-------- Original Message --------
http://downontheriver.blogspot.com/
Michelle Childs
21.04.06
The EU Commission recently held a consultation on the Patent system in
Europe.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/indprop/patent/
It covered a number of issues. One of great concern to all those activists
who had successfully campaigned against the introduction of software
patents, was the Commissions proposal to introduce a Community patent
system ( one patent for the whole of Europe). They feared that this could
be a backdoor method to introduce software patents. So the activists once
again marshalled thier resources to respond to the consultation.
But the fights not over yet. I have recently been told by Florian Mueller
( one of the lead lobbyists against software patenting) that there is
another backdoor method being pursued by pro software patenting companies.
That is using the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA).
You can read the background on it here:
ahttp://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller-blog/epla
Cptech also submitted comments to the Commissions patent consultation.
While we oppose software patents, we sought in our response to also focus
on wider principles of patent policy that apply to all areas of the
economy eg the development of medicines.
A copy of our response can be found here:
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/cptechECPatconsultation-12april06.pdf
--
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
Consumer Project on Technology in London
24, Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX,UK.
Tel:+44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252.
Mob:+44(0)790 386 4642. Fax: +44(0)207 354 0607
http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA .Tel.:
+1.202.332.2670,Fax: +1.202.332.2673
Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva
1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727
_______________________________________________
A2k mailing list
A2k(a)lists.essential.org
http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/a2k
Event information page: http://www.ifso.ie/events/2006-04-29/
It will be an interesting afternoon and won't be repeatable for a long
time, so I'd like to make the most of it.
The notice is too short to allow news of this event to trickle through
any usual channels, so it would be most useful to directly contact
individuals and organisations who you think might/should be interested
in the topics of "Free Software and Education" and "The Imperative for
Free Software in Government & Public Administration".
I've been doing this and have gotten a handful of postive responses.
I can only do this on a small scale, but if this was done by everyone
on the list that would like to see Free Software used more in
education and government, then the scale would be large.
Saturday April 29th is five days away, so direct contact such as
sending emails or making phone calls would be most useful. Also
useful would be to mention it on websites would be useful, but direct
contact is better given the time scale.
Or if you have ideas for what types of people or what specific
organisations should be contacted, post them here so that someone else
might be able to do so.
Who should be interested:
* Companies hoping to sell free software solutions to public administration
* University researchers
* School employees
* Free software advocates of all types, particularly those in universities
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org
(please forward as appropriate.)
Federico Heinz was coming to Europe so IFSO have detoured him to host
two talks on Saturday April 29th in the ICS building in Dublin.
Heinz is a veteran and widely-respected free software advocate in
Latin America, a long time GNU project spokesperson, and was elected
president of FSF Latin America when it launched recently.
Below:
1. The talks
2. About Federico
3. Event details
1. The talks:
One talk will be on free software in government / public
administration. Heinz is one of the drafters and advocates behind
laws requiring government bodies to use free software in various
Latin American countries, particularly Argentina, Peru, and
Venezuela. These laws have met mixed results.
The other talk will be on free software in education. This is a
topic that IFSO requested he talk about, and it's something that's
also important to him. Issues such as access to education are far
more acute there than in Ireland.
2. About Federico:
His background is in software development and administration, mostly
on the implementation end, getting systems in place using existing
free software.
Heinz is also one of the GNU projects nine official speakers, a bio
is on this page:
http://www.gnu.org/people/speakers.html
I've spent the last few days with him; I had heard that he is an
excellent speaker, and I'm now sure he will be.
3. Event details:
The venue is provided by the Irish Computer Society, which we've
been invited to use by ILUG's Niall Walsh (thanks Niall).
The start time will be 14h00. There will be a 30 minute break
between the two talks and tea, coffee, and biscuits will be served.
The end time will be around 17h00.
For any more details, just ask.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org
Hi there.
None of the committee are available for Tuesday's meeting,
so we've decided to cancel the IFSO meeting for this month.
Good luck,
Malcolm.
___________________________________________________________
Switch an email account to Yahoo! Mail, you could win FIFA World Cup tickets. http://uk.mail.yahoo.com
1. What is set
2. What's not finished
3. What we need people to do
=====================================
1. What is set:
* The name (new) is "FOSS Means Business"
* The keynote speakers are Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens
* A substantial part of Stallman's presentation will be about GPLv3
* The date is March 16th, and it's whole-day event, probably 10am to 5:30pm
* The venue is Spires, Belfast
=====================================
2. What's not finished:
* setting the timetable for the day - this is only half set
* confirming some speakers
* raising funds for improving the event's appearance (we have 2000 sterling,
which covers the venue and loads of tea and coffee and buscuits, but we
are still waiting on funding for a meal and welcome packs)
=====================================
3. What we need people to do
Publicise this. Tell everyone to book the day out of the office, and to get
their boss to do the same.
* We need to tell mailing lists (Linux, free software, Unix, system
administrators, creative commons, computer societies, computer-user lists,
college societies, anything lists like that)
* blogs: blog about this and get others to do so too.
* Post to forums: I don't participate in many forums, so I don't know much
about this, but there must be people here that do know
* Send emails to news sites, and other sites, that have Events pages. Many
sites like this exist. I've so far gotten this mentioned on
http://www.ukuug.org/diary/ and on http://enn.ie/events.html
* If you have business contact lists, please inform them informally if that
is acceptable, or do so formally when we have a formal announcement ready
* If you have press contacts, there will be a press release made about this,
hopefully on Friday, so please be ready to forward that or tell someone
(like myself) the details for contacting that journalist / press person
* contribute to the wiki:
http://belfoss.org
(That is the official event wiki, for the public, so remember that the IT
managers that we are trying to impress will be looking there.)
* reply to this mail and tell me what I've forgotten
When I put "foss means business" into google (including quotes), I get zero
hits right now, so we can gauge how effective our web presence is spreading
by checking that each day. Every new hit will be because of us.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org
___________________________| http://ciaran.compsoc.com/fsfe-fellowship.html