Re: [VOTE] Support the EU patent protest

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@webweaving.org>]

Though I personally support the patent protest; and have been heavily
donating bits, bandwidth,bytes and storage to the cause as a private
citizen; I am not too eager to see the ASF jump into the political arena.

So count it as a -0 for me.

As this is certainly not in one issue which in my opinion directly relates
to US (the ASF) or to open source.

Sure - _if_ patent offices in europe are as bad/careless as in the US and
_if_ cost recovery is made harder and _if_ the originality clase is swept
under the table and _if_ the courts turn the table so that proving prior
art suddenly becomes expensive in the EU.. then it may have an adverse
effect on open source.. But then again - that is a lot of 'if's. And one
can even see ways for Open Source to protect itself using EU patents
linked to its own prior art at very low cost - and using that outside the
EU to protect itself.

Lets save these loud ASF statement/actions things for issues which
_directly_ affect the ASF work.

Dw


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Re: [VOTE] Support the EU patent protest

["David N. Welton" <da...@dedasys.com>]

Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@webweaving.org> writes:

> Sure - _if_ patent offices in europe are as bad/careless as in the
> US and _if_ cost recovery is made harder and _if_ the originality
> clase is swept under the table and _if_ the courts turn the table so
> that proving prior art suddenly becomes expensive in the EU.. then
> it may have an adverse effect on open source.. But then again - that
> is a lot of 'if's. And one can even see ways for Open Source to
> protect itself using EU patents linked to its own prior art at very
> low cost - and using that outside the EU to protect itself.

> Lets save these loud ASF statement/actions things for issues which
> _directly_ affect the ASF work.

Guess it's a moot point, because we're doing it, but I think it's good
to be "proactive" in this case.  This puts free software in a stronger
bargaining position - maybe they will pass the law the same, but
hopefully they will keep us in mind when setting things up.  Better to
start making noise now rather than when some future SCO-like company
tries to make a quick buck off of us.

-- 
David N. Welton
   Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/
     Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/
   Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/

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