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FLOSS "Concept Booklet" WIKI!
by Aniruddha Shankar 20 May '04

20 May '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The FLOSS Concept Booklet Wiki is online at http://wikibooks.org/wiki/FLOSS_Concept_Booklet For those who are not exactly clear on what a wiki is, it's a collaborative Web site comprised of the collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to easily edit, delete or modify content that has been placed there. This method of working, apart from being a literal application of the collaborative opensource methodology will allow many many more people than would otherwise be possible to contribute. The more the people who read, comment and modify, the denser will be this resource base, so please, people, contribute! The original introduction to the FLOSS Concept Booklet that I had posted in my earlier mail is appended with the appropriate modifications: Hello. I work in a non-profit organisation (www.sarai.net) that is deeply involved in and committed to Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We're in the process of creating and publishing a Concept Booklet on Free/Libre/Open Source Software that will, hopefully, be accessible even to people with an extremely limited understanding of computers and absolutely no knowledge of open source/free/libre software. In collaboration with one such layperson, we created a set of questions on FLOSS and are in the process of generating the answers and the additional content for the concept booklet. We'd be thrilled if you people would contribute as many answers as you can to the questions that are outlined in the wiki. Of course, please feel free to comment on the existing questions and to make additions to them. All contributions will be gratefully acknowledged. The booklet will either be published under the Creative Commons/Share Alike License or the GNU Free Documentation License and distributed free or at a nominal cost. We will, of course, be providing a full version online, including print-quality PDFs. This call for contributions from the wider community interested in free/libre/open source software is an effort to extend the methodology used in creating free software into the arena of collaborative publishing. All contributions, no matter how small, trivial or they might seem, are extremely valuable to us. Please, do take the time to read the questions and contribute, if possible. I apologise to those who are subscribed to two or more of the lists to which this is posted for the crosspost. Please feel free to forward this email to people or entities that you feel might be helpful. cheers, - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFArFVNhJkrd6A3rSsRAlgZAKC4yee13L3tCTb/k3n/6XP+JbcRBgCgnK4o HgX6ZHf4OczksDK0DEaX8BY= =3fIN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Some news aand some threats
by Mahesh T. Pai 19 May '04

19 May '04

An update to the FSF site. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/subpoena.html And oh. That is a non-threat. So what are the real threats? See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040226003735733 -- "Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty"

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Re: [Fsf-friends] FLOSS concept booklet...
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 19 May '04

19 May '04

I have answered a few questions. But I guess the questions need a little bit of reordering and rephrasing. I am posting this to the fsf-friends list so that the experts can correct me. It would be better if this could be done on wiki. Vijay ---------- Intro / Concept: What is free software? Free software is software that gives the user the following four freedoms Freedom 0: Freedom to run the program. Freedom 1: Freedom to help yourself, by studying and modifying the program to your needs. Freedom 2: Freedom to help your neighbour, by distributing copies of the program. Freedom 3: Freedom to help build your community, by publishing a modified version of the program. Well tell me what's not "free" about other kinds of software? So "free" means that I don't have to spend any money then? With free software, it might not be possible to "sell" the software itself. But when you get free software, you might be paying for the distribution media. Or you might be paying for support bundled along with the software. Or you might be paying for printed manuals that come along with the software. So in some cases you might get the software for zero dollars, in some cases you might be paying a small amount, and in yet some cases you might be paying a lot! Whether the software is gratis or not is an unimportant side issue, what is important is whether you have the above said freedoms. Proprietary software could also be obtained gratis. For example Microsoft is giving schools gratis copies of Windows, that does not make Windows ethically legitimate. How is Free Software actually made? You mean, how do people raise funds to develop free software? Many people who write free software are volunteers, they probably have an unrelated day time job. These people spend their free time developing free software. Commercial organisations that benefit from free software distribution or that provide free software support also develop free software by investing portions of their profit. Example of such organsiations are Redhat and Mandrake. There are many non-profit organisations that raise funds to develop free software, through donations from free software users. The Free Software Foundation is one such organisation. Other examples are SPI, Gnome Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and the like. Some free software packages are developed by universities. The Festival text to speech engine, Octave - the Matlab clone are examples of software developed by universities. Many commercial organisations also contribute to the development of free software, because these organisations benefit from the existing free software code base. For example IBM maintains the port of the Linux kernel to the PowerPC, because it needs a OS for its processor. So how is this different from the production of other kinds of software? Well, freedom three has enabled a new development methodology, in which a lot of people can collabrate through the internet and can help make the software better. This has resulted in free software being superior in quality to other non-free software. So the term Free Software is a legal definition then? What do you mean by "Copyleft" ? What's wrong with copyright? How is this different? One way to make your software free would be put the program in the public domain. That way there would be no restrictions on the program and the users of the software would have the above four freedoms. But there is a problem with this approach. It enables uncooperative people to take free software make modifications in it and release it as non-free software. The new features might tempt some of the users to give up their freedom. And the free software developers would be forced to compete with improved versions of their own software! This is not mere speculation, this has happened with the X Window system and the BSD operating system, where less restrictive free software licenses were used. Copyleft is a way of using the copyright provisions to prevent people from parasitically using free software code in non-free programs. Copyleft ensures that the freedoms are passed along in every version of a free software program. The GNU General Public License is a realisation of the copyleft. What's wrong with copyright is a very different issue. You might want to read Stallman's essay on "Misinterpreting Copyright - A series of errors". But remember most of the free software programs are copyrighted. Is this Copyleft against the law? No. What does GNU GPL stand for? The GNU General Public License. If this software is free as you say then why do we need legislation to protect it? What is this supposed to mean... What other licenses exist to protect Free Software? There are many license that make a software free. But only some of them preserve the freedom aka copyleft. The non-copyleft license include MIT, BSD, ... The copyleft licenses include the GPL, LGPL, ... -- ______________________________________________ Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox. Powered by Outblaze

