Elect NoSoftwarePatents as European Of The Year 180
Aargh writes "Every year a public Internet poll is taken to vote for, amongst others, the "European of the Year". This year, the founder of NoSoftwarePatents.com has been selected as a candidate. Taken from the NoSoftwarePatents.com site: "We now have a first-rate opportunity to make political leaders, media and citizens all over the world realize the significance of our cause. Please give us your vote, and help us gain more votes, so that the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign be elected as the new 'European of the Year'." Non-europeans can also vote, so why dont we unleash the slashdot hordes?" Mr. Mueller had been exchanging e-mails recently on this subject; thanks to an introduction from Kaj Arnö. I truly do think that given his, and the organization's work that they deserve to win. Check out the celebrity endorsements as well. *grin* Also, worth reading their voting guide if you are going to vote.
Also read the reasons for their nominations (Score:2, Insightful)
Many of the voting recommendations have more to do with politics than patents; when it has little to do with patents, it might be worth disobeying the recommendations in order to make a real vote, rather than simply boosting an arbitary choice.
I wish in fact that NoSoftwarePatents.com had made no recommendation when the was no patent-related issues for that candidate. Such block-voting recommendations also make it easier for people to write this kind of idiocy [techcentralstation.com].
Do not vote if you have no clue (Score:5, Insightful)
Tough choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Voted for Florian though because I think that is the best choice for a more free economy.
Sweet irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine some bobo from MS handing over the prize to the guy from NoSoftwarePatents.
(I know the organisation would let it come to that, but Microsoft would still be on all the promo material, press releases,...)
Disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
-Da3vid-
Re:Do not vote if you have no clue (Score:4, Insightful)
Business Leader of the Year: Anne Lauvergeon
We have no particular problem with any of the five candidates, nor do we have a strong preference for someone. The recommendation above was made by a random generator.
Well, this is exactly the way not to go. Instead of giving an advice people have to judge for themselves and that regarding the patents issue the candidates are equal they take a random recommendation!
And ofcourse voting should have been possible with categories unselected, it is really a major error on behalve of the builder.
Re:Slashdot condones astroturfing? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, we're a bunch of geeks who are being urged to vote for someone who most of us probably happen to agree with.
Organising a campaign isn't the same as faking a campaign.
Reasons for this kind of idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
Software patents are being pushed hard by a rich, powerful, and ammoral machine built from lawyers, lobbyists, and large misguided software firms that have been beguiled by the arms race.
Voting for Florian will send a strong signal that software patents are not a popular legal innovation but are rightly seen as a threat to the free market and open capitalism.
Re:Disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Note that even without software patents, it doesn't mean it's impossible to get patents relating to a software product, it only means you cannot patent the algorithms themselves.
Throw out the baby with the bathwater? (Score:3, Insightful)
The No Software Patents site says that copyright should cover everything that patents cover, and elsewhere that patents are used as guns against small software developers. Um, and copyrights AREN'T used this way? C'mon. If patents disappeared tomorrow, the lawyers would find a way of crushing you with copyrights, and you'd have a No Software Copyrights! movement in a minute.
The problem is not with the protection of ideas, but with the execution of that protection in the business world. Maybe 20 years is an inappropriate length for a patent in software; maybe two years would be better. Perhaps patent and copyright duration should be scaled based on the industry, or adjusted based on the commercialization/profit of the IP holder. There are other ways of dealing with this besides chucking the whole system.
Protect? (Score:3, Insightful)
To defend software patents, you must find a software patent that has expired, is useful today, and is unlikely to have been invented independently during the patent period.
Vote for Florian (Score:4, Insightful)
The more sophisticated amoung us see the issue of software patents as one of the artificial creation of monopolies and the unneccessary restriction of freedom, but from the pure propertarian perspective, this can look a lot like the slogan "property is theft". Lawyers know how complex a concept property is, but the average person, and it seems the average politician doesn't know this, and hear opposition as simple "rationalisation".
Re:Disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you should bugger off implement it and sell a product, and stop trying to monopolise thoughts and demand that other people pay you money for work they did.
The software industry doesn't pay many people to sit around and think up ideas for other people to implement (computer games designers are exceptions, and a special case, really).
There is a reason for that. Ideas are cheap and easy to come by. Implementing them is a bit more difficult (though fairly cheap and easy nowdays).
Trouble is, that at the moment, hardware, software, and skilled manpower, and the means of software distribution and production are all quite cheap and available to most people. This is making life difficult for the big players in the software industry, because in order to be an oligopolist, you and a few of your buddies need to have control over a scarce resource. In computing, at the moment, there's very little scarcity. Hence the need to bribe lawmakers for software patents, and to make software ideas scarce, so that the industry can find something to charge us for. Namely the ideas in our own heads.
Come back and whine about software patents when there really is a global ideas shortage, not before.
Re:Flawed voting (Score:1, Insightful)
This is supposed to be politics. This is supposed to mean somthing! How can they err on such a simple thing as a flawed system of voting when it is the foundation of democracy?
It's an internet/newspaper poll, followed by a black-tie dinner and an awards ceremony. I think we can forgive them.
Re:Throw out the baby with the bathwater? (Score:5, Insightful)
Proponents of software patents have been claiming for years the whole system can be fixed by just making a few adjustments, but no one has been able to actually argue in economic terms that this is in fact true. And then there's still these pesky details such as the WTO TRIPs treaty, which requires a minimum duration of 17 years for all patents you grant.
We're not chucking anything, we're preventing the codification of the American system in Europe.