[Fsfe-ie] Ms. Harney on Newstalk 106 tomorrow (Friday)

[teresahackett at eircom.net]

One final point, Eibhear, if it's going out as IFSO (and I think this would be good), suggest to write IFSO out in full, include strapline "To promote and defend Free Software in Ireland" and URL.

I'll find Newstalk 106 on my radio and will listen out tomorrow morning.

Cheers
Teresa

> 
> Plagerise, plagerise! Let no one else's work evade your eyes.
> 
> Indeed, I liked the reduced verbosity of Ian's wording. Here is another shot
> that incorporates it and some other suggestions.
> 
> Something tells me that the main focus of the slot will be on the referendum
> in June.
> 
> 
> Éibhear
> 
> == Draft 2
> Subject: Software patents stifle invention and place an undue burden on
> small and medium enterprises.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Perhaps you can bring the following up with the Tanaiste when you are
> speaking with her.
> 
> On Wednesday of this week, hundreds of software engineers and small business
> owners protested in Brussels against the introduction of Software Patents in
> the EU. In September the European Parliament made amendments and
> clarifications to a proposal to prevent it from legalizing software patents,
> yet the European Council's internal working party chose to discard these
> amendments.
> 
> Does the Irish Presidency recognise the risks to innovation and competition
> in the software industry that software patents create, and if so, why
> discard the European Parliaments efforts to address these risks?
> 
> Some points of information:
> 1. The view of the United States' Federal Trade Commission
> is "that software and Internet patents are impeding
> innovation" (FTC report, "To Promote Innovation: The
> Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy",
> http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/10/innovationrpt.pdf, page 165.
> See a summary at http://www.ffii.org.uk/ftc/ftc.html).
> 2. A policy of allowing software patents benefits the large
> companies who hold huge patent portfolios where they are
> 
> --    allowed. Ms. Harney's brief, as Minister for Enterprise,
> Trade and Employment is to encourage innovation and
> invention in Irish businesses.
> 3. Both the websites of the Progressive Democrats and Ms.
> Harney herself are built using populat community
> technologies known as "Apache", "PHP", "MySQL" and
> "FreeBSD". New development in these types of technologies
> would be virtually impossible in a regime of software patents.
> 4. A regime of software patents make it extremely difficult for
> small companies or contractors to implement web sites or
> other software applications for clients.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Éibhear
> Éibhear Ó hAnluain
> IFSO
> Ireland.