As you maybe know, next week the european parliament will make a decicion on allowing software patents in europe. Maybe this will directly affect open source development, like the Irrlicht Engine. I don't think that I want to develop free software and getting sued afterwards as reward. For all of you living in europe, it would be a good idea to send mails to your european member of the parliament, trying to convince them not to allow software patents in europe.
There are some more informations available on http://petition.eurolinux.org/.
Software patent free europe?
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pman
Re: Software patents
I am also absolutely against software patents. I hope the EU parliament will see the imminent dangers associated with those patents!! Everybody sign the petition and write to the EU parliament members of your country!!
Ooh.. ooh... get your paperwork ready and patent 1 and 0.
Then you can sue for royalties from everyone.
If I lived in the EU, I would write to parliment. But since I live in the US where people patent the "Buy it Now" process and sue eBay. Patent "shopping carts" and sue small dot-coms. But that's not where the real money is. The real money is to ship a terrible product, and when someone talks ill about your product on a bulliten board, sue them, the board, the other people on the board, and anyone who donates to help his legal fund for slandering you. Or maybe I'll sue IBM for using Unix code in Linux and say that all open-source is illegal while still packaging SAMBA(open-source) with my Unix like SunOS is. All of the above are real incidents.
Patents here are not a shield for defending your intellectual property as they were originally meant to be, they are now swords for sueing for extra capital for your failing dotcom buisness.
Then you can sue for royalties from everyone.
If I lived in the EU, I would write to parliment. But since I live in the US where people patent the "Buy it Now" process and sue eBay. Patent "shopping carts" and sue small dot-coms. But that's not where the real money is. The real money is to ship a terrible product, and when someone talks ill about your product on a bulliten board, sue them, the board, the other people on the board, and anyone who donates to help his legal fund for slandering you. Or maybe I'll sue IBM for using Unix code in Linux and say that all open-source is illegal while still packaging SAMBA(open-source) with my Unix like SunOS is. All of the above are real incidents.
Patents here are not a shield for defending your intellectual property as they were originally meant to be, they are now swords for sueing for extra capital for your failing dotcom buisness.
Crud, how do I do this again?
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JayCG
The EU Parliament
I wouldn´t give to much attention to that matter at all. Why? Very simple: The European Parliament isn´t able to impose law, it doesn´t have any right for that. It is able to recommend anything to the Comission and we al know that the Comission does only do what the governments tell it to do. So, of course I am aware of the general problem. But to write to your local representant in parliament wouldn´t make too much sense. First of all, because the EU parliament consists of 2nd or 3rd line politicians without deep knowledge of any matter they are working on. These guys will not be interested in concerns of any programmers. Even if they are, they won´t understand the matter. Second of all, because the EU parliament will not be the democratic institution to decide. If any institution at all will make an important decision concerning this matter, not the parliament of the EU. Third of all, if you nevertheless want to write a letter, write it to your government and/or chancellor or prime minister or to the EU comission.
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Guest
Software patents aren't bad and stupid... no wait, they are.
http://news.com.com/2009-1023_3-5082004.html
Goodbye Macromedia Flash, Adobe Reader, WildTangent, Java Applets, etc... It's a shame that those billion other companies had to steal Eolas's idea of applications that launch in a web-browser, because if Eolas hadn't figured it out, no one would know how to do it.
When you guys in Europe get software patents, one of you needs to patent the IF statement, binary sorts, linked lists, 1 and 0.
http://news.com.com/2009-1023_3-5082004.html
Wait a minute, Eolas is a 1 man company and they patented "applications that launch in a webpage"?Filed in 1999, the Eolas case drew international attention last month, when a U.S. District Court ruled that Microsoft's IE browser violated Eolas' Patent No. 5,838,906. The patent, filed on Oct. 17, 1994, and granted Nov. 17, 1998, covers a system that launches an application within a Web page.
The jury found that IE infringed on the patent through its inclusion of Microsoft's ActiveX technology, which Web authors use to launch and run plug-in applications such as Java applets, Adobe Acrobat documents and Macromedia Flash movies. Without ActiveX, the Microsoft browser would be unable to fully render a significant proportion of pages on the Web as well as on many corporate intranets.
Goodbye Macromedia Flash, Adobe Reader, WildTangent, Java Applets, etc... It's a shame that those billion other companies had to steal Eolas's idea of applications that launch in a web-browser, because if Eolas hadn't figured it out, no one would know how to do it.
When you guys in Europe get software patents, one of you needs to patent the IF statement, binary sorts, linked lists, 1 and 0.
Crud, how do I do this again?
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Guest
And I've heard that there are already strange things patented like progress bars. And did you know that stencil buffer shadows are patented as well? I've read it here: http://www.flipcode.com/cgi-bin/msg.cgi ... bits&id=-1
But it looks like it is going well: The european parliarment desiced not to allow "pure" software patents. Read more here: (sorry, but it's a german page: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-24.09.03-000/)
[hey this post was written by me, niko. But the forum logged me out, and I'm not able to change the username afterwards. *grml*]
But it looks like it is going well: The european parliarment desiced not to allow "pure" software patents. Read more here: (sorry, but it's a german page: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-24.09.03-000/)
[hey this post was written by me, niko. But the forum logged me out, and I'm not able to change the username afterwards. *grml*]
Patents are a real weird case, niko could do whats known as a natural patent right now (if he wants to know how, he can pm me) and then if patents are brought in he can legally set the rules (which he has already stated on the user licence, and we all like). for use of the engine. We have Patents and Copyrights here in New Zealand and if you use them right they arent too terrible, when they are abused (see USA use of patents) then they are just plain weird.
Hopefully noone tries to abuse patents in the EU, none has gotten to in NZ to my knowledge
and im considering Patenting a drink i designed (Alcoholic Beverage 
)
Hopefully noone tries to abuse patents in the EU, none has gotten to in NZ to my knowledge
and im considering Patenting a drink i designed (Alcoholic Beverage )You should read my site. I've been keeping tabs on all the really strange patents out there. Many of them are US, but quite a few UK ones are popping up.
The one that has mystified people the most is the US Patent on Basmati Rice, which Indians (from India) have been eating for centruries. But a guy in the US got away with a patent and the license to sole distributorship in the US of it.
The one that has mystified people the most is the US Patent on Basmati Rice, which Indians (from India) have been eating for centruries. But a guy in the US got away with a patent and the license to sole distributorship in the US of it.
Crud, how do I do this again?