Anonymous Reader writes, “It looked like curtains not too long ago for the Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA). Acquired in September of 1999 by EMusic, the oldest Net music site (going back to 1993) watched as EMusic burned through its cash stockpile and then semi-close IUMA to save money, leaving the site up but not updating it. Friday, IUMA was saved.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/iuma.html“

Russ Foster writes, “Call him a player, a gambler, a true risk taker, but he’s not a fool. Ron Lazarus, chief operating officer at Woodland Hills, California-based Just Sports placed a bet that could cost him thousands of dollars when he approved the use of open source applications and tools to create his company’s new transactional database management system. But it would
prove one of the smartest business decisions he’s ever made. In addition to saving money by using a database powered by PostgreSQL (popularly known as Postgres) and Apache
servers running on a Linux operating system, Just Sports USA created a powerful open source infrastructure that is customisable to meet the company’s evolving needs.

At first, the prospect of using a free, open source database application called PostgreSQL that they’d never heard of confused Just Sports USA. That’s not an uncommon reaction among corporations. The “free for all” mentality of the open-source community flies in the face of most business models. When most businesses learn that PostgreSQL developers enhance and de-bug the program as part of an ongoing volunteer collaborative effort, and that no one actually owns the software, they usually shake their heads and ask, “Why would anyone in their right mind do that?”

Complete story at SlashTCO.com.”

On Friday, March 23rd 2001, State
Secretary of
Industry Christian Pierret who is directly in charge of
the French
Patent Policy stated in an interview to 01 Informatique,
the leading
IT magazine in France: ‘I am against software patents in
Europe. It
would kill innovation and promote juridical terrorism
because
multinational software publishers would multiply legal
disputes
against start-ups’.EuroLinux welcomes this brave position. “Christian
Pierret is the
living proof that there still exist politicians in Europe
who defend
innovation and the general interest even under the
pressure of
powerful multinational software publishers, politicians
who can oppose
the underwater lobbying of their national patent offices
seeking to
defend their own privileges” says Stéfane Fermigier, Pdt
of AFUL for
EuroLinux.

EuroLinux wishes for other governments in Europe to be
able to take
similar positions. In Germany, all political parties have
taken
positions against software patents. In France, many
member of
parliaments (Conservative, Greens, Socialists) have taken
positions
against software patents. In the Netherlands, the
parliament ordered
its government to first fix the obviousness and
technicality criteria
before allowing software patents. In Denmark, PROSA, an
association of
13.000 computer professionals opposed software patents.
The EuroLinux
petition counts 200 commercial companies in its
supporters, as well as
more than 70.000 individual signatures.

Still, key software patent lobbyists such as the UK
Patent Office,
which organised in London in 1998 an EC conference to
promote software
patents, or John Mogg, head of the General Directorate
for Internal
Market at the European Commission, are pushing for the
legalisation of
so-called “patents on software with technical effect”.
The problem
with this approach is that “the technical character of
computer
software should be generally acknowledged” which means
that “all
computer programs are technical” as famous German patent
expert
M. Betten explained in front of EC representatives as
early as in
1997, during a conference of the UNION, an association of
more than
700 professionals in industrial property from 20 European
countries.
It is obviously contradictory to ban software patents and
to legalise
patents on software with technical effect. Recent
decisions of the
European Patent Office show that the legalisation of
“patents on
software with technical effect” would not only legalise
patent on file
formats (ex. GIF, MP3) or network protocols (ex. WAP) but
also lead to
patents on business methods such as “printing cooking
recipes on
demand” (EP756731) or “managing a company through a
single log file”
(EP 209907 )

EU governments should understand that the General
Directorate for
Internal Market is trying to fool them with the concept
of “software
with technical effect”. They should clearly say “NO!” to
all software
patents, with or without technical effect, in order to
protect
innovation in Europe.

