BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Friday, September 24, 2010 -- The Free
Software Foundation (FSF) is advising the software community in the
United States to write to the United States Patent and Trademark Office
(USPTO) and ask that software patents be excluded from upcoming
guidance about patent eligibility.
Following the Supreme Court's recent decision in *Bilski v. Kappos*,
the USPTO plans to release new guidance about which patent
applications will be accepted, and which will not. As part of this
process, they are seeking input from the public about how that
guidance should be structured. The FSF is taking this opportunity to
call on the USPTO to exclude software patents from eligibility, and
encouraging others in the field to do the same.
"Normally when the USPTO solicits feedback like this, they hear almost
exclusively from patent attorneys who have a vested interest in making
sure that patents are granted as broadly as possible," said Brett
Smith, license compliance engineer at the FSF. "And this process will
be overseen by David Kappos, the current director of the USPTO and
formerly an attorney at IBM in charge of their heavy-handed patent
strategy. It's not hard to guess what this guidance will look like if
we leave this process in their hands, so we're taking this opportunity
to put on public record how software patents harm all computer users
and developers, and why, based upon the Supreme Court's ruling, they
should not be granted."
Ciaran O'Riordan, executive director of End Software Patents added,
"The *Bilski* decision didn't give us everything we wanted, but there
was a silver lining. We asked the Supreme Court to reaffirm their
rulings in *Diehr*, *Benson*, and *Flook*, and distance themselves
from the decisions of lower courts that expanded patent eligibility.
They did just that. Now the USPTO has to interpret this shift, and
our task is to ensure that this key element of the decision isn't
forgotten."
The FSF is advising US corporations, computer users, and developers to
express their opposition to software patents by writing to
<Bilski_Guidance(a)uspto.gov>. More information and example starter
text is available at <http://www.fsf.org/news/uspto-bilski-guidance>
and
<http://en.swpat.org/wiki/USPTO_2010_consultation_-_deadline_27_sept>.
The USPTO is accepting comments through Monday, September 27.
### About the Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to
promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and
redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and
use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating
system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free
software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and
political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites,
located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information
about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
<http://donate.fsf.org>. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.
### About Free Software and Open Source
The free software movement's goal is freedom for computer users. Some,
especially corporations, advocate a different viewpoint, known as
"open source," which cites only practical goals such as making
software powerful and reliable, focuses on development models, and
avoids discussion of ethics and freedom. These two viewpoints are
different at the deepest level. For more explanation, see
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html>.
### Media Contacts
Brett Smith
License Compliance Engineer
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942 x18
<brett(a)fsf.org>
###
_______________________________________________
FSF And GNU Press mailing list <info-press(a)fsf.org>
http://lists.fsf.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press
= FSFE: Stop unfair advertising - get your government to promote free
PDF readers! =
[Permanent URL : http://www.fsfe.org/news/2010/news-20100913-01.en.html]
The Free Software Foundation Europe calls on all Europeans to seek out
advertisements for proprietary PDF readers on their government's
websites, and report them [1]. In addition, FSFE has prepared
a petition [2] demanding an end to such advertising practices, and
encourages the public to sign it .
"Every time that state websites link to non-free applications and
encourage visitors to use them, they needlessly encourage citizens to
throw away their freedom", says Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's President.
As websites such as pdfreaders.org [3] demonstrate, Free
Software PDF readers exist for all major operating systems. Fellows of
FSFE launched the project in 2009 in response to public bodies' habit
of advertising a particular non-free product on their sites.
FSFE's Fellowship Coordinator Matthias Kirschner comments: "What would
you think about a sign on the highway saying 'You need a Volkswagen to
drive on this road. Contact your Volkswagen dealer for a gratis test
drive'? When it comes to PDF readers, governments seem to think that
this is acceptable."
Such endorsements give unfair advantage to whichever proprietary
product they recommend, and are often accompanied by inaccurate
statements presenting the application as the only available option.