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Open Access Initiative
by V. Sasi Kumar 19 May '04

19 May '04

The scientific journal Nature presents some discussions on the Open Access paradigm: Nature Web Focus on "Access to the Literature" http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/ The Green and the Gold Roads to Open Access http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html (Harnad, Bordy, Vallieres, Carr, Hitchcock, Gingras, Oppenheim Stamerjohanns & Hilf) -- V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)hotpop.com>

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Software Patents and India
by rajeev joseph sebastian 19 May '04

19 May '04

Dear friends, I support Pai's call for discussions on patent issues at local groups. I also urge the leadership of the FSF and also the lovers of free software, and freedom in general to rise-up against these series of events. I frankly think that its only awareness that will solve the issue - "they" can't buy them all. Rajeev J Sebastian __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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Debian Weekly News - May 18th, 2004 (fwd)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 19 May '04

19 May '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/20/ Debian Weekly News - May 18th, 2004 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. In an [1]interview Miguel de Icaza [2]said that Debian's community commitment is fantastic, but it is a very hard platform to support for an independent software vendor. Philip Charles also [3]announced new K6 mini [4]iso [5]images. 1. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989 2. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989&page=2 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2004/05/msg00034.html 4. http://na.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/ 5. http://eu.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/ Two Debian Developers died. Debian [6]mourns the loss of two project members. Manuel Estrada Sainz (ranty) and Andrés García (ErConde) were killed in a tragic car accident while returning from the [7]Free Software conference held in Valencia, Spain. The Debian Project honors their good work and strong dedication to Debian and Free Software. The contributions of both Manuel and Andrés will not be forgotten, and other developers will continue their work. 6. http://www.debian.org/News/20040515 7. http://www.lliurex.net/congres/cas/ Status of Java to main Effort. Arnaud Vandyck [8]reported on the progress of moving packages that use Java but can be run without the aid of non-free software from contrib to main. A number of packages have been moved to main and new releases of [9]GNU Classpath, [10]SableVM, and [11]Kaffe promise further steps ahead. Two of the major issues currently being looked at are making [12]gjdoc a proper javadoc replacement and building [13]ant with Free Software only. People wanting to help can start by inspecting packages labeled as unknown on the [14]Java to main wiki. 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2004/05/msg00023.html 9. http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/classpath.html 10. http://www.sablevm.org/ 11. http://www.kaffe.org/ 12. http://packages.debian.org/gjdoc 13. http://packages.debian.org/ant 14. http://java.debian.net/index.php/MovingJavaToMain Debian powers Binoculars. The world's largest selection of [15]binoculars is powered by Debian GNU/Linux as Jon Thralow [16]reported. The site uses a technology they call dynamically generated HTML. The pages are regenerated every five minutes and pushed to the web server as static pages. This looks similar to the technique used for the Debian website itself with regeneration just more frequently. 15. http://www.binoculars.com/ 16. http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/12/157257 Status of GNOME 2.6 for unstable. Sebastien Bacher sent in another [17]status report covering GNOME 2.6 in Debian. The reason is to ask the release team for advice regarding the transition to unstable, given the [18]progress the packages have made in the last few weeks. The packages have been [19]tested by many users without any major issues reported. In response Anthony Towns [20]told him that many architectures are still missing and that GNOME is ready when everything has been uploaded to experimental and only the version number needs to be bumped up for unstable. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00064.html 18. http://pkg-gnome.alioth.debian.org/package-status.html 19. http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?GnomeTwoDotSixFAQ 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00071.html Should Sun use Debian GNU/Linux? David Edmondson [21]argued that Sun should base their GNU/Linux efforts on Debian. A key advantage of Debian is the breadth and depth of applications just an apt-get away. Glynn Foster [22]agreed with him and noted that for the most part Debian 'Just Works'. 21. http://www.dme.org/log/2004/05/14/linux-debian-bad-news 22. http://www.gnome.org/~gman/blog//15052004 Supporting more Features. Eric Dorland [23]wondered how Debian should handle requests to activate compile-time controlled features. He [24]asked to [25]enable deactivated features or split out packages with these features enabled, but the maintainers were concerned by feature-creep and having to maintain more packages than needed. Matthew Palmer [26]suggested to either create new binary packages, to add the features into the existing packages or to make it very easy for the user to rebuild the package to support the optional feature. 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00811.html 24. http://bugs.debian.org/222421 25. http://bugs.debian.org/231472 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00813.html Removing System Accounts. Stephen Gran [27]wondered how system accounts should be treated upon removal if they were created upon package installation. Wouter Verhelst [28]explained that it may be a good idea to leave the system user since arbitrary files could still be owned by it. 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01151.