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On Wednesday 04 May 2005 20:12, Aaron Trevena wrote:
Hello everybody, I'm writing to highlight the need for you to add your voice and support to the campaign against software patents and the european council's Computer Implemented Invention directive. You are probably wondering how it affects you, well.. If you use linux it will affect you as - MS Office document formats are patented
We choose to use openoffice at work because we object to the price of MS office, may people we deal with send word documents and this would effect us too. We choose to use firefox and thunderbird as well for various reasons, the fact is *we choose* for what ever reason and this choice would be taken away from us. We also *choose* to mix a linux server in with this sytem. But we would have to pay *the server tax* if patents got there way. There is *no* way we could afford MS Server, and SQL server and Exchange and all the other rubbish that is needed to do a *BASIC* job of serving emails and files.
And it goes beyond just linux.. All software will cost more as patent searching and legal costs push up the cost of developing and supporting software. Microsoft spends 100's of millions a year on patent litigation alone, and patent litigation is already sucking millions out of the UK economy through litigation before you even consider the impact on business growth and innovation.
It could flatten us, don't think its just *big* OS's like linux and windows in this mess. I write z80 firmware code, its software. its in the danger!. How many small businesses are involved in some form of software writing or another, PLC code, firmware? Patents do NOTHING to protect software writers and/or small/medium sized businesses. The ONLY people who will benifit are large coorporations. I think it was all summed up at the Cardiff patent workshop, when asked who did NOT want software patents EVERYONE who wrote/developed software for a living said they DID NOT want patents, the only person who wanted them was (to the best of my memory) a patent lawer!
You can do something about this - you can lobby your MP, particularly if you are in a marginal seat (of which there are a couple in the south west), you can lobby your MEP, as they need to support and reinstate the proposed from M Rocard and the FFII. Finally you can (and this is the easy bit) can sign up at http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/index.en.html and# http://www.economic-majority.com/.
With a new bunch of MP's a *good* time for a whole new round of letter writing and complaining to your (possibly new) MP. -- Robin Cornelius --------------------------------------------------- robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.cornelius.demon.co.uk http://sourceforge.net/projects/rt2400 GPG Key ID: 0x729A79A23B7EE764 http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x729A79A23B7EE764
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