The hunt begins on September 13th, and will continue until October
17th 2010. Prizes will be awarded at the end of October to the
individuals and groups who report the greatest number of proprietary
software advertisements on government websites.
Happy hunting!
1. www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.html
2. www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/petition.html
3. http://pdfreaders.org/">pdfreaders.org
== About the Free Software Foundation Europe ==
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit
non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and
involved in many global activities. Access to software determines
participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation
in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free
Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the
furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study,
modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these
issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving
people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are
central issues of the FSFE.
http://fsfe.org/
(Please support us to reach more people in their native language. Join
our translator team http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/.)
= FSFE Newsletter - September 2010 =
In this edition we are covering Free Software in education, distributed
Free Software solutions as alternative to centralised services, some ways
to celebrate what we -- the Free Software community -- already achieved,
and how you can participate in the European football championship even if
you are not interested in football.
A lot of us used August to recharge our batteries. We also supercharged
our internship team, as Nicolas Jean joined Maëlle Costa and Sam Tuke.
Karsten [24]gave an interview in Noticias de Gipuzcoa (Spanish) where he
talks about how Free Software contributes to the division of power in
democracies. He also discusses how Free Software helps local enterprises
to acquire advanced technology skills, and keeps profits in the region. I
(Matthias) gave an interview to Dradio to explain a wider audience, that
[25]'Free does not mean gratis (German)', explaining how and why to earn
money with software you can use, study, share, and improve.
== Free Software in education ==
As more people understand technology, more people will understand why
Free Software is important for our society. Our aim is that children and
students do not only learn how to use software, but understand the
principles how software and computers in general work. With Free Software
there are no artificial barriers to stop you from learning. You can dive
right in and see exactly how professionals design software.
Our [26]education team is connecting people working on these topics to
avoid duplication of efforts, spreads information about Free Software in
education and explains the importance of software freedom.
Edu-team member [27]Guido Arnold published a summary covering news about
Free Software in education over the last 16 month in European countries,
including news from Free Software distributions aiming for education, and
news what happened in the education team itself.
== Celebrate Software Freedom ==
Many of us dedicate a lot of time and energy working for freedom in the
digital age. One possibility to celebrate our achievements worldwide is
[28]Software Freedom Day on September 18th. At this day we encourage you
to celebrate Free Software, and share your joy with others.
We organise and take part in several events. Our Austrian Fellows are
organising an event in Graz, Hugo Roy is planning an activity in Paris,
our German Fellows take part at events in Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, and
Offenburg. Our President Karsten will give a talk at a celebration in the
Royal Library of The Hague/Netherlands and Reinhard Müller will hold a
speech at FrOSCamp in Zurich titled "Free yourself -- how to save the
world in five easy steps". For more details check out [29]our event page
and [30]the Fellowship calendar.
== Free Software Championship ==
Do you like Football? To like Guido's Free Software championship, you
don't have to. The idea is to run a parallel tournament to the football
championship in Europe 2012 where the discipline is Free Software usage
in government. Guido developed the [31]ground rules and uses the
[32]information from our page about Free Software usage in the public
administration as input. Participate by [33]adding missing data about the
Free Software usage in governments to our website and discuss the rules
with Guido. If you like to microblog about it, you can use the hashtag
#euro4fs.
== Will distributed Free Software preserve our freedom? ==
Today, the majority of Europe's citizens communicate on-line, often
hundreds of times a day. Employers demand it, communities need it, yet
more and more digital communication happens through only a handful of
globalised service providers. Whether emailing, social networking,
blogging, calling over VOIP, sharing files or researching data, control
over our data and what we can do remains firmly out of our grasp.
A democratic society relies on dividing power between its institutions
and citizens. Individuals deserve control of their own actions and
information in the digital age.
Does Free Software offer us this control, through distributed, accessible
and transparent ways of interacting? That is what we want to discuss. We
will be hosting an own track at FSCONS. Our five talks form a series
entitled [34]'Divide and Reconquer: regaining control of our
communications', and includes speakers from software initiatives that are
changing the future of the Internet.