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01156.html Right of Publicity. Branden Robinson [29]explained why he is annoyed by no-advertising clauses in several licenses. In the United States, there are several legal [30]remedies available to people whose names or likenesses are misappropriated for advertising or promotional purposes. In order to prevent similar misuse no special clause is needed. Branden seeks information on how this is handled in other countries in order discourage no-advertising clauses more actively. 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00540.html 30. http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/publicity.html IBM Public License. Frank Lichtenheld [31]stomped over the [32]IBM Public License again and wondered if it is suited for Debian. [33]MJ Ray and [34]Walter Landry raised some concerns. However, this license is already used for [35]postfix as Steven Augart [36]pointed out. 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00597.html 32. http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/license10.html 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00600.html 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00603.html 35. http://packages.debian.org/postfix 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00617.html Sendmail Open Source License. Richard Nelson [37]reported that a new license for [38]sendmail is discussed and the authors are seeking feedback. In particular they want to know whether the new license is as acceptable as the sendmail 8 license. [39]Henning Makholm and [40]Nathanael Nerode asserted that a license is non-free if one is forced to go to San Francisco to defend ones innocence. 37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00598.html 38. http://packages.debian.org/sendmail 39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00636.html 40. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00742.html Concerned about new GPL Version. Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho is [41]concerned about the [42]Free Software Foundation (FSF) developing the next generation GNU [43]General Public License (GPL). One of the rumours about potential changes involve a requirement to post sources of GPL'd software that is used to power a website, which would probably fail the [44]Debian Free Software Guidelines. He also wondered whether differences about the GNU [45]Free Documentation License are symptoms of a deeper difference of opinion between Debian and FSF. 41. http://www.kaijanaho.info/antti-juhani/blog/en/debian/gpl-dfsg.html 42. http://www.fsf.org/ 43. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html 44. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 45. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [46]mah-jong -- Denial of service. * [47]heimdal -- Potential buffer overflow. 46. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-503 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-504 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [48]recently or contain important updates. 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [49]amavis-stats -- Virus statistics RRDtool frontend for Amavis. * [50]aspell-bn -- Bengali Wordlist for Aspell. * [51]bittornado -- Bittorrent client with enhanced GUI and curses mode. * [52]diogenes -- Web content management system. * [53]hspell-gui -- Graphical front-end for the hspell hebrew spell checker. * [54]kstreamripper -- KDE frontend for streamripper. * [55]lksctp-tools -- User-space access to Linux Kernel SCTP - command-line tools. * [56]mtink -- Status monitor and configuration tool for Epson inkjet printers. * [57]perlindex -- Index and query Perl manual pages. * [58]siproxd -- SIP proxy/redirect/registrar. * [59]tcng -- Linux traffic control language interpreter. 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/amavis-stats 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aspell-bn 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/bittornado 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/diogenes 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/hspell-gui 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/kstreamripper 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/lksctp-tools 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/mtink 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/perlindex 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/siproxd 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/tcng Debian Packages introduced last Week. Every day, a different Debian package is [60]featured from the testing distribution. If you know about an obscure package you think others should also know about, send it to [61]Andrew Sweger. Debian package a day introduced the following packages last week. 60. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/ 61. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=debaday * [62]binclock -- binary clock for console with color support. * [63]mywiki -- Personal wiki on GNUstep or Cocoa environment. * [64]srs -- Command-line Sender Rewriting Scheme client. * [65]telnet -- The telnet client. * [66]procmail -- Versatile e-mail processor. * [67]whitespace -- Programming language where only whitespace counts. * [68]regexplorer -- Visual regular expression explorer. 62. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13221.html 63. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13432.html 64. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13601.html 65. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13874.html 66. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14220.html 67. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14410.html 68. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14835.html Orphaned Packages. 2 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 159 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [69]WNPP pages for the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package. 69. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [70]imwheel -- Program to support the "wheel" on most new mice. ([71]Bug#249533) * [72]libmail-audit-perl -- Perl library for creating easy mail filters. ([73]Bug#248606) 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/imwheel 71. http://bugs.debian.org/249533 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/libmail-audit-perl 73. http://bugs.debian.org/248606 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [74]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [75]dwn(a)debian.org. 74. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 75. mailto:dwn@debian.org --

