"We think this has gone far enough," says Carlo Piana, who represents
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) in front of European
Court. "Waiting for Microsoft to come up with terms that reinstate
competition seems a complete waste of time. We have therefore begun
working on terms that would implement what the European Commission
sought to achieve with its ruling and what the European Court upheld."
"The Samba team has over 12 years of experience of working to
interoperate with Microsoft software. We have worked for many years in
the area of Workgroup server software," Jeremy Allison of the Samba
Team explains. "We know exactly what information is needed to at least
restore the possibility of competition. So we will put that experience
to good use in helping the European Commission."
"Microsoft has behaved much like unruly children who throw themselves
to the ground and have to be dragged along every step of the way,"
Georg Greve, president of FSFE says. "Since Microsoft seems unwilling
to get up and walk, we will help the Commission to bring Microsoft to
its feet and move towards reestablishing competition. If they keep
dragging their feet, the Commission should end this unworthy spectacle
and ultimately fine Microsoft with 5% of the net turnover per day of
the relvant market for each day they are not in compliance."
The European Union antitrust case has been going on for years now. All
the time, Microsoft has been dragging its feet, seeking to block and
slow down the European Commission investigation and restoration of
competition at each and every turn.
And even after receiving a fine by the Commission that broke all
records, Microsoft spent several times that sum to solicit supporters
away from the European Commission while appealing at the European
Court to avoid giving competitors the information needed to achieve
interoperability.
The European Court was not fooled by these tactics and ordered
Microsoft to comply with the terms of the European Commission
immediately. In response to this, Microsoft offered a licensing
agreement that was designed to create further obstacles for
competition.
The European Commission has now recognized this officially, again
asking Microsoft to please allow competition. Over the past years, the
European Commission has indeed shown an almost unbelievable amount of
patience with Microsoft, a fact the software giant has overabused.
Now it will be time for the Commission to actively ask Microsoft to
implement remedies and terms that will be able to restore competition.
Failure to implement them and further delays should not continue at the
expense of the European economic region.
The European Commission should set a final deadline for Microsoft to
comply with its ruling and the European Court decision. If Microsoft
keeps playing for time, the Commission should impose the maximum
possible fine of 5% of the net turnover per day of delayed compliance
on the relevant market.
"Microsoft has abused the patience of Europe for years now," Georg
Greve concludes. "They should come into compliance or compensate for
the damage they cause. Given their behaviour during the past years and
their extraordinarily deep pockets, to which Europe contributed no
little amount, 5% seems indeed adequate."
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
If you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, 67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
EUROCITIES is the network of some 100 major cities within the
EU: Norway, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe and the New
Independent States (NIS). Eurocities was established in 1986,
there are over 100 million citizens in its member cities.
Catherine Parmentier is Chief Executive Officer of EUROCITIES.
Dear Mrs Parmentier,
The European Council and European Commission are trying to introduce a
legal basis for software patents in Europe. This would expose European
cities to uncalculable and unforseeable risks due to software patent
litigation expenses. That is why we hope you will join us in fighting
these employment and innovation killers.
In addition, city councils throughout Europe do have to overcome the
same difficulties: The number of those who depend on social welfare is
increasing, budgets ar decreasing and citizens expect public services to
provide a better quality than ever before. These apparently
contradictory goals shall be reached by a conversion of the formerly
labour-intensive administration tasks into automated electronic
procedures and structures -- not only within a single administration,
but also between different public services, administration to
citizens and administration to business.
The well known buzzword for this is "eGovernment".
Standardised structures and procedures which are defined and
implemented as the default software to be used across local structures
and administration provide and ideal territory for software patent
litigation claims: Potential claims reach from the grounds of basic
functionality, such as networks, databases and file systems, to the
abstract methods and protocols providing the specific functionality.
As software patents do not require proof of concept or implementation,
the patentee can easily afford to file abstract methods and decide to
give or deny licenses arbitrarily.
This will become a significant cost factor for three main reasons:
Both software developers and users can be asked for almost any amount
of money the software patent holder chooses. Many developers and
companies will not be able to pay such demands and thus go out of
business, turning tax-payers into people in need of social welfare.
Finally, the price of the remaining software companies products will
increase because of the need to refinance their software patent expenses
and also because of reduced competition in the market.