'Divide and Reconquer' invites you to engage with the empowering concept
of decentralised networks, understand how recent trends have concentrated
control, and witness the most exciting tools available for taking the
power back.
* The foundations of the Internet: the dawn of peer-to-peer (working
title) - Benjamin Bayart (French Data Network)
* The Centralisation of the Internet (working title) - Torsten Grote
(FSFE)
* Socially responsible social networks (working title) - Michael
Chisari (Appleseed Project), Jaussoin Timothée and Ludovic Bocquet
(Movim)
* Web Search By The People, For The People (working title) - Michael
Christen (YaCy)
* TBA - Matt Lee (FSF)
== Get active: Encourage people think about distributed software ==
For our monthly get active item, we would like to encourage more people
to think about distributed Free Software programs as an alternative to
centralised services. Our track 'divide and reconquer' at FSCONS will
deal with that. Please help us:
* Attend the conference, discuss the topics with us and afterwards
continue discussions with friends. [35]Accommodation booking through
FSCONS will close by the end of September.
* Help out as a volunteer during the conference in Gothenburg. For
example you can help us with recording the talks so more people can
benefit from them. Get in [36]touch with us. Your help will be very
much appreciated.
* Promote the conference on your website, or by inviting friends.
* Check out the topics of the track and send us possible questions for
the speakers to [37]our discussion lists.
Thank you for supporting FSFE!
Regards,
Matthias Kirschner- FSFE
1. http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss
2. http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss
3. http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201009.en.html#content
4. http://fsfe.org/index.en.html
5. http://fsfe.org/about/about.en.html
6. http://fsfe.org/projects/work.en.html
7. http://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html
8. http://fsfe.org/donate/donate.en.html
9. http://fsfe.org/order/order.en.html
10. http://fsfe.org/press/press.en.html
11. http://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus.en.html
12. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/
13. http://wiki.fsfe.org/
14. http://planet.fsfe.org/
15. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join
18. http://fellowship.fsfe.org/about
19. http://softwarefreedomday.org/
20. http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201009.de.html
21. http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201009.el.html
22. http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201009.fr.html
23. http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201009.it.html
24.
http://www.noticiasdegipuzkoa.com/2010/08/23/economia/el-dinero-que-se-gast…
25. http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=627
26. http://fsfe.org/projects/education/eduteam.en.html
27.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2010/08/free-software-in-education-clearing-the…
28. http://softwarefreedomday.org/
29. http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.html
30. http://wiki.fsfe.org/FellowshipEvents
31. http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2010/08/euro-2012-in-free-software/
32. http://wiki.fsfe.org/Free_Software_usage_in_public_administration
33.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2010/08/euro2012-qualifying-preparing-for-day-2/
34. http://fsfe.org/events/fscons-2010.en.html
35. http://fscons.org/catalog/14
36. mailto:fellowship@fsfeurope.org
37. http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html
38. http://fsfe.org/about/kirschner/kirschner.en.html
39. http://fsfe.org/index.en.html
40. http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss
41. http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss
42. http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml
43. http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html
44. http://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201009.en.html#top
45. http://fsfe.org/index.en.html
46. http://fsfe.org/source/news/nl/nl-201009.en.xhtml
47. http://fsfe.org/contribute/translators/index.en.html
48. http://fsfe.org/about/fsfnetwork.en.html
49. http://www.fsf.org/
50. http://www.fsf.org.in/
51. http://www.fsfla.org/
--
Free Software Foundation Europe <http://www.fsfe.org>
FSFE News <http://fsfe.org/news/news.en.rss>
Upcoming FSFE Events <http://fsfe.org/events/events.en.rss>
Fellowship Blog Aggregation <http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml>
Free Software Discussions <http://fsfe.org/contact/community.en.html>