High Resolution pictures available at
http://www.aful.org/images/pierret-tux-big.jpg
or
http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pierret-tux-big.jpg

References

EuroLinux petition for a Software Patent Free Europe –
http://petition.EuroLinux.org/

A few patents granted by the European Patent Office to
“software with
technical effect”

     EP 209907 - Computer management system
     EP 762304 - Trade warrant system
     EP 784279 - Stateless shopping cart for the web
     EP 756731 - Interactive information selection apparatus

Excerpt of 01 Informatique (2001-03-23) interview with
Christian
Pierret:

Public Administrations get on-line faster thanks to free
software

“I already supported personally open-source software,
notably at the
university of Metz. I am glad to see French publishers
of free
software like MandrakeSoft be successful in the United
States. I
support Linux and free software, because they allow
faster and more
robust development to put the Public Administration
on-line. While
commercial software raise the issue of computer security,
since one
does not know what is inside. This is why I am against
software
patents in Europe. It would kill innovation and promote
juridical
terrorism because multinational software publishers would
multiply
legal disputes against start-ups”

About EuroLinux – www.EuroLinux.org

The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information
Infrastructure is an
open coalition of commercial companies and non-profit
associations
united to promote and protect a vigourous European
Software Culture
based on Open Standards, Open Competition, Linux and Open
Source
Software. Companies members or supporters of EuroLinux
develop or sell
software under free, semi-free and non-free licenses for
operating
systems such as Linux, MacOS or Windows.

The EuroLinux Alliance launched on 2000-06-15 an
electronic petition
to protect software innovation in Europe. The EuroLinux
petition has
received so far massive support from more than 70.000
European
citizens, 2000 corporate managers and 200 companies.

The EuroLinux Alliance has co-organised in 1999, together
with the
French Embassy in Japan, the first Europe-Japan
conference on Linux
and Free Software. The EuroLinux Alliance is at the
initiative of the
www.freepatents.org web site to promote and protect
innovation and
competition in the European IT industry.

Press Contacts

France & Europe: Stéfane Fermigier, sf@fermigier.com
+33-6 63 04 12 77
Germany & Europe: Harmut Pilch, phm@ffii.org +49-89 127
89 608
Denmark and Northern Europe: Anne Østergaard,
aoe@sslug.dk
Belgium: Nicolas Pettiaux, nicolas.pettiaux@linuxbe.org

Permanent URL for this PR

   http://petition.EuroLinux.org/pr/pr10.html
   http://petition.EuroLinux.org/pr/pr10.pdf

Legalese

   Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
   All other trademarks and copyrights are owned by their
respective
   companies.

InfoWorld: “zOS fully exploits the z900 series of mainframes — which was the first shoe to drop
last December — including support for the Intelligent Resource Director (IRD). With
IRD a z900 can automatically manage the amount of processing power devoted to
applications across the entire system, which IBM officials claim is an industry first.”

MSNBC tells us: “If another application is running, the controls in dialog boxes
and palettes may be misplaced, missing, or inoperative in
Photoshop 6 or ImageReady 3 for Windows 98 or Me, says
Adobe.”

MSNBC.com: “The leading TV recording
service has collected information about viewers – programs
watched or recorded, remote control buttons pushed – without
adequately informing them, a research group says.”

AP report at Yahoo: “It was meant as a crowning moment for a
long-promised technology designed to create a wireless link among
different devices around the home or office.

But instead, the “Bluetooth” demonstration at the world’s biggest computer
and electronics show turned into an embarrassing flop when 100
transmitters equipped with the short-range radio technology failed to
transform a convention hall into a wireless data network for visitors with
palmtop computers.”

InfoWorld: “Microsoft is using Transmeta’s 600MHz TM5600 chip to develop “reference
designs” for the Tablet PC, or prototypes that will be sent to manufacturers to show
them how the device can be built. The announcement confirms rumors that have
circulated for months about a tie-up between the companies.”

CNET says: “Windows XP promises to be a stable, multimedia-friendly operating system, but the final release is strictly for
early adopters. The system requirements and learning curve make XP a long, hard upgrade path.”

Slashdot has the details on a Linux-based AOL brand box to be given away by a Spanish bank.