In what tentatively appears to be a win for the good guys, the European Union has delayed voting on software patents until sometime in 2005. The reasons for the delay are many and varied, but the most significant reason is that they no longer have the majority, and a vote could well kill off the proposal. So they probably put it off until such time as they can work out a way to push it though without opposition. My guess is that there is a good many dollars behind this proposal, big software companies desperately want software patents in place as it’s a very effective weapon to use against your competition. (Look at the situation in the US if you don’t believe me.)
With many European countries eager to distance themselves from reliance on US big business, they are not too keen to vote in laws that are likely to cement their reliance on Microsoft for desktop and server software. Countries in which OSS (Open Source Software) is growing in popularity are showing a growing desire to remove software patents from the table, and rightly so because software patents are just an excuse for frivolous litigation used by big guys to kill off little guys. Software is copyright, you don’t patent a book, you copyright it, software is exactly the same. We don’t need to hand big monopolies any more tools with which they can oppress the competition.
Franki
