[Fsfe-ie] IFSO Meeting: Tuesday 18th July 2000h, Mahaffey's Pub

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

Malcolm Tyrrell <malcoh0l at yahoo.ie> writes:
> The forthcoming Tuesday is the third of the month, so there will be an IFSO meeting
> in Mahaffey's pub.

Two things to have on the agenda:

* An Irish free software business network (or Ireland and UK)

 This has been discussed on some lists and by phone, but it's a big topic so
 a few discussions ended with "lets discuss this when we're all together in
 person".

 Something is stirring, so we should decide what sort of things we'd, who
 we'd be willing to give our time/advice to, what we will ignore, and is
 anything happening that creates a situation where we will have missed the
 boat if we do not make something useful happen now.

* The beginning of the 2nd software patents battle

 It looks like the battle is coming back.  Instead of changing what the law
 says about what is patentable and what is not, this time the threat is that
 a specialist, EU-wide court will be set up to deal with patent litigation.
 The two current proposals (the Community Patent and the European Patent
 Litigation Agreement) put the European Patent Office in command of this
 patent court.  So the people who have to follow the law (the
 administration) will hire and fire the judges that audit whether they are
 actually following the law.  Gobsmacking but true.  This has been kinda on
 the cards, but it's happening now, and the strategies we can choose from
 are appearing.


See yous there.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \  GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \   Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org