The US Patent and Trademark Office has registered 1185 software
patents [1] dealing with "public service" and 19 explicitly dealing
with "city council" [2]. It is not necessary to mention these keywords
when applying for a software patent, so these are only the tip of the
iceberg and the list is expected to grow rapidly should software patents
become reality.
With the introduction of software patents, European cities would have
to be aware of dramatically increasing costs and an increasingly
difficult legal situation with high risks for the administration.
We would like to recommend that you contact Mr Christian Ude, the mayor
of Munich, who has also become aware of the damaging effects that
software patents have for public services. Should you have further
questions or need additional assistance, please do not hesitate to
contact us.
With kind regards
Georg Greve
President
Free Software Foundation Europe
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
[1]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fneta…
[2]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fneta…
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)pr-profi.com>
PR-Berater, www.pr-profi.com
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, Tel.: 0179/6919565
67134 Birkenheide
1. Fellowship of FSFE announced
2. Comments on WSIS/WGIG papers
3. Wilhelm Tux hits the apple
4. Software patents: the battle continues...
5. Microsoft tries to bypass European Court decision
1. Fellowship of FSFE announced
After months of preparation and much hard work, the FSFE presented the
Fellowship program at this year's FOSDEM event in Brussels. For a
yearly fee of 120 Euro (60 Euro for students) you can become a fellow
of FSFE and support its work politically, financially and through your
activities.
The Fellowship is a community with its own web portal where fellows
can post blogs, share experiences in foras, and keep up to date with
the latest news. Every fellow gets an email address in the fsfe.org
domain to publicly display his or her support for Free Software.
As a practical feature to strengthen their privacy and security, all
Fellows also receive a unique, personalised OpenPGP-compliant
SmartCard programmed and handled by Werner Koch, author of GnuPG and
Head of Office of the FSFE. The card contains keys for electronic
signatures, for encryption, and for state of the art secure key-based
authentication.
During the past months, we worked on the planning and designs of the
Fellowship -- all designs were done pro-bono by the companies
futurebrand, who did the imagery and SmartCard, and artundweise.de,
who did the web page design.
Special thanks go to the global Plone community that helped us quickly
and competently with getting the site up within a little more than a
week -- an amazing feat. Special thanks go to Russ Ferriday for help
with the layout, as well as Riccardo Lemmi from reflab.it and Holger
Lehmann from catworkx.de, who helped us with the not-entirely-trivial
registration form.
The Fellowship will be very important to give Free Software and those
who actively work for digital freedom the necessary weight and
resources. So if you have not yet signed up, please do so at
http://www.fsfe.org
2. Comments on WSIS/WGIG papers
On 1st February 2005, the United Nations Working Group on Internet
Governance (WGIG) published a set of 20 issue papers concerning
"Internet Governance." Together with its associate organisation La
Fundación Vía Libre, the Free Software Foundation Europe managed to
comment on the paper on "Cyber security, cybercrime", which, among
other things, asked to outlaw the art of finding elegant solutions to
non-obvious problems ("hacking") and the paper on "Intellectual
Property Rights", which for instance asked to "balance human rights
with the interests of rights-holders."
For more information, see
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/wsis/
3. Wilhelm Tux hits the apple
The Swiss associate organisation of the FSFE, Wilhelm Tux, shows
considerable activity: In Berne, Switzerland, an event called "LOTS"
(Let's Open The Source) was organized and Georg Greve was invited to
hold the keynote about Free Software. Also, several members of Wilhelm
Tux joined the FSFE booth at FOSDEM.
4. Software patents: the battle continues...
Politicians from all countries and of all parties show an ever
increasing awareness of the potential damage an introduction of
software patents in Europe would do to economy. While the Commission
persists in the current directive draft and the Council still hasn't
finally approved its position, the European Parliament officially
demanded a restart of the whole process to get out of the current
deadlock situation.
5. Microsoft tries to bypass European Court decision
As reported in earlier newsletters, Microsoft has been asked to
publish technical information about the interfaces to their Windows
Operating System to enable competitors (most notably the Samba Free
Software project) to reach Windows interoperability. However, the
licensing terms that Microsoft now has published for these documents
exclude Free Software in general and the GNU General Public License in
particular. The FSFE will, together with the Samba team, continue to
fight for just and reasonable conditions.
