Hi All,
On Ciaran's suggestion I have signed up to this mailing list, and I just wanted to introduce myself. I have noticed that you guys seem to be one of the most coherent faces of the anti-patent movement.
I am the founder and coordinator of the Freenet Project, a reasonably well known free software project that has been around since 1999. I am also the CEO of a US-based software company, and am involved in a variety of other commercial projects. I am a native of Navan, Co. Meath, although I have been living in California for the past few years. I plan to move to Edinburgh, Scotland in early October.
The issue of software patents in the EU has been of great concern to me, not just as a free software developer, but as a software developer in general (I also develop non-free software). One of my reasons for leaving the US is the insane patent system here as it relates to software, clearly I don't want the EU to fall into the same trap. Back in June I contacted Avril Doyle, MEP for Leinster, to alert her to this issue - and it is my understanding that she has been supportive of the anti-patent movement since then.
Anyhoo, I just wanted to introduce myself and will try to follow developments and help in any way that I can.
Kind regards,
Ian.
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Ian,
I am the founder and coordinator of the Freenet Project, a reasonably well known free software project that has been around since 1999.
I heard (on irc) recently that you had to move from the U.S. because of legal problems to do with having developed freenet. Is this true?
B.T.W. I admire your work on freenet. One of the most positive things I've seen happen with it lately is that GNU Arch has a backend that allows publication onto freenet. This will allow for distributed development of software that may be questionable in certain countries but is reasonable from a consumer point of view eg: DeCSS. - -- Thanks, Aidan Delaney - -- If anyone has both the right and the need to study the code and be assured of its correct functioning, it is users. -- Whitfield Diffie Checksums of bad data tell you only: "yup, that's exactly the same bad data the other guy has" -- Tom Lord
gpg key: http://minds.cs.may.ie/~balor/public_key.asc
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 09:27:58AM +0100, Aidan Delaney wrote:
Ian,
I am the founder and coordinator of the Freenet Project, a reasonably well known free software project that has been around since 1999.
I heard (on irc) recently that you had to move from the U.S. because of legal problems to do with having developed freenet. Is this true?
Kinda, but not quite, I just discussed it in an interview here: http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article.pl?sid=03/09/02/0125236
B.T.W. I admire your work on freenet. One of the most positive things I've seen happen with it lately is that GNU Arch has a backend that allows publication onto freenet. This will allow for distributed development of software that may be questionable in certain countries but is reasonable from a consumer point of view eg: DeCSS.
Yes, that is interesting although I am not yet sure that Freenet's data retention will be good enough for this, but we shall see.
Ian.
Wed/2000h/BenShaws is perfect for me.
The BenShaws map is still at: http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/images/benshaws.png
I'm suffering bad mail lag, it might be the fsf.org machine so if anyone needs to contact me, try 'coriordan at compsoc dot com'. I'll keep an eye on the fsfe-ie archives too.
Things I'd like to bring up, (in semi-order of importance):
* Telling our MEPs that we support the Castro/Crowley amendment I'd like to contact as many MEPs as possible. Is posting another letter overkill? should we dig out email and fax details instead? A joint letter?
* Analysing what we did wrong with the last letter? general critissims. (When I was asking people for ID details, I should have also asked if it was okay to reuse their info for subsequent letters of similar content on this one topic)
* Where's the EU overkill copyright directive at the moment? Isn't the committee vote coming up on Sept 11? Should we be working on this yet/soon/after-patents?
* Does anyone know what "The Community Patent" is? Some kinda upcoming EU thing...
* Anyone want a copy of "Free Software: Free Society, collected essays of Richard Stallman"? (I have a spare)
* Has anyone registered a .ie domain before?
* I got a mail today from a Belgiun that read our letter. He's offered to translate it into French and says he might be able to have it translated to Danish and Spanish too. I've told him it's too late for that letter, but we may want a future letter translated. (nice offer)
* Has anyone kept track of which MEPs are on our side?
Ciaran.
On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 09:15:46PM +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
- Where's the EU overkill copyright directive at the moment? Isn't the committee vote coming up on Sept 11? Should we be working on this yet/soon/after-patents?
I would say so -- but IMO, the patent issue is much more serious for software developers. The latter is a big issue for people who may have to perform reverse engineering while developing software; swpats affect all forms of software development.
AFAIK also, I recall hearing that the Irish copyright law since its amendment in 2000 is pretty much a DMCA-alike already.
My thoughts are to concentrate on patents for now and do the copyright thing after...
(PS: regarding getting a .ie, IMO it's not worth it. Stick with a .org, much easier to manage and cheaper too. ;)
--j.
On 2 Sep 2003 at 21:15, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
- Telling our MEPs that we support the Castro/Crowley amendment I'd like to contact as many MEPs as possible. Is posting another letter overkill? should we dig out email and fax details instead? A joint letter?
We must still always say each and every time that any patenting of the ideas behind software is a bad idea period. However if they really /must/ do this, then those amendments are good.
- Analysing what we did wrong with the last letter? general critissims. (When I was asking people for ID details, I should have also asked if it was okay to reuse their info for subsequent letters of similar content on this one topic)
I'd personally want to read each and every before permission.
- Where's the EU overkill copyright directive at the moment? Isn't the committee vote coming up on Sept 11? Should we be working on this yet/soon/after-patents?
Didn't that go through about two years ago? It removed the right to reverse engineer anything with a protection mechanism plus optionally made telling anyone about a weakness in a protection mechanism attract a three year prison stretch.
It also did several other really stupid things. That was another stupid law. Unfortunately we didn't have the numbers to stop that one despite it being worse than the DMCA in the US.
- Has anyone kept track of which MEPs are on our side?
AFAICS none of the Irish ones are rabidly pro-swpat. In the UK, I've had letters back from at least ten who spewed such industry bullshit that I sometimes wonder if they have any independent intelligence at all. My opinion of politicians which had been raised by the general Irish response has been lowered again :(
Cheers, Niall