[Fsfe-ie] Enforcement Directive mark two

Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran at fsfe.org
Wed Jul 13 15:21:40 CEST 2005


Malcolm Tyrrell <malcoh0l at yahoo.ie> writes:

> in the Patents debate we made a conscious decision to stand with SMEs

and it was a good decision, but a lot of people framed the debate as SMEs
Vs. Whatever.  Mostly because that was the easiest argument to make.

This wasn't so much of a problem for this list since this list is a focal
point of most/all of Irelands competence on this issue, but for the next
battle we have to make sure that others are able to make the best arguments,
instead of resorting to the easiest one.

The pro-swpat camp won most of the ground they won because they noticed a
weak point in the legislative process (the largest party in the EP was
having their vote dictated to them by one person, so they just had to get
this one person on-side).

After their very embarrassing defeat in that round, they'll be looking for a
more stable weakness in our position.  We can't afford to leave the SME
problem open in the next round: the pro-swpat camp will offer a Software
Patents + SME Assistance Plan compromise.  And it really will be a
compromise, and it will be what we have asked for, and it will be terrible.


-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan,                              |   Support FSFE's work against
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/             | software patents by becomming
                                               |     a Fellow: http://fsfe.org



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