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
"Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!"
Fellowship programme of FSFE launched to defend freedom in the digital
age.
"We stand up to protect our freedom to shape and participate in a
digital society that respects liberty and privacy." With this slogan,
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) started its fellowship
program at the FOSDEM fair for Free Software last weekend in Brussels.
The resistance against software patents has shown that it is possible
to change things, but it has also shown that we need to do more. While
we were and still are defending ourselves against software patents,
other issues -- old and new -- could not be addressed as they should
have been.
"Global players aiming to spread their monopolies and business-models
are excerting influence on many levels through technology, legislation
and money.", Stefano Maffulli, Italian representative of FSFE says and
concludes: "If our freedom is to be preserved, we need more shoulders
to support the work and more people to raise their voice."
Fellowship comes at EUR 120,- (EUR 60,-) per year. All Fellows receive
a login on the Fellowship portal, a site to meet, communicate and
cooperate. Fellows can write blogs, share experience in forums and
remain informed about the latest news. Through this approach, it is
possible to bridge initiatives and people to stand united and
raise our collective voice. In addition, all fellows receive an email
alias @fsfe.org, a visible sign of their connection to the Free Software
Foundation Europe.
As a practical feature to strengthen their privacy and security, all
Fellows receive a unique, personalised OpenPGP compliant SmartCard
programmed and handled by Werner Koch, author of GnuPG and Head of
Office of the FSFE. With this SmartCard, all Fellows can communicate
securely and privately through digital signatures and encryption.
In addition, this protects your logins and data on disk, among other
things.
"This card is a a state-of-the-art hardware token for many different
applications, such as encrypting your email. Through this card, we put
the power of protecting data and privacy into the hands of all our
Fellows. We seek to make this power available to all, raising
awareness for privacy and security issues", Werner Koch explains.
"In the past years, we have worked to the peak of our abilities and
beyond. We have seen that we can make progress, but also we had to
realise that the battle has only just begun. Defending our collective
freedom is something we need to do together. Consider this your call to
arms," says Georg Greve.
Please join the Fellowship at http://www.fsfe.org/
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
When you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, D-67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)
For Immediate Release:
http://www.fsf.org/news/new-executive-director.html
FSF announces new Executive Director
Boston, MA, USA - Monday, February 14, 2005 - The Free Software
Foundation (FSF) today announced the appointment of Peter T. Brown as
its new Executive Director.
The appointment follows the departure of Bradley M. Kuhn, who is
taking up the post of Chief Technology Officer at the newly created
Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). Regarding his departure, Kuhn
noted his desire to live in the New York City area and his interest in
pursuing a technical role again.
Brown, who has worked at the FSF since 2001 and is currently the
manager of the GPL Compliance Lab, and previously a Director of the
alternative press magazine, New Internationalist, said, "I am very
excited by this opportunity to work closely with FSF President,
Richard Stallman, though I am sad to see Bradley leave the
organization following such a successful tenure. The FSF faces an
exciting year ahead as well as tough challenges. The additional legal
resources being offered by the Software Freedom Law Center will give
us an opportunity to expand on our GPL compliance efforts. We expect
to work closely with the law center and the free software community as
we work towards GPL version 3. We're also moving, in two senses, as we
have just launched our new home page at www.fsf.org, and we'll be
moving to new office premises in May, so expect an updated GPL version
2 with that new address."
Asked about the challenges ahead, Brown said, "Everyday it becomes
more apparent that the growing success of Free Software threatens
established proprietary software and media interests. These interests
will continue to see our freedoms as threats, and we fully expect, and
are preparing for, further challenges to our community."
----
About Free Software Foundation: The Free Software Foundation, founded
in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use,
study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF
promotes the development and use of Free (as in freedom) Software -
particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants - and
Free Documentation for Free Software. The FSF also helps to spread
awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of
software. Their web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important
source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in
Boston, MA, USA.
_______________________________________________
FSF And GNU Press mailing list <info-press(a)gnu.org>
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press
FSFE: "Microsoft seeking to bypass decisions of European Court"
"My local shop has a rule that they don't serve women. This is not
discriminatory because the same rule applies to both males and
females equally." Software giant Microsoft seems to behave similar
to the shop owner after a decision of European Court.
