Newsgroup: it.fan.culo
Titolo: Software patents threat (in Europe and not only)

June 16 2005
To : a mailing list
Reply to :
Subj. : Software patents threat (in Europe and not only)
If this is a NG, please tolerate the possible OT and off language, I
think you
will agree that we all are facing a bad threat to software freedom :-)
Dear friends (and : colleagues bosses students teachers etc) ,
after the USA , also the European Union is now risking to destroy
consumer
freedom, software companies, fair industrial competition, jobs and
creativity in
the area of the Information Technology.
Plenty of patents issued by lazy examiners in the "European Patent
Office" may
be turned on next July 6 2005 by the European Parliament. You may feel
concerned
also if you don't live in Europe because of the risks of bad politic
and
economic inspiration. The future main activity of thousands of software
houses
risks to move to a battlefield of legal madness where success or death
of
companies may be determined by commercial (rather than technical)
reasons.
List of contents
  -- THE THREAT
  -- WHAT YOU CAN DO
			 ~ ~ ~ ~   THE THREAT   ~ ~ ~ ~
As of June 15 2005, at 
http://petition.eurolinux.org/reference/pto.html
you can
find interesting material , e.g. :
    There is currently no economic incentive for the European Patent
Office to
    reject more patents because rejecting a patent costs a lot of money
while
    granting it creates revenue. There is even less incentives for
patent examiners
    to reject patents since most patents are filed by companies which
may actually
    become their next employer.
    "Patent Nonsense", The Economist, April 8, 2000. This article
includes
    evidences on the fact that patent examiners tend to be paid to
grant patents
    rather than to reject them which tends to generate a lot of abusive
patents.
Richard Stallman, one of the originators of any installed GNU/Linux
system, at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1971 to 1983, received in
1998 the
Electronic Frontier Foundation's pioneer award along with Linus
Torvalds (the
creator of Linux), and is one of the leaders of the opposition to
indiscriminate
proliferation of software patents. Here is an excerpt from
http://www.interlex.it/copyright/stallman.htm
 (as of June 15 2005) :
    [...]
    Software developers and users in Europe face the danger if the EU
allows
    software techniques to be patented: danger of being sued for the
ideas
    included in the software they develope or use.
    Unlike a copyright, which covers the details of an entire program
but not
    the ideas, a software patent is a state-imposed monopoly on use of
a general
    technique. A complex program combines thousands of such techniques.
In a
    country that allows each of these techniques to be patented, a
complex
    program can infringe hundreds of patents at once. (Linux, the
kernel used
    with the GNU operating system, infringes 283 different US patents
according
    to a study made last year.)
    What are these techniques like? Consider the "progress bar", which
fills up
    gradually from 0% to 100% to show a program's progress in doing a
certain
    task. This technique is a small part of thousands of programs that
do many
    different jobs. It is also patented, according to the European
Patent
    Office--one of the 50,000 software patents that it has illegally
issued,
    defying the treaty that created it. If the European Union Directive
gives
    legal validity to these patents, the developers and the users of
those
    thousands of programs could all face threats of lawsuits.
    A program is like a novel: a large collection of details that
together
    implement many ideas. Imagine if each literary idea could be
patented--for
    instance, "A love scene with the woman on a balcony" or "a person's
blue
    eyes resemble the sea". Anyone writing a novel would then infringe
dozens or
    hundreds of patents; writing a novel you won't get sued for would
be harder
    than writing a good novel. This is not the way to promote
writing--not
    novels, and not software.
    [...]
                                               Richard Stallman
		      ~ ~ ~ ~   WHAT YOU CAN DO   ~ ~ ~ ~
0. Very important (but please *Only If* today is before July 7 2005 ! )
:
    Please email or forward the present message (possibly as a Bcc ,
and without
    '>' quoting) to your friends, teachers, students, colleagues ... ;
in
    particular people who work in a software company with less than
50.000
    employees may be concerned about the software patents.
    While you are there you may also strip any commercial advertisement
    automatically added to this email by the internet providers, and
fill the
    'Reply to : ' field above.
1.  Please sign the petition at
 
http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en
     even if you don't live in Europe (BTW - australians and asian
people not in
     the pacific area: apparently this page hasn't been informed about
your
     existence, quite embarrassing ! ;-)
2. If you maintain web pages on behalf of your software company (or if
you have
   a personal web page or blog), please consider to put there a pointer
to the
   following protest page, e.g.
	    <HR>
	    <P ALIGN=CENTER>
	    <a href="
http://noepatents.eu.org
">
	    <img src="swpatbanner.en.png" width="680" height=60"
	    alt="STOP Software Patents!" /></a>
	    </P>
	    <HR>
   , where the banner swpatbanner.en.png can be downloaded from
 
http://patinfo.ffii.org/material/webdemo-2005
   Please after that register the webpage at
 
http://wiki.noepatents.eu.org/webdemo/list.php
3. If you live in the EU, you can write paper letters, faxes or make
phone calls
   to your representatives in the European Parliament :
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ipid=0&ilg=EN&iorig=home&imsg=
   and ask them to follow the FFII voting recommendations at
 
http://europarl.ffii.org/amendments.en.html
4.  (particularly if you represent a company) please look at
 
http://noepatents.eu.org/index.php/NO_Software_Patents
   for further ideas on how to protest against software patents.

 reasons.
E, naturalmente, anche in questo caso la Margherita ha pensato bene di
saltare in anticipo sul carro dei  molto  probabili, ahinoi, vincitori
e di giustificarsi sparando cazzate:
        Personalmente ritengo che il primo vantaggio competitivo
        [della legalizzazione dei  brevetti sul software]  starà
        nell'accelerazione  della  regolamentazione  legislativa
        dell'open source che ancora si basa quasi esclusivamente
        su  GNU GPL,  ovvero su uno standard  non riconosciuto e
        ampiamente   perfettibile. [Paolo  Zocchi,  coordinatore
        dell'Osservatorio Nazionale ICT della Margherita]
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=53465&r=PI

chissa' in quale senso la GPL rischia di essere 'perfezionata' ...