06 Jul 2005

Europe rejects software patents!

European Parliament says no to software patents, yes to innovation. Thank you Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Thank you economic-majority.com. And thanks to all those individuals that called, phoned, faxed and demonstrated these last couple of years. Hopefully this shows that european democracy can work. Even if it takes a lot of time and energy. The people from the FFII really did a good job, and I hope that they will continue to educate politicians in the future (hint: Donate to the FFII!)

And amazingly even Red Hat and Sun are friends when it comes to oposing software patents. They went as far as releasing a joint press release:

Sun and Red Hat, […], set aside their competitive differences in this process. Both companies felt the interests of free and open source software merited cooperation at a high level.

Seems Sun has learned a lesson or two. Now Lets see if they can put this new friendship into real actions in the future.