a future with hurdles for ubuntu

[Alexander Volovics]

On june 5 or 6 the EU bill on software patents is due for
debate in the "full" parliament. The bill as it reads now is a
invitation to horror (with a little googling you can find the
text or summaries somewhere, and also accounts of it's history
up to now).

Unless you are a card carrying member of the Business Software
Alliance, or feel at home in the capitalist, neoliberal, freemarket,
globalisation, privatise everything stream of effluence that is
being poured over Europe you might find something fishy about
the patenting of code (in whatever form).

Think about patenting mathematical theorems, lemmas, corrolaries.
Or patenting text phrases, sequences of musical notes, etc.
These things "belong" to everybody. They are not the 'intelectual
property' of some multinational or consortium.

The only acceptable form for this bill would run along the lines
of Michel Rocard's suggestions (Rocard is a former French prime
minister and a member of the european parliament).
Everything else should be rejected outright by a majority of the
parliament and not be sent back to the EU council for change or
amemdments. And certainly the unelected EU commission should keep
its dirty, business lobby tainted, paws off the bill.

It is short day but massive polite protest might still have some
influence. If possible approach your representative in the EU
parlement, succinctly and politely, to 'votez non'. If possible
organize massive protests in Brussels, etc.

Especially our eastern european ubuntistas should wake up to
the fact that after basking for a short while in the so called
progressive schemes of neoliberal, freemarket, privatise eveything
reformers they might find themselves even more entangled and
enslaved than before.

And if any German ubuntista can get close enough to Brigitte Zypries
I would advice ging this socialist Bundesjustizministerin a very very
firm kick in the arse for her advice to the German EU parliamentarians.

Alexander