September 24, 2003
European software patents
Word is coming out: the European Parliament voted in favor of the proposed legislation on software patents. While a good deal of amendments made it through the vote, it remains to be seen how much the European legislation will differ from the US one, once it gets implemented. There's a mixed mess of hurrays and boos to be heard on the relevant lists and fora, as it isn't clear what difference the amendments exactly mean. Patent activists indicate that the overall legal text is different in many ways from the one in force in the US, but still there will be some important lobbying going on by BSA peeps to finally get what they want from the European Council.
I'm again thinking abuse-prone patent legislation should be countered through open source licenses, i.e. by adding clauses which disallow companies that abuse patent law for their own good to use a given open source project.
We don't have much by which we can fight with, but I'll have a serious look at the xReporter license in the next few weeks.