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Hello All,
I was just perusing the net and stopped by the Gimp's website and i noticed it looked different, because they are protesting some European software patent. and it got me wondering exactly what is this all about. so do any of our European pals understand? here is the link of course to see what i am referring to. :-|
http://www.gimp.org
Debian have the same on there site.
Most of the major Open Source sites have this up, as a protest to laws the European commissions want to impose. :p
to summarize it, it is the EU parlament who are voting to make a new patent law that might make free software illegal. An example is "SkoleLinux" or "SchoolLinux" in English. Some guy from '92 has a patent on teaching pupils with computers, and if that "new law" is passed, schoolinux developers can get sued. Same goes for gimp. Etc etc..
Recently, Microsofn had to pay (was it) 520 million dollars to a company that had panents on plugins in webbrowsers.
Now I'm very happy that Norway isn't a part of EU :)
The EU is a pain in the a***. It's all stupid beauracracy, protectionist c**p. And it matters to everyone in the world, not just the EU member states.
meh ... this protest business is really getting on my nerves. it is just causing me more headaches then I care for. seems like every site i go to, i have to find the fine print saying "sike ... enter the site thisaway" any of you blokes from EU please let us know when this is all resolved and what the "verdict" is.
I'll second that.Quote:
Originally Posted by kevinatkins
How many people who have a say in things (politicians etc) actualy have a lue about anything to do with computers? next to none i'm guessing. they will have advisors. advisors who have a comp sci degree and an mcp and nothing more. no experience... or very little at least.
it pisses me off how they can make laws for things they don't understand. It's just like if J decided that no-one was allowed to use the forum from a dialup connection, not knowing that some of these people have no option but to use a dialup connection.
ok, thats annoyed me now... i'm going to go to sleep :evil:
Although the E.U. has not lived upto its over hyped power and has made some really bad decisions, it is still the only thing currently that can make the U.S. stop and think before it acts economically.
It has not lived up to this but that was one of the major selling points when their was only the U.S. and U.S.S.R. With some changes and cooperation, it still can fulfill it primary goals.
On a related subejct I remember the push for all U.S. industries to become ISO 9000 certified which is a subset of the U.N. for International commerce. The U.S. can be movitated but I've only seen it via $$$$$$$$$. The E.U. had a deadline of compliance with ISO 9000 or the product couldn't be sold to Europe from the U.S. That made mfg's of all sorts run for compliance in the U.S.