On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 00:18 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:

Of course mathematical discoveries like MP3 should not get patent protection, but AIUI from recent Debian threads, Germany is about as software-patent-happy as UK and US.

I'm not sure that's quite true; from my understanding there are certain types of patents that the German system is more likely to allow, but in general the levels of "badness" are roughly Germany < UK < EPO < US.

Even recently, the UKPO has been turning down some patents which really they should have granted on their previous logic.

Going back to MP3: you can view a list of the main patents here:

http://www.mp3licensing.com/patents/index.html

Most of those are mathematical in nature, and pretty awful, but not all of them: for example, the patent on psychoacoustic compression (0251028 over here) would likely survive any test that has been used previously or has been put forward (e.g., the "forces of nature" test that the Germans previously used), as far as I know (that's not to say that there hasn't been disagreement about whether or not it was actually novel).

Cheers,

Alex.

"Hanno Böck" ml@hboeck.de writes:

...

• Is this one of the "epa gives sw-patents although they're not

allowed"-case?

Probably. What we achieved in July 2005 did not change the EPO's practice.

We didn't really "win", we just scared them off. Now the software patents problem is coming back in a different form this Winter: http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/the_future_of...

I disagree. We won. It's just that winning a battle or even a war does not imply you can sleep on laurels. The attacks keep coming. That was a hostile force trying to take over a part of our law. We were the defenders and we kept the law intact, the attackers were forced to flee our land. Simply because we didn't slain them all doesn't mean that we didn't win. We have to keep watch, but we would have to anyway, whatever the outcome would have been.

Now sorry for the belicist metaphor, but I think saying we didn't win it's simply giving the pro-swpat field too much credit. They did the only thing they could do after we proved them wrong to legislators. And they've been forced to take less easy ways to their goals. We still have to stop them in those ways, and it's no easy task, but thinking we lost once does not help. We lost in the IPRED, in privacity, in DRMs, in so many laws so many times. But this time we won. We learnt much and we showed others we are right and may prevail. Maybe if we hadn't won we would have less reason to keep working.

When we started our campaign in March 2002 (we=CALIU, I know there were groups that had been active much earlier) we asked for rejection of the directive. And that's what we got in the end. I call that success.

Proposing better legislation that we currently have was no original goal, but was done as a constructive answer to legislators and deision makers. We don't really need better law (it is not hard to envision better legislation that we have, but the one we have suffices and there are many worse law in many other areas). Our problems are in unaccountability, democratic deficits, imbalances of interests, widespread ignorance and maybe money to be had by some if the weak defences of public interest can be undermined. No small threat, but no reason to think we didn't win if looking in perspective.

So we didn't win eternal peace, but still we won. Damn it, we won and you should know it since you worked so hard for it.

I'm not saying it because it is required partisan marketing to say always you won whatever it happens (like after elections), I'm saying it honestly because I think it is difficult to achive continued successes if we don't recognize one when you get it. Just as difficult as surviving with just one success.

On 06-Sep-2006, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:

So we didn't win eternal peace, but still we won. Damn it, we won and you should know it since you worked so hard for it.

An excellent perspective. Thank you.

On Thu, 2006-09-07 at 10:42 +0200, Stefano Spinucci wrote:

there is a RSS feed of all FSFE *blogs* ???

Not yet, sorry. This is a much requested feature, just below the antispam in comments and trackbacks. We are working on solving the spam issue. Next will be the aggregator/planet of fsfe.org. Do you know exactly how you wanted this aggregator to work like? Contribute your idea (and code, if you can) to the forum.

Thank you Stef

Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran@fsfe.org wrote:

For everyone, the current discussion is here: http://fsfe.org/en/forums/fellowship_smoothers/wishlist_a_blogs_portal

Unfortunately, not everyone can post there, can they?

I think planet's algorithm is broken and you can see the main effect when planet sites get spammed on every blog upgrade. I have a better algorithm http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2004-4.html#1081685979%40blogger.dsl.pipex.com which I'll implement in eZ if someone who knows it is willing to work with me. ( Or someone else can, if you prefer. ;-)

Thanks,

On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 14:39 +0100, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:

...

which I'll implement in eZ if someone who knows it is willing to work with me. ( Or someone else can, if you prefer. ;-)

I think Stef has organised an eZ hacking team, but I'll mention this to him.

