[Fwd: [Kiberpipa] patentiranje programja.]

[Andraz Tori]

majhen koscek v mozaiku?

-----Posredovano sporočilo-----
From: viator <nova at skylined.org>

DEAD-line: 1. september.

webmasterji, admini, vabljeni k protestu.

"Software patents can get you prosecuted for publishing texts
you wrote yourself!"

----------------------------------------------------------
From: "Felix E. Klee" <felix.klee.deb-proj at gmx.net>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 17:24:08 +0200

Hi,

I guess that most of you are informed about software patents
and know that they are incompatible with most, if not all,
free software licenses (if not visit
http://www.ffii.org/index.en.html and/or, if you understand
german, http://patinfo.ffii.org/start.html).

On September 1 the European parliament will vote on a
directive that legalizes software patents in Europe. If this
directive comes through we will be stuck with software patents
in the foreseeable future. Chances of changing the patent law
back are close to zero.

Because of this, we at the FFII - an organization that has
already done a lot of lobbying against software patents - are
organizing an event in Brussels on August 27 as a last minute
protest to raise the attention of yet undecided members of the
parliament (many of them probably don't have a strong opinion
on this subject - they have to vote on dozens of directives
each weak). BTW, the event is public, of course. So you are
encouraged to join it (preliminary information can be found on
http://offen.ffii.org/bxl/FrontPage).

While planning this event we came up with the idea of a
parallel "online protest" in the form of a "simulation of the
effects of software patents on free software": We want
operators of servers running/serving free software to shut
down their site (or only offer access to it through some kind
of backdoor) and display a statement concerning software
patents instead. You can see an example on the FFII web site
at http://www.ffii.org. We would like to see this statement to
appear on as many web servers as possible (or "all over the
web") on 27th August, the day of the event.

BTW, in *my personal opinion* the whole thing would have much
more of an impact if sites were shut down for a day and no
backdoor is offered.

How can we reach people responsible for the web sites?

Felix

-- 
To contact me in private don't reply but send mail to
    felix DOT klee AT inka DOT de