Re: [Fsfe-uk] Munich, swpat and Linux - possible in UK

[Robin Green]

On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 09:41:37AM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 02:00 +0100, Tom Chance wrote:
> > After the recent news about the Green Party stirring the city of Munich 
> > into 
> > anti-software patent action [1], it made me think: would this be remotely 
> > possible in the UK? 
> 
> Surely stopping the roll-out of Free Software because of some fear of
> software patents is mostly akin to cutting your nose off to spite your
> face? I can't think Munich's actions would be something we should try to
> replicate in this country.

It's a nice piece of political brinkmanship. Temporarily losing Munich city
council to MS would be a minor setback compared to losing the fight to ban
software patents in Europe. I think the FFII and the Greens were right to raise
this issue and point out a concrete example for patents stifling reform in this 
way.

Of course, it would be pointless if the EU member states were entirely beholden
to the likes of Microsoft and couldn't be persuaded by threats to indigenous
software businesses... but as we've seen, that isn't the case with all EU
governments.

-- 
Robin

pgp5ydfYFBzAo.pgp
Description: PGP signature