How to promote free software

[Xavi Drudis Ferran]

El Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 12:09:16PM +0100, Wim De Smet deia:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, 01 Dec 2002 04:17:21 -0500
> Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > The best thing you can do for free software in Europe now at the
> > political level is to fight against software patents as hard as you
> > possibly can.  If we win that fight, free software should have a good
> > future in Europe.  If we lose, we will face difficulties everywhere.
> 

I agree. There are other important issues, blatant restrictions of freedom 
or opportunities for FS progress, but none so basic and important, make it
or break it, as swpats. 

> I think we definitely got a message out at the european parliament recently. Although I do feel that most parties will be moving to harmonize with the US markets, no matter what we tell them. Off course we must try to stop swpatents in europe, and at a governmental level we can still slow down implementation if the directive _does_ pass. Great speech there on tuesday btw, I much enjoyed listening to it. :-)
> 

I'm still reading speeches at 
http://www.greens-efa.org/en/issues/?id=14

(and haven't read Stallman's yet)

But I'd wellcome more accounts of the event (how many people, reactions, questions, etc.)
or summaries, such as the one we did for the previous hearing 

http://patents.caliu.info/audiencia.en.html

Getting our message out is not enough, we must ensure MEPs know people care, and 
promote good ammendments such as those at 

http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/prop/

Now that the message is out, proswpat people also know they need to lobby harder
and pretend they represent the European businesses. So it is important for European 
businesses (both software developers and users) to take position against swpats, 
the same goes for university departments, research centres, human rights groups
(swpat are basically a privatisation of censorship legislation with (IIRC) public 
criminal law enforcing), consumer rights groups, etc. 

One way for them to support us is signing our call for action 
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/demands/


-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org