FSFE Newsletter

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms at 1407.org
Mon Jan 7 18:05:08 UTC 2008


On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 03:22:35PM +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> writes:
> > On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 12:40:18PM +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> >> Sure.  What project/initiative/activity do you think FSFE and FFII should
> >> coordinate on?
> >
> > The main issue, of course, software patents.
> 
> I was hoping for something a lot more specific.

It's impossible to be more specific, since the fact that there has been
little coordination has resulted in *no* critic about the result of the
case in terms of software patents from FSF Europe.

Even Samba (Jeremy) is now using a foundation (made up by SFLC) on the US
to get to the documents in an NDA fashion. NDA development is bad enough
on hardware drivers. On formats and protocols it is a poison pill.

The EU is happy-happy joy-joy[1] about the whole charade where it
has granted Microsoft the right to demand royalties for it's software
patents to Free Software users.

Even if it's a one-time payment royalty, it's a royalty on software
patents which implies respecting them.

If this view from the result is incorrect, please tell me how it is so,
for this comes straight from Kroes's statements and Microsoft's
agreements.

Rui

[1] yes, appropriate Ren & Stimpy obscure reference

-- 
P'tang!
Today is Boomtime, the 7th day of Chaos in the YOLD 3174
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?



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