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FLOSS concept booklet...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 18 May '04

18 May '04

________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 18:46:45 +0530 From: Aniruddha Shankar <karim(a)sarai.net> Subject: FLOSS "Concept Booklet":Contributions/Criticism/Addenda solicited -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello. I work in a non-profit organisation (www.sarai.net) that is deeply involved in and committed to Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We're in the process of creating and publishing a Concept Booklet on Free/Libre/Open Source Software that will, hopefully, be accessible even to people with an extremely limited understanding of computers and absolutely no knowledge of open source/free/libre software. In collabroation with one such layperson, we created a set of questions on free software and are in the process of generating the answers and the additional content for the concept booklet. We'd be thrilled if you people would contribute as many answers as you can to the questions that we have outlined below. Of course, please feel free to comment on the existing questions and to make additions to them. All contributions will be gratefully acknowledged. The booklet will be published under the Creative Commons/Share Alike License and distributed free or at a nominal cost. We will, of course, be providing a full version online, including print-quality PDFs. This call for contributions from the wider community interested in free/libre/open source software is an effort to extend the methodology used in creating free software into the arena of collaborative publishing. All contributions, no matter how small, trivial or obvious they might seem, are extremely valuable to us. Please, do take the time to read the questions and contribute, if possible. I apologise to those who are subscribed to two or more of the lists to which this is posted for the crosspost. Please feel free to forward this email to people or entities that you feel might be helpful. Cheers, Aniruddha Shankar Intro / Concept: What is free software? Well tell me what's not " free" about other kinds of software? So " free" means that I don't have to spend any money then? How is Free Software actually made? So how is this different from the production of other kinds of software? So the term Free Software is a legal definition then? What do you mean by " Copyleft" ? What's wrong with copyright? How is this different? Is this Copyleft against the law? What does GNU GPL stand for? If this software is free as you say then why do we need legislation to protect it? What other licenses exist to protect Free Software? Okay so I can see that Free Software is legal but surely if I duplicate something that means that someone is losing out somewhere along the way? History of F.S: When did this whole Free Software thing start? How long have people been using it for? So Free Software actually pre-dates Microsoft? So are you saying that in some ways the history of Free Software and the internet run parallel to one another? Okay, but now what is Linux? When did that come about? So how this changed the development of software in general? Who's this Stallman character then? Where does he fit into the picture? How do you see the future development of Free Software? Production Methodology: How is Free Software actually made? What kinds of people make Free Software? But I still don't understand why anyone would want to give away their work for free? What's in it for them!? What do you mean by a Digital Commons? In what ways could I benefit from involving myself in this Digital Commons? Arguments for using F.S: I'm still not convinced. Surely a big computer company knows best when it comes to designing software? Why would I want to use software designed by an amateur? But what about bugs? Surely Free Software is more likely to be virus prone? So you're saying that Free Software actually evolves at a faster pace than closed software? Software that can be modified actually runs better than closed software then? Free Software is only something used by computer enthusiasts, right? Have any established organizations actually used Free Software to their advantage? Personal Relationship to F.S: What kinds of problems might I expect to encounter using F.S? Okay but why would I want to modify my software anyway? Look, I'm no computer whiz! Isn't it easier for me to just use packaged software? Who do I turn to when something goes wrong? But how do I know I can trust someone not linked to a big company that has a reputation to uphold? Won't this cost me more than just calling someone out through the help-line of an established computer company? Well what do I have to lose from using Free Software? Okay so how would I begin to install Free Software on my machine? Glossary: - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFAqLs6hJkrd6A3rSsRAnM/AJ97T14ztuABNlWolokpoF6koxeOcgCgvLGZ z59adLmHeP6FoXeah3OlmJ0= =Imd+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________

