On Sun, Apr 21, 2002 at 01:57:21PM +0200, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote: > Jeroen Dekkers wrote: > > On Sun, Apr 21, 2002 at 11:52:58AM +0200, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote: > > > Stephen Zander wrote: > > > > I don't believe the US will ever stop supporting softare patents; > > > > there's too much money at stake. > > > > > > By the same reasoning, the EC member states should also all > > > support software patents. The European industry also has a > > > lot of money at stake in software-related R&D (all the > > > software in DVD players and mobile phones, for example). > > > > Software patents is the biggest threat for free software and we should > > *never* support them. > > Keep in mind that I was responding to Stephen's comment that > the US wouldn't get rid of software patents because of their > economic importance. The exact same argument can be made > for the European countries. I'm not saying the argument is > right. I have the idea that Europe is less braindamaged then the USA. I hope I don't get proved wrong... > Nevertheless, I'm not sure this is the right place to debate > patent policy. I don't think Debian should worry too much, > unless they receive notification from a patent holder > identifying a patent and a program that infringes. The problem is that it's already too late when we receive a notification. I agree that it isn't the right list, if you want to discuss software patents in Europe, I think the discussion mailinglist of the FSFE is a good place. But the outcome of the discussions about software patents there is already that they are all bad etc. ;-) Jeroen Dekkers -- Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers@jabber.org Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org IRC: jeroen@openprojects
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