Spring last year, EU Commissioner Mario Monti imposed a penalty of
nearly 500 million Euro on Microsoft, as well as some additional
conditions. One of those conditions are the publication of so called
software interfaces.
Software interfaces determine how computers communicate with each other
to exchange information. This information is important for several Free
Software projects. One of these is SAMBA, which connects the UNIX and
GNU/Linux world with Microsoft's operating system and works against the
monopoly that Microsoft has established on the operating system market.
Without access to the software interface information, SAMBA will have a
hard time keeping up.
Microsoft appealed against this decision in front of European Court of
Justice and asked to suspend the decision until the proceeding has come
to a final decision in possibly four years. European Court refused this
suspension December last year. Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
supported the European Commission throughout this procedure. Officially
Microsoft says it wants to cooperate with the Commission and to comply
with the conditions.
Microsoft has published an agreement which allows Free Software projects
like SAMBA to use the software interface information, but bans it from
publishing the software as Free Software.
"That is not even complying with the wording of European Court's
decision - not to mention its spirit!" Stefano Maffulli, Italian
Chancellor of FSFE says. Microsoft requests a "Per User Royalty" from
Free Software projects: "Obviously, while paying royalties is not
impossible in principle as una-tantum, with Free Software nobody knows
exactly how many copies use a certain program are circulating, as Free
Software is allowed to be copied as often as necessary, freely.",
Maffulli says.
FSFE Lawyer Carlo Piana adds: "It seems that Microsoft has misunderstood
the actual meaning of the decision. I cannot enter into details, but it
has offered a license as though it would have to license its software,
while all which is demanded is to release certain information as to the
'language spoken' by its applications."
This is the same kind of information that any software company is
entitled to acquire and use by reverse engineering, to produce an
independent product or buy buying a license to standards like POSIX.
Piana adds: "Moreover, the license offered only applies to the European
Economic Area (but it is governed by the laws -- and put under the
jurisdiction -- of the USA.) Not to say about the agreement requested
for evaluating the licensed software, which is incredibly burdensome and
only allows inspection for total 48 hours. According to Microsoft
testimony, the inspected documentation would pile up 'tens of thousand
pages', you can do the math! It took more than four hours to me just to
study the contracts... And those who have inspected the information
loose the possibility to work on the development of similar products for
one year. We cannot even start a discussion on this basis."
"We have communicated our concerns to the Commission and we are full of
confidence that Brussels will bear them in mind: for European consumers
it is a must that SAMBA and any other Free Software developer is allowed
to publish Free Software on the basis of the given interface
information. Secondly nothing else than a single payment is acceptable
to us. And thirdly we have to take care that Microsoft does not try to
protect its monopoly with software patents on these interface
informations. It is really difficult to follow all the dodges they do",
Maffulli says, "but FSFE will be awake to avoid Microsoft making paper
tigers out of decisions of the European Court!"
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
When you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, D-67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)
1. FSFE in Dublin
2. FSFE at World Social Forum (WSF)
3. HP donates two servers
4. Continued tour through Italy
5. Activities against software patents
1. FSFE in Dublin
At the University of Dublin, Georg Greve gave a talk about the
challenges of Free Software in a digital world and also introduced
the work of the FSFE.
As always, he also used the opportunity to intensify contacts with
the local Free Software community and discussed possibilities for
integrating people from Ireland more closely into the FSFE network.
2. FSFE at World Social Forum (WSF)
In cooperation with the Free Software Project Brasil [1], FSFEs
president Georg Greve participated in a series of activities and
events [2] around Free Software at the World Social Forum (WSF) in
Porto Alegre, Brazil -- among them the official release of the 2005
Free Software Forum. [3]
The Free Software, free knowledge and free arts events at the WSF had
strong support from the Brazilian Cultural Ministry. Gilberto Gil,
minister of Culture, participated in some of them personally, along
with other known figures, such as Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow.
During the WSF, many activists also made their first contact with Free
Software using one of the about 1000 machines in the estudio livre and
other access points.