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death of democracy
by Mahesh T. Pai 17 May '04

17 May '04

I am forwarding a message to show how the European Union's legal policies are being hijacked by a few, in the teeth of strong public opposition. Just see how strongarm lobbying is winning (at as of now) in the teeth of opposition from an overwhelming majority. Why is this relevant on this list? Simple - the patent issue was re-opened in EU by the Irish republic, which has a coalition government. The smaller parties, which wield power disproportionate to its strength call the shots. One such party has been `purchased' by a particular company, and they are effectively dictating the terms here. With cow-herds who proudly trumpet their ignorance about Information Technology playing power-brokers and king (err queen) -makers at New Delhi, we are situated in identical situation as the Irish republic. And we have a serious additional disadvantage - lack of public awareness. I request all of you to devote at least half an hour to discussing philosophical issues and in particular, dangers from patents at the next local user group meet. ----- Forwarded message from Mandrakesoft Team <return(a)mandrakesoft.com> ----- Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 17:10:30 +0200 (CEST) From: Mandrakesoft Team <return(a)mandrakesoft.com> Subject: Mandrakelinux NWL: Software patents - fresh news and call for action To: Flash: Software patents - fresh news and call for action As a follow-up to our latest flash regarding the upcoming decision of the European Council to legalize software patentability in Europe, here are some fresh news and information on what you can do to help. If nothing changes, tomorrow, Tuesday May 18, the European Council, that is, the European body which represents all the governments of the European Union, will vote in favor of a directive that will legalize software patents in Europe. Last September, faced with a similar choice, the European Parliament voted major amendments to the directive text drafted by the European Commission, actually rejecting software patentability. However, the Council, ignoring all of these amendments, is going to vote in favor of a text that is even worse than the initial version of the Commission. Why can the Council take a decision which will be so harmful to the European software industry? Unlike the Parliament, which is a place open to the public, where Members of the European Parliament have had time to study the proposal and hear many positions on the issue in order to take a well-thought decision, the Council is a closed body where, due to the alledged complexity of the subject, representatives of the governments have handed out the file to committees of experts. These experts, who re-drafted the text and wrote position papers on why to vote it, are in fact mostly representatives from the national patent offices, backed by the heads of the legal departments of some big industrial companies, all of whom have a common interest: more patents mean more power for them, irrespective of the harm that will be done to the economy at large, and even to their own companies. In the name of "the Industry" and of "innovation", they manipulated the political decision-makers to make them believe that the new text did not allow to patent pure software, that it was a good compromise between the Commission and Parliament texts, and that not all of the parliamentary amendments could be kept because some of them were illegal with respect to international treaties such as TRIPS. All of this is plain lie. In fact, if voted, the text of the Council would lead to a situation where big companies with large patent portfolios use these to lock their respective markets and prevent competition from innovative SMEs, and where "intellectual property" companies that do not create any software use their own patent portfolios to collect license fee rents from everybody. This is the situation which is happening in the US, putting at risk its successful software industry. This is what may just happen in Europe in a few months. However, it is not too late. Because of growing pressure from computer professionals and from the public, and because they get more and more feed-back from the media, political decision-makers begin to get aware of the issues, and to have doubts about the sincerity of the patent lobby. In some countries, they have taken the file back from the patent offices http://lwn.net/Articles/85379/ http://kwiki.ffii.org/?SwpatcninoEn and some countries of the Council have just decided to switch from a voting procedure without debate to a voting procedure with debate, as the text gets less and less consensus among the members of the European Union. You can convince even more of them to reject software patentability. In order to do that, please take some time to read about the issues at stake, and spread the information across your friends and business contacts, the press, your members of the parliament and your government. It is essential that elected policy makers get back into command of the situation and do not leave the patent offices decide alone. Here are some texts which can help you to present the issues to the media and to convince policy-makers of all countries of the European Union. A very readable analysis by Fran?ois Pellegrini explaining the legal and economic issues of software patentability: http://www.abul.org/article191.html A thorough analysis by Jonas Maebe of the difference between the three versions of the directive, and why software patents are indeed illegal with respect to TRIPS: http://www.elis.ugent.be/~jmaebe/swpat/councilanalysis/paper-en.pdf Positions of the member countries of the European Union: http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/ (add "pt", "ie", "fr", "de", "be", "gr", etc to have the positions of the member countries) The page of the FFII giving some directions for actions: http://kwiki.ffii.org/?LtrSmePolit0405En A recent paper published in the Washington Post describing the current situation in the United States: "Patenting Air or Protecting Property? Information Age Invents a New Problem" http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54548-2003Dec10?language=printer 31 companies sued for using the JPEG image format (the plaintiff filed for a patent while recommending the adoption in international bodies of a standard including its patented technology): http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_bizhead_1 A US company sues companies of on-line content distribution: http://www.e-data.com/ http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5205529.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144097.html A well-documented file on the reference site Law.com: http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZV4RVSSPC Thank you very much for your help. Mandrakesoft Online Team. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- "Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty"

