EU Software Patents: The Times' Take

[Steve]

You might recall the EU parliament voting out new software patent laws 648 to 14. The general concencus amongst smaller projects and of course, open source projects, is that this is good news. However, The Times has an article on their web site giving "the other side" of the story... what the big boys think.

BIG software developers were dealt a blow yesterday as the European Parliament voted down a directive to harmonise patenting rules across the European Union.

The overwhelming vote against the directive by MEPs left companies such as Nokia and Siemens, both of which had championed the proposal, dependent on the fragmented patent rules of individual member states.

An interesting take on the situation. I use as much F/OSS software as I feasibly can, and the majority of them were in some way campaigning against EU software patents, so you can probably tell which side of the fence I was on.

What about my fellow hexites?

[Steve]

It gets better. From ZDNet:

The Green Party has called for greater transparency in political lobbying following the tactics of some campaign groups during the debating of the software patent directive.