[SLUG] A possible speaker, do you want her?

[Paul Teasdale]

On Monday 15 Nov 2004 10:44, john at johnallsopp.co.uk wrote:
> I have a friend who lives locally called Dr. Farrell Burnett who is a
> spectacular brain-head PhD in intellectual property and, while she
> may not know Linux, comes from our side of the argument. I've
> contacted her and she would be more than happy to come and talk to us
> about copyright, patents, and all that stuff in relation to software.
>
> Do we want that? In the January meeting? I want her to concentrate on
> what's happening with relation to the European patents thing and then
> maybe we can throw it to a discussion. What do people think?
>
Hi John,

I think this would be a really good idea as I'm quite interested in this 
kind of thing.

I don't know how closely you follow this kind of thing but rumours are a 
plenty that this is the way Microsoft is now looking to attempt to 
thwart the Linux onslaught (ie: claiming & enforcing patents).

Also Sun is one to be watched at the moment. Allegedly they don't know 
which way to turn regarding open source software and it was a great 
loss to them when Novell bought SUSE (with help from IBM apparently) 
because of implications for their Sun Java Desktop System. (For those 
that don't know this is a problem for Sun because their Java Desktop 
version of Linux is based on SUSE). I read an article a few weeks ago 
that Sun & Microsoft were burying the hatchet and looking to fight open 
source software with patents. This has many implications such as 
OpenOffice and Java etc.

These are not the exact articles I have read in the last few weeks but 
are on the same theme (and just as worrying):

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/09/16/HNopenoffice_1.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17586

This patent thing not only affects OSS but smaller commercial software 
developers such as the company I work for. It would be very nice to 
find out more info. Thanks John.

Regards,

Paul.

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