software patents

Computing Our Liberty: July 2005

Victory

It\'s summer time folks! Well, at least for the most of us (most of Earth being mainly on the northern hemisphere). For many summer is a vacation time, but this summer may also be a celebration time. The timing is great, just before you may have picked up your suitcases you heard the great news, the battle we were all fighting for the past months is won. EU wont see software patents legalized in quite some time after this. However, while you may certainly afford yourself a nice and happy vacation there, winning a battle (however significant it may be) isn't winning the war. Software is being patented in Europe no matter if these patents aren't universally enforcable and some countries may yet legalize them. This merely means that the eyes and ears should be kept open.

Computing Our Liberty: June 2005

Loosing the spirit?

\"Linux\", \"Open Source\", \"Free Software\", these are just some of the new major buzzwords floating around in the information technology world, each one having a different meaning to all of us, each one capable of inducing a different image in our minds of what the true sense of those words are. The average person might only see them as merely a great contribution to any young revolutionaries lexicon, and in this capitalist society made to believe that these things are somehow wrong.

Free Software is making a major breakthrough in the market, there are more GNU/Linux users around these days and even more corporations trying to take advantage of that very fact. Some are scared by it, others are excited by it, but somewhere in the mist of all the excitement did we somehow forget what these things really mean to us. At what point did it become ok to make money from \"free\" software, at what point did we say to ourselves, we have the right to have access to the source code. The truth is both are true, at one point it was black and white but somewhere along the line, the neat little line got smudged, turning black and white into black white and grey, it\'s this grey area that makes people unsure as to what \"Free Software\" truly is.

Yet another month has passed, full of events, screaming thoughts and voices, virtual fights, victories and defeats. But the "war" is still raging. And this column is on the "computing liberty front", with small people like you and me with great multiplied power, fighting for a simple freedom to be masters of our own computers, our own digital destiny and our "hidden" urge to cooperate for our and everyone's benefit.

Software Patents: Screaming in the night: "Where is the light!"

But on the other front there are people afraid for their position in the world, for the destiny they planed to build on the expense of others. Software Patents in Europe and US are nothing short of that. Corporate powers of capitalism (read: profitland) are now more powerful than a country, or even worse, a union. So powerful that the union\'s principles are being thrown away for it - democracy (if there ever was such a thing) - rejected for \"higher interests\". The \"suspected\" collusion of Microsoft with European Commission when they, despite all of the major opposition, decided to pass software patents as an A-item leaving only one chance for it to be rejected, on a second reading to European Parliament, proves the already clear involvement of \"higher interests\". There is little chance that European Parliament will have majority for rejection and we, my dear readers, have come ever close to the worst threat our computing freedoms ever encountered becoming a legitimate reality.