[1] http://www.softwarelivre.org/
[2] http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/3543
[3] http://fisl.softwarelivre.org
3. HP donates two servers
Hewlett-Packard Germany donated two Compaq N2400 servers (Dual CPU,
Pentium III 1GHz with 1GB RAM each). The machines have replaced the
quite outdated web- and mailserver machines and are running core
services of the FSFE. The FSFE would like to thank HP for their
support.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/help/hardware.en.html
4. Continued tour through Italy
After the successful public events in December, the Italian FSFE team
has continued their tour through Italy and took part in the "week of
digital freedom", which was organized by the Linux Club Italia in Rome.
Alessandro Rubini talked about "Embedded Free Software", and Stefano
Maffulli held a speech about "Free Software Foundation Europe:
activities and plans for the future". T-shirts of FSFE are available
at the Linux Club.
http://www.italy.fsfeurope.org/it/events/2004/tour/tour.it.html
5. Activities against software patents
The decision of the EU council to introduce software patents in Europe
is still not finally approved, and the political resistance against
that decision has become stronger than ever. The FSFE and its
associate organisations, most of all the FFII, are still cooperating
in their efforts to prevent that threat to innovation.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
"Basel II is a round of deliberations by central bankers from around the
world, under the auspices of the International Bank of Settlements in
Basel, Switzerland, aimed at producing uniformity in the way banks and
banking regulators approach risk management across national borders."
[0] Mr Nout Wellink is the Chairman of the Board of Directors and
President of the International Bank Settlements.
Dear Mr. Wellink,
in our open letter [1] to the head of the Allianz insurance group,
Mr. Diekmann, we explained how software patents [2] are likely to
become a massive cost and risk factor for all money and information
technology intensive businesses like insurance companies. The same holds
true for banks.
Software patents establish monopolies on abstract ideas which are
available to anyone, including those who do no software development but
do have legal departments. Like all larger software projects, all parts
of Basel II consist of a multitude of ideas, each of which may become
subject to a monopoly by anyone. If you for instance check the database
of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you will already discover
180 patents [3] on software ideas concerning "credit risk" -- the
central issue of Basel II.
There is no compulsory licensing for any of these, the particular
patent holder gets to determine the terms on which they will grant or
deny use of the monopoly on each individual idea.
But the implementations of Basel II will naturally also depend upon a
multitude of standard components, such as file services, databases,
transfer protocols and more. Each of these is similarly subject to
software patents. Since the number of methods to secure computer
systems is limited, this may mean that Basel II will have to implement
its features on a known insecure basis.
Once Basel II becomes widely used, a dramatic increase in software
patent infringement lawsuits for this area is likely to occur on a
global basis. Any bank or any of its customers for Basel II based
software may become target of such legal action -- the risk is
incalculable and can bring about multi-billion Euro lawsuits.
Most banks are still unaware of this threat -- they have not realized
that software patents will affect them to such an extent. When
we were recently talking to a German bank, they were shocked when they
realized what software patents will mean to their business.
Software patents will dramatically reduce the innovation rate and
competitiveness of European economy in general, and to you they mean
introducing an incalculable risk that can generate huge damages.
That is why we ask you to protect your interests and take initiatives
against software patents -- directly and by supporting our work. Also,
should you have further questions, please do not hesitate to get in
touch.
Best regards,
Georg Greve
Free Software Foundation Europe, President
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_II
[1] http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/letter-20041004.en.html
[2] http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.html
[3]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2F…
About the Free Software Foundation Europe:
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition-
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
When you would like to receive our press releases regularly please
subscribe to our mailinglist at
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release.
Thank you very much for your interest.
--
Joachim Jakobs <jj(a)office.fsfeurope.org>
Press Speaker - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Heinrich-Heine-Str. 3, D-67134 Birkenheide (Tel: +49-179-6919565)
1. Poland disapproves software patent directive in EU Council
2. First victory for EU and FSFE in Microsoft trial
3. FSFE Chapter Italy meets the Italian audience
4. Chapter Italy awarded Prof. Stefano Rodotà
5. Other public appearances
1. Poland disapproves software patent directive in EU Council
With its veto, Poland blocked the final approval of the software patent
directive in the EU Council. This means that the directive will have
to be discussed again in the Council. Several countries are expected to
have changed their mind against software patents since the last
discussion in May, where only a thin majority was pro software patents.