I'm reading :)

Thanks MJ for offering help. I'll contact you in private.

/stef

MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop writes:

it would be nice to see where the EUR120/year's going to go...

With my time, the five main things I currently work on are software patents, IPRED2, GPLv3, policy meetings with the European Commission, and public speaking. Here's what I've publicly documented of my work:

For the latest on software patents, see: http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/the_future_of...

For an explantion of IPRED2, see: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ipred2/ (I am currently active on this in non-public ways)

GPLv3 work: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/ http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/europe-gplv3-conference

The work I do on policy meetings is mostly non-public.

And I keep a list of public speaking engagements at: http://ciaran.compsoc.com/#roadshow

I also have meetings which I can't publicly mention. Sometimes it's because it would be tactically bad to let the opposition know who is collaborating against them, and sometimes it's because the people meeting me can't be seen in public to be helping us.

Another source of information for what FSFE is doing is the newsletter: http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html

FSFE's funds are more transperant than most NGOs: http://fsfeurope.org/about/funds/funds.en.html

The 2005 accounts are delayed due to a change of accounting system which was needed because the organisation grew - but previous years are there.

There are still ways that our transperancy should be improved, but the core work has to continue at full speed while any changes are taking place, so it has to be an evolutionary process - and it has to suit the people who are doing the work. One person's perfect solution will be incompatible with other people. If you see low hanging fruit, make a suggestion.f

I think FSFE has shown, over five years, that it is doing important work, and that it is becoming more transperant and more effective over time. Being well funded should make that improvement continue or speed up. Being less well funded leaves us juggling resources between communicating our work and doing our work.

1. No support for FSF*'s non-free-software actions (FDL and so on)

Personally, I'm also not a fan of the GFDL, but I think it's disproportionate to black ball FSFE's work because of this.

FSFE does support the GFDL, including the invariant sections, but FSFE has not lobbied for invariant sections. We've said we find them acceptable and that we see their utility, but we never said we'd contest their removal. (I know, invariant sections are not the only issue, it's just an example.)

RMS said a year and a half ago that GFDL would be updated.

And, FWIW, in this talk: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6019 Eben Moglen says that a draft of the next version of the GFDL is almost ready, that it will be accompanied by a public consultation, and it will not include invariant sections. (It's also a generally interesting talk.)

2. No personal data for sites without a privacy policy or P3P support.

Hmm, seems like an easily correctable oversight. I've raised it now: http://fsfe.org/en/forums/fellowship_smoothers/privacy_policy

On Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:22, MJ Ray said:

As I'm sure you know, it's mostly not about the cost! Although it would be nice to see where the EUR120/year's going to go...

I am sorry for the trouble with bookkeeping. We had to change to a full balancing system and that took longer than we expected. We do have the numbers up to 2004 (http://fsfeurope.org/about/funds/2004.en.html). The 2005 numbers will be posted as soon as available.

1. No support for FSF*'s non-free-software actions (FDL and so on)

Ah well, I don't think that we support the FDL with any action (or well money) it it is related to software. Given that the FDL is the most widely used license for non-software (read "wikpedia"), there is of course a need to discuss problems this license has created.

I think we all will be glad to see the FDL problems cleaned out. At least I eagerly wait to get rid of non-free in sources.list which I unfortunately need to get hands on libc and automake docs.

2. No personal data for sites without a privacy policy or P3P support.

I was not aware that we don't have such a statement. Anyway, we don't just produce bits of information but we actually implement data protection. This is pretty common given that we are registered in Germany and German data protecion laws are very tight.

Shalom-Salam,

Werner

On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 19:48 +0200, Stefano Spinucci wrote:

I'd like to have a simple RSS aggregation of FSFE blog entries, readable with google reader (reader.google.com)

I can assure you that this is next on our todo list, right after adding the possibility to clean blog comments from spam (and avoid future spam problems). That seems to be very nasty.

today, reading LWN, I found two articles about planets:

Thank you, stef