[Fsfe-ie] approaching the Innovation Taskforce

[maoltuile]

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>Today's Topics:
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>   1. Cowan's Innovation Taskforce and swpats (Ciaran
>O'Riordan)
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>-----------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:01:48 +0100
>From: Ciaran O'Riordan <ciaran at member.fsf.org>
>Subject: [Fsfe-ie] Cowan's Innovation Taskforce and swpats
>To: fsfe-ie at fsfeurope.org 
>Message-ID: <9lljmhifoj.fsf at vorcha.compsoc.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
>
>It's reasonable to guess that the innovation taskforce[0]
>that Brian Cowan has announced will form an opinion about
>patents and IT/computers/software.
>
>[0]
>http://www.ireland.com/home/Taoiseach_establishes_innovation_taskforce/maxi/fast/news/irnews/233165
>
>Does anyone have ideas on who to contact or how to approach
>this?
>
>Being optimistic, there's a possibility that they'll
>conclude that software patents are anti-innovation, like
>the UK government's independent study did in 2005:
>http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Gowers_Review_of_Intellectual_Property
>
>But being a bit more cautious: the membership is mostly
>people decision makers in universities, and they're under
>huge pressure to be profitable this year.  So it's possible
>that royalties and appeasing MS+IBM might take preference
>over innovation, freedom, progress, etc.

Certain universities (admin side, not faculty) have a close
relationship with MS, so there's that. And Irish Government
ministers (the most unlikely people in the world to stick
their necks out on point of principle) are likely to value
jobs and taxes from MS.

My advice? Leave out any mention of ideology, instead go in
with case studies of easy wins for FLOSS adoption such as
Apache, Firefox, InkScape and Open Office. Get them used to
the GPL, and to free not necessarily meaning rubbish.