The FSFE and its associate organisations worked hard on a political
level both in Poland itself and in other countries backing Poland in
this decision to make the veto possible.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/
2. First victory for EU and FSFE in Microsoft trial
Bo Versterdorf, President of the European Court, has rejected
Microsoft's appeal to delay execution of the sanctions. Microsoft has
been forced by the European Commission to publish technical information
about the interfaces of their Windows Operating System to enable
competitors to reach interoperability between their systems and Windows.
The fact that the rest of Microsoft's opponents have decided to resign
from this case, means that this becomes an even more important victory
for the EU Commission and the FSFE.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/
3. FSFE Chapter Italy meets the Italian audience
From December 15th until December 18th, the Italian Chapter of the FSFE
attended four events in Trieste, Torino, Bologna and Milano.
During the four days, Stefano Maffulli gave a speech about the
activity of the FSFE and future perspectives of Free Software in
Italy, Alessandro Rubini spoke about "Gnu General Public License Vs
Creative Commons Public License", Lele Rozza underlined the importance
of Free Software for the public administration. More meetings will be
organized for next months.
4. Chapter Italy awarded Prof. Stefano Rodotà
During the event in Milano, the Italian Chapter of the FSFE awarded
Prof. Stefano Rodotà (head of the Italian Data Protection Authority)
the 2004 Italian "Free Software, Free society" award. Prof. Rodotà
was awarded for his commitment in building awareness around the issue
of personal data protection and into protecting freedom in a digital
society.
5. Other public appearances
Georg Greve gave two public speeches in December: At the University of
Lüneburg, Germany, he gave an introduction to Free Software with a
focus on the effects of Free Software on society, also introducing the
FSFE. At an event held by the University Hamburg, Germany, under the
heading of "programmers and other lawmakers" he also talked about the
current developments in the EU software patent issue and the Microsoft
trial.
You can find a list of all FSF Europe newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html
For the attention of The Director General of the WHO
Dear Mr LEE Jong-wook,
Software patents grant a monopoly on their specific idea. The patentee
can grant or withhold authorisation to use that idea and unilaterally
define the terms under which such authorisation is granted or
withheld. This is before even a single line of source code has been
written. In fact: lawyers are generally in a better position to obtain
software patents than the majority of programmers are. Each program
consists of thousands of ideas -- each of them potentially subject to
patent claims. Even though the European Patent Convention explicitly
excludes software from being patented, so far 30,000 software patents
have in fact already been granted in recent years.
The discussion [1] about a formal introduction of software patents has
been ongoing for several years and we would like to make you aware of
the effect of software patents on telemedicine, an area of great hope
for many.
Today, we are seeing the first steps in the telemedicine area. Instead
of being delivered by traditional post, X-Ray scans are transferred
electronically, reducing the availability timescale from days to
seconds. Physicians will soon be able to monitor individual patients
remotely, something that will in particular offer possibilities of
increased medical coverage for people in remote areas all over the
world. Given the demographic development in northern countries and the
increasing medical needs of potentially wealthy elderly people; that
particular idea was patented years ago. [2]
The database of the European Patent Office currently contains 69
patents directly referring to "telemedicine". That seemingly low
number should not let you rest easy. Not only is the number of
software patents likely to skyrocket after the formal introduction of
software patents.
Each application in the field of telemedicine will also depend on
basic software principles to function. These basic principals include
security, networking and data storage. Security in particular is key,
because the number of methods to make computer systems secure are
limited. There is no compulsory licensing of software patents, so
market tactics are likely to see many applications disappear in
courtroom battles before they have become available to patients. In
addition, besides having to refinance the legal costs, each
telemedicine and remote surgery application is likely to suffer from
known security holes and stability problems.
Software patents are putting the wealth of the software patent lobby
over the health of citizens in Europe and around the world.
That is why we believe software patents will adversely affect your
cause and are asking you to take a firm stand against software
patents. If you have further questions, need additional information or
would like to help us prevent software patents in Europe, please do
not hesitate to get in touch.
With kind regards,
Georg Greve
President
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable
non-governmental organization dedicated to all aspects of Free
Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate
in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and
redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition
allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness
for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and
giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE, which was founded in 2001 as the
European sister organization of the Free Software Foundation in the
United States.
Further information: http://www.fsfeurope.org
[1] http://fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/swpat.en.html
[2]
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=…
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World (http://brave-gnu-world.org)