Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

[MJ Ray]

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:
> No one voted for the current Portuguese governement :0

Ah, but did the deputies in the government parties account for more than 50%
of the vote?  I'd rather see people voting for the representatives they
agree with and *then* a government is formed than the current thing here of
people voting for the group they think is most likely to form an acceptable
goverment.  This is wildly OT, of course.

>> At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are
>> AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR
>> don't like patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young
>> (expect a call for members Real Soon Now).  I don't think this counts as
>> "very publicly" yet. The more people who get involved with these two
>> groups, the sooner it will.
> 
> This is very important, but it's going to be harder to win in the UK
> where there are software patents already than over here.

Yes, we have some patents which may apply to software, but they are not
enforceable for software here, thanks to various rulings which clarified the
situation.  This is not guaranteed for the future and I think that exporting
that original lack of clarity is a very bad idea.