[Fsfe-ie] IPRED2 draft 0.3

Ian Clarke ian at locut.us
Fri Aug 26 15:53:27 CEST 2005


Another suggestion:

On 26 Aug 2005, at 12:36, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> The USA has already enacted similar legislation.  Like the software
> patents issue, this provides valuable evidence about what a mistake it
> was.

Perhaps replace that with something like:

"As with the issue of Software Patents, the USA provides us with  
excellent evidence of the danger as similar legislation was enacted  
there a number of years ago."

>   In the USA, a not-profitable company called SCO has accused IBM

"not-profitable" could be confused with non-profit, implying that SCO  
is a charity.  Perhaps use "failing" instead.

> of violating their copyrights by mixing some SCO-owned software code
> into the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system.  SCO claims that
> all users of GNU/Linux have to pay licensing fees to SCO.

Replace last "SCO" with "them".

>
> This case has been going on for years and many distributors of
> GNU/Linux have be dragged into it.  The Free Software Foundation,
> which holds to the copyright to the largest part of GNU/Linux, and
> others have had their time wasted by broad subpoenas.  Software users
> have been scared away from switching to GNU/Linux because of perceived
> uncertainty of it's legal status.
>
> Despite SCO's numerous published claims, and all it's many appearances
> in court, they have yet to have even a single claim proven.  Not only
> this, but it has recently come to light[2] that in 2002, when SCO
> conducted a study to search for SCO-owned code in the kernel of
> GNU/Linux, the researchers concluded that they "had found absolutely
> *nothing*. ie no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever".
>
> Also relevant is that this company which is damaging the reputation of
> GNU/Linux and businesses based on it is funded by Microsoft[3].
> (GNU/Linux is the #1 competitor to Microsoft's Windows operating
> system.)  A memo, whose authenticity has been confirmed by SCO[4],
> shows that Microsoft have given SCO more than $100 million in funding.
>
> Trying to prevent organised crime is a good goal, but the Commission's
> draft text will have the opposite effect: it will prevent legitimate
> commerce in the EU and it will provide business incentives to abuse of
> the law for market-place gain.

Here is an alternate suggestion for the conclusion:

"Trying to prevent organised crime is a laudable goal, but the  
Commission's draft text is unlikely to have this effect, and creates  
the serious risk of abuse by companies like SCO to harass legitimate  
business for their own benefit".

Ian.



More information about the FSFE-IE mailing list