it, suggestions for what it should contain are welcome. In general, the goals are to: * minimize misinformed anger by providing facts clearly for joe soap from Ireland who finds the page by a search engine * inform press people who come to our site after we talk about the GPLv3 - I suppose they like bullet point lists and quotable things - what sort of lists? * channel people towards (correctly) using FSF's participation process -- Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org ___________________________| http://ciaran.compsoc.com/fsfe-fellowship.html

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U.S. Office Joins an Effort to Improve Software Patents, by John Markoff, NY Times, 10 Jan 2006
by Joseph Kiniry 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

Hi all, I thought this would be of interest to list readers. Has anyone tracked these proposed software projects? Joe --- Joseph Kiniry School of Computer Science and Informatics UCD Dublin http://secure.ucd.ie/ http://srg.cs.ucd.ie/ --- The New York Times January 10, 2006 U.S. Office Joins an Effort to Improve Software Patents By JOHN MARKOFF The United States Patent and Trademark Office plans to announce today that it will cooperate with open-source software developers on three initiatives that it says will improve the quality of software patents. The patent office has come under increasing pressure in recent years from critics who contend that it issues patents without adequate investigation of earlier inventions. As a result, conflicts over published patents have loosed an avalanche of intellectual property litigation. At a meeting last month with companies and organizations that support open-source software (software that can be distributed and modified freely), including I.B.M., Red Hat, Novell and some universities, officials of the patent office discussed how to give patent examiners access to better information and other ways to issue higher-quality patents. Two of the initiatives would rely on recently developed Internet technologies. An open patent review program would set up a system on the patent office Web site where visitors could submit search criteria and subscribe to electronic alerts about patent applications in specific areas. The third initiative is focused on the creation of a patent quality index that would serve as a tool for patent applicants to use in writing their applications. It is based on work done by R. Polk Wagner, an intellectual property expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "This is a great example of how the patent office can reach out to the community and how they can help us where we have difficulty getting prior art," said John J. Doll, the commissioner for patents. The patent office has held similar discussions with other technology industries including biotechnology, nanotechnology and semiconductors, he said. The open-source project, being led by I.B.M., aims to build an automated system for creating a series of categories to organize software written by open-source programmers. The system would then be made available to help patent examiners search for earlier examples in patent applications. Mr. Doll said that Google had participated in the discussions and it was possible that its search technology would be used in the project. Jim Stalling, vice president for intellectual property and standards at I.B.M., said, "We think that this initiative will lead to greater certainty in the patent system." He added that any improvement in the general quality of patents would lower the costs of defending patents, and that money could again be focused on financing research and development. One frequent critic of the patent system, Gregory Aharonian, publisher of The Internet Patent News Service, said it was unlikely that the new initiatives would have a significant impact, because the patent office was not able to deal efficiently with the information it already had. "If the patent office can't figure out how to use the resources they already have," he said, "what is the point?" Diane Peters, general counsel for the Open Source Development Laboratories, a corporate consortium backed by Linux supporters, said that if the initiatives were successful it might lead the patent office to issue fewer but higher-quality patents. Separately, the patent office plans to announce today that I.B.M. once again topped the list of private-sector patent recipients in 2005. The company received 2,941 patents last year, compared with 3,248 patents in 2004.

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"French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software"
by Malcolm Tyrrell 10 Jan '06

10 Jan '06

I just came accross this. I don't know if this is old news by now, but it looks pretty disturbing: http://www.fsffrance.org/news/article2005-11-25.en.html Malx. ___________________________________________________________ NEW Yahoo! Cars - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online! http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/

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GPLv3 - what should/could we plan?
by Ciaran O'Riordan 10 Jan '06

10 Jan '06

The first public draft of the GPLv3 will be published on January 16th along with an explanatory document about why each change was made. If anyone has ideas for people we should keep informed, or press we should inform, or noise we should make, or whatever, now's one of the finest times to mention them. Secondary stuff: I won't be able to make the Jan 17th IFSO meeting (apologies) as I will be at the GPLv3 launch conference on Jan 16th & 17th in Boston[0]. >From there, I'll be coming to Ireland on the morning of Thursday the 19th, but that evening I'll be heading to Belfast for their monthly GNU/Linux user group meeting. If there's anything I can do, or if people want to meet on Thursday daytime or Friday day/evening - I'm up for it. I'll be heading back to Brux some time on Friday the 20th. I'm not sure what sort of Internet connections or phone facilities will be available at the conference, but if there's a want, I could do my best to provided somewhat-live coverage there. [0] I originally declined since entering the USA means having to submit to being fingerprinted by the US government, and the Irish government will be required to send over a load of data about me (which the US government has shown it has no intention of keeping confidential). After a lot of thinking, I've decided the reasons in favour of going are more important. I'll keep my spending there to a minimum so that at least the US government won't financially benefit from FSF's bad choice of event host countries. -- Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org ___________________________| http://ciaran.compsoc.com/fsfe-fellowship.html

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AGM notice
by Glenn Strong 10 Jan '06

10 Jan '06

I have sent email to each IFSO member regarding the AGM. If you are a member and do not receive it please let me know. A more general public announcement will follow to this list when the date has been fixed. (so if you're not a member, but would like to attend anyway, stay tuned). Thanks. -- Glenn Strong

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IFSO Wiki updates
by IfsoWiki＠ifso.ie 07 Jan '06

07 Jan '06

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FSFE-IE January 2006