Dozens of sites shut down in protest of EU software patents…
Slashdot’s running a story on how several open source/free software sites are shutting down to protest the possible acceptance of a law legalizing software patents in the EU. Read the article here: Slashdot | Sites Shut Down to Protest Software Patents.
I noticed this myself last night when I stopped by the Knoppix homepage to check on the status of my favorite LiveCD linux distro, and found instead that the site was closed down in protest of the EU Software Patents, and a short explanation and links to a petition to stop this law from going through. Now it seems that a bevy of sites for other open source software projects have followed suit, including such OSS heavy hitters as TUTOS, WINE, The Gimp, gPHPEdit, Xine, FreshRPMs, and a slew more.
Why are they doing this? Well, in a nutshell:
In the next few days, the European Parliament will decide about the legalisation and adoption of so-called “software patents” in Europe, which are already used by large companies in other countries to put competitors out of business. This can lead to the termination of many software projects such as TUTOS, at least within Europe, because the holders of the over 30,000 already granted “software patents” (currently without a legal foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial things like “progress bars”, “mouseclicks on online order forms”, “scrolling within a window” and similar. That way, software developers will have to pay the “software-patentholders” for using these features, even in their own, completely self-developed applications, which can completely stall the development of innovative software for small and medium companies. Apart from this, the expense for patent inquiries and legal assistence is high, for even trying to find out if the self-developed software is possibly violating “software-patents”, if you want to continue to market your software. Contrary to real patents, “software-patents” are, in the current draft, monopolization of business ideas and methods, even without any tangible technical implementation.
To paraphrase in terms non-programmers might be more familiar with: a software patent is akin to patenting a way of doing things. If someone had patented ‘hitting a nail into a piece of wood with a hammer’, we would have to pay that guy royalties every single time you wanted to build anything out of wood using nails and a hammer. If soeone had patented ‘using a numeric keypad to enter a series of digits as an identification measure’, then, presto, you’d have a patent on putting in PIN numbers in ATM machines, and every bank in the world would have to pay the patent holder royalties on this.
Sound ridiculous? It is, but since it’s happening in the world of software, not real life objects, it’s in real danger of becoming law. This severely threatens the development and viability of open-source, and even many commercial, software projects. Many open source projects and smaller commercial offerings are created by small teams of underfunded workers or unpaid volunteers who code for the love of it, or to make something that will benefit others. If these people find themselves having to pay a royalty for every clickable button or scrollable window in their applications, or for every time they calculate an average or format a number, these projects would quickly be bankrupted out of existence.
Don’t let this happen. Click here to find out more about this and voice your opinion.
