[Sderby] Fwd: action week against EU software patent plans

[Dominic Knight]

Any thoughts on how we want to be involved in this as a user group?

Dom

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: action week against EU software patent plans
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 03:13:09 +0100
From: FFII/Eurolinux - Olaf Buddenhagen <muenchen0309@ffii.org>
To: lugmaster@sderby.lug.org.uk

Hello Linux supporters!

(We send this message to you as the contact person of your Linux
 User Group. Please forward it to the other members.)

Surely you know the deadly danger imposed on free software by
 software patents.

Under the influence of the patent lobby, the European Parliament is
 about to pass a directive allowing extremely broad software
 patentability -- harming not only GNU/Linux and free software in
 general, but also imposing danger on every programmer, web
 publisher, computer user, and severly demaging the European
 economy.

With massive protests organized by the FFII, we succeeded in
 thwarting a premature decision, and mobilizing public resistence by
 citizens, enterprizes, trade associations, and politicians.

September 24th has been set as a new date for the decision in
 European Parliament. Encouraged by the recent success, we are
 planning even wider protests before the decision this time, to
 further raise public awareness of the problem.

Besides of a second online demonstration, we want to organize
 mini-demos/info stands during the week between September 17th and
 September 24th in as many European cities as possible. We need your
 help with this. Although software patents are not only a concern
 for GNU/Linux users, we believe that the LUGs feature an
 exceptional combination of people strongly interested in stopping
 software patents, and the organisation (mailing lists etc.)
 necessary to line up such an event in a short run.

That's why we beg you to help us, to prevent a patent disaster.

http://netrik.sf.net/swpatents_de.html offers general information on
 software patents, the current situation, and the planned actions.

Organising the info stands is done via the wiki at
http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/InfoStands for the most part. You'll
 find tips there what to take care of when organizing such an event,
 as well as dedicated pages for each single demo, for interchange
 amongst those interested. Please simply add a new page for you city
 if noone exists yet. (To achieve this, klick the "edit" button;
 then insert the name into the existing list, following the scheme
 InfoStandCityname; confirm with "save"; and now follow the newly
 created link with the question mark.)

There is also irc.debian.org#bxl-ffii; usually, there are some FFII
 members present.

If you have further important questions, simply send a reply here.

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