[Fsfe-ie] June 11th voting RFC

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

I think it's time to produce a voting recommendation email for the MEP vote
on June 11th.  Some iluggers have already requested it, and I'm sure others
have too.

The polls predict that Patricia McKenna will just about lose her seat this
year and Nuala Ahern's replacement (Mary White) doesn't look like she'll get
a seat, these would be shames since McKenna and Ahern fully backed us on the
patents directive.

Ivana Bacik also seems to be on our side, but she also doesn't look like
she'll be getting a seat.  Eoin Dubsky is the same AFAIK.

...those are from the top of my head.  What other MEPs (incumbent or
candidates) have shown an interest in the non-patentability of software
ideas?

"Tier 1" candidates should be people like McKenna that have a track record
of rejecting software idea patents, "Tier 2" candidates would be people like
Bacik that have no record but sound about right or come from parties which
seem to have a software-non-patentability position.  "Please avoid" would be
candidates with an unrepented record of voting for software idea
patentability - or candidates from parties which seem to have
patent-inflation policies.

I've only just started on this, but I suspect I won't be able to do a good
job of voting recommendations for outside of Dublin - so can politically
savvy people or nondubs give a hand here?

Here's two webpages with tables of how the sitting MEPs voted in relation to
how FFII asked them to vote:
http://www.ffii.org.uk/votes/swpat/country/IE.html
http://beauprez.net/softpat/lobbybase/search.php


-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/
Irish Free Software Organisation: http://ifso.ie