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Patently stupid
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 14 May '04

14 May '04

Hi, Patents are back !!!!! Hide if you can, they'll get you. <news> In direct contravention of the recent vote by the European Parliament to curtail Software Patents, the Irish Presidency of the European Union has surreptitiously reinstated unlimited software patent language into the text of a statement to be adopted by the European Council of Ministers on Monday, May 17, without further debate! The new text, if adopted, will extend Software Patents to every piece of software, including computer programs, data structures, and process descriptions. This will directly harm most software firms and all Open Source projects unable to pay patent licensing tribute, and amounts to an appropriation of the public domain by proprietary interests. A direct beneficiary will be a new class of pure patent companies without any real business or contribution to employment, which will use the threat of litigation to extort payments. Of note is that a sponsor of the Irish Presidency is Microsoft, currently building a large patent portfolio. If the Software Patent text is adopted, Microsoft may use this patent portfolio against Linux and other Open Source projects. </news> Read More Software patents back on the horizon after EU leaders ignore the vote of MEPs: http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/05/13/1447225.shtml?tid=132&tid=1… FYI --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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Re: [Fsf-friends] FairPlay is now Hymn
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 11 May '04

11 May '04

--- Sajith T S <sajith(a)symonds.net> wrote: > Rakesh 'arky' Ambati wrote: > > > The project has been renamed Hymn, according to > Anand > > Babu, the maintainer of the project. It is being > > hosted on two sites by a US-based hosting service > > provider. > > Where is Hymn hosted? Just found this news update. The project has been renamed Hymn, according to Anand Babu, the maintainer of the project. It is being hosted on two sites (http://playfair.org/ and http://hymn-project.org) by a U.S.-based hosting service provider. Babu said last month that the project would be hosted outside the U.S. cheers --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

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