[Fsfe-france] Re: Software Patents Agenda

[loic]

PILCH Hartmut writes:
 > 
 > We haven't listed them in any single document.
 > 
        ...
 > 
 > It can't be found in any central place, but most of the things that were
 > done were documented.  Some appointments with EU officials took place and
 > will take place.

        Thanks for the confirmation. I thought I missed an important 
set of reference documents. Basically what you say is that digging thru
the mailing lists archive and asking people is the way to go. 
 
 > >    - How can I integrate the agenda I built into petition.eurolinux.org ?
 > >      Is it desirable, useless, too complex, not important ?
 > 
 > I will give you a zope login today so that you can build the page into the
 > petition site.  It seems
 > 
 >      http://petition.eurolinux.org/reference/agenda/
 > 
 > would be a good location.

        Ok. 

 > All those points need to be worked in gradually.
 > That's what working with Zope can be good for.  Other people can go over
 > the page and add some things they know of.

        Correct. Let's do this step first and then worry about the rest
later.

 > We can take some of the dicsussions off the mailing lists and conduct them
 > in private or via address@hidden

        From what I understand address@hidden has a private archive.
I'd rather discuss this in public (on the aful mailing list for instance)
so that potential contributors learn from it. 

        I'll insert something like this in the FSF Europe pages to 
explain how FSF friends can participate to the fight against software
patents:

        How to get involved ?

        - Send a letter to your government officials to explain in your
          own words why you're not in favor of the legalization
          of software patents in Europe.
        - Get an appointment with European Commission officials, bring
          them documents explaining why software patents are bad.
          (there should really be a lobbying howto on this, it's complex)
        - Sign the petition

        - Send information and pointers about your government positions
          on software patents to (what is the prefered, public, europe
          wide mailing list ?)
        - Help building and maintaining the web site petition.eurolinux.org.
          In order to do this, propose a change or update to 
          address@hidden It will be integrated by 
          someone. If you plan to contribute on a regular basis you will
          be given a Zope account to do the updates yourself.

        I also realize that such a list would be useful on the 
petition.eurolinux.org web site itself since I was not able to find
something similar.

        On the FSF Europe web site specific side, I'll write something
like:

          Most of the information displayed on the FSF Europe web
          pages related to software patents is mirrored from
          petition.eurolinux.org. There are many reasons for this.
          Although petition.eurolinux.org is a misleading name, it is
          a very active web site that gathers most of the information
          and actions related to the software patents problem in
          europe. The FSF Europe acknowledge this fact by contributing
          to it and using it as a central repository instead of
          duplicating their effort. Another reason is that it's the
          only europe wide initiative that successfully gather
          numerous individuals and companies who are willing to stop
          software patents in europe. The FSF Europe is building a
          european network that will be benificial and will make every
          effort to contribute its resources to
          petition.eurolinux.org. In short, the FSF Europe applies
          the rule of cooperating and sharing instead of duplicating
          and being secret.

        This gives you the spirit in which I'm working and it also 
triggers a few questions.

        - Will petition.eurolinux.org agree that www.fsfeurope.org mirrors
          some of its content ? I see no copyright notice allowing this,
          therefore I have to ask. This content could also be available
          on the LPF web site or any another web site. 

        - The FSF Europe is willing to contribute to
          petition.eurolinux.org regardless of the possible disputes
          related to Free Software vs Open Source or GNU/Linux vs
          Linux. The software patents problem is above all these
          considerations and must even include non free software
          advocates. Does petition.eurolinux.org agrees on the principle ?
          Or is there any reason why petition.eurolinux.org would have
          a problem working with the FSF Europe ? 

        Cheers,

-- 
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