[Cumbria] Legal development of free software

[Nick Hill]

Ivan Markowicz wrote:
>>I am concerned that companies such as Microsoft will succeed in killing
>>their competition- free and open source software.
>>
>>This will occur not through competition but by political collaboration.
>>There is a real and current danger that free software will, effectively,
>>be outlawed by the introduction of extended state-sanctioned monopolies.
> 
> 
> How could an MEP be convinced to introduce a state sanctioned monopoly?
 > I heard there were plans in Europe to start an antitrust lawsuit against
 > Microsoft. The idea of this would be to break up a monopoly.

What Mario Monty is considering and what Arlene McCarthy is doing have 
nothing to do with each other. It is confusing the situation.

Arlene McCarthy is being wined and dined at the expense of Microsoft. 
She is closely allied to a group funded by Microsoft. The group 
organises dinners for select MEPs to talk to members supporting the 
group. Please see the FFII site for more info:
http://swpat.ffii.org/players/mccarthy/index.en.html

> 
> 
>>Arlene McCarthy is MEP for Cumbria, Lancashire, Chester and Cheshire.
>>She is currently working hard to push through proposals which will kill
>>the paradigm of free software development.
> 
> 
> Nothing she can do will kill development of Linux. Linux is released under 
 > the general public license so anyone can develop Linux. The design
 > of the GPL and free software is such that it will grow organically and
 > grow faster on top of what has already been made.
> 

If everything remained the same, then yes. Under new proposals, 
developing software will be too dangerous for small players. Only 
players with a substantial software patent portfolio will be able to 
play in the market. Richard Stalman makes an excellent case of how this 
works in his Cambridge software patent lecture. If anyone is in doubt 
about the dangers of software patents please listen to the recording or 
read the transcript available here:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/stallman-patents.html

Small players will be put out of business by big players wielding 
patents. For example, the Samba project attracts a great deal of ire 
from Microsoft. The project provides a route around the per-connection 
licensing costs associated with servers for use with windows desktops. 
Microsoft, by implementing a patented idea in the netbios protocol can 
lock samba out of supporting future versions of windows.


> 
>>We can secure the future of free and open source software by fighting
>>Arlene McCarthy politically. She must be made to realise that she is
>>actually not aligning herself with the power interests which will
>>promote her political career.
> 
> 
> If she was thinking of doing something which would put so much power
 > into corporate hands as killing the only competition the Windows
 > monopoly has, she will break her political career. This is something
 > people just will not tolerate.

This is clearly not how Arlene McCarthy thinks. She is possibly dazzled 
by the power, money and professionalism of the SWPAT group she 
associates with. Arlene McCarthy is clearly not motivated to do what is 
best for society. She has not a whisper of socialism. I believe she is 
motivated solely through self-interest. I welcome any hypotheses of what 
else could be motivating her to do what she is doing.