Hello all,
I thought you'd like to know that Miguel de Icaza, GNOME founder and Ximian CEO, is talking to spanish Senate comission on March 14th, at 16:00 CET, in order to "explain the Free Software phenomenon".
With Miguel, spanish local "delegated advisor" (sorry, don't know the english name) of Microsoft will be speaking to the Senate's comission, in order to not have a "monopolistic" view.
This talk has been agreed thanks to the Senate, the free software community and Hispalinux, which currently has over 1,500 associates.
The talk will be streamed over internet, on the following page (Real Player G2): http://www.senado.es/novedades/index.html
Hope this will help our politicians understand the current software "market".
Regards.
Eneko Lacunza wrote:
[...] Hope this will help our politicians understand the current software "market".
I hope Miguel will point to Ballmer's patent threats on competing DotNET implementations.
On the patents@aful.org mailing list, phm@a2e.de said
<<
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-12.03.02-000/
you find a report about Steve Ballmer's speeches at CeBit in Hannover. It quotes Steve Ballmer as saying that for Unix systems a subset of DotNet will be made available but for university research only. "We have invested millions in this and obtained so many patents on it that we want to use."
Ballmer said this also with reference independent free projects such as Miguel d'Icaza's Mono.
Also, did spain political officials mention their opinion on the current directive proposal?
Hello,
El mié, 13-03-2002 a las 12:40, Laurent Guerby escribió:
Eneko Lacunza wrote:
[...] Hope this will help our politicians understand the current software "market".
I hope Miguel will point to Ballmer's patent threats on competing DotNET implementations.
I have forwarded this issue to the correct people, so that the information can reach to Miguel, thank you.
Also, did spain political officials mention their opinion on the current directive proposal?
There isn't any official statement currently. We're having some intense activity meeting goverment people, to explain various issues, with patents being a very important issue. We're contacting the media regularly as well, so that knowledgement around this kind of issues reaches as long as possible.
2-3 years ago our goverment created a new Ministery called "Ministery of Science and Technology". There is a lot of controversy around it, as almost all people in IT world thinks that people involved in it has not enough knowledgement to take decissions. Some past decissions (LSSI == the return of Inquisition to "spanish internet") have been very bad, but we think that things can get better, as they seem that are willing to hear what we have to say, at least. We'll see.
Thanks and regards,