Free July 6, 2005, Europa.

Oh... it's 5 years now

Erik — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:18:00 +0200

I thought I should update the blog to take note of the Day!

Alexandra Combes calls for celebration :-)

Free as in Free Champagne!

Erik — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:52:00 +0200

As you can see this is not a regular blog. Or rather, it's not a blog that I use regularly. But today's 3rd anniversary of one of the greatest victories of on-line activism in this century made me feel I should get myself a glass of champagne and enjoy this beautiful summer day in company with some retrospect nostalgica.

Speaking of champagne, and nostalgica, I met with Simon Gentry on a conference in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago. I said - Simon, you are shorter than I remember! - and we both laughed, not only because the champagne actually was free. Three years ago neither was shorter than the other; both of us claimed victory. The directive was rejected and the law remained unchanged. Today, philosophers all over the world are still asking themselves what "as such" means, trying to help judges to figure out the meaning when it's related to software.

I'd paraphrase patent lawyers who say they know when a patent is technical when they see one: a programmer know it's software when they see a software patent. But that kind of explains a lot. It's a matter of taste and culture. Patent attorneys are actually a bit like artists. They are sensitive guys since they are creative people. And some of their masterpieces are worth millions of euros. Others are worth nothing.

As Dr. Stephen Potter said at the conference, the value of a patent is context sensitive.

I'd say that even a meeting with Simon Gentry is context sensitive!

Happy anniversary Simon!

www.free765.eu

Erik — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:17:00 +0200

Alexandra has used her wikidot skills to create a site where anyone can put "souveniers" from Strasbourg (or any other place I suppose). I have always thought that there must be more pictures of the naval battle. There is a glass covered passerelle over the canal between Louise Weiss and Churchill as the buildings are called, so anyone with a camera could have taken really good pictures. I hope some of them turn up!

Champagne for the celebration!

Erik — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:35:00 +0200

So we go by car to Paris. I have decided to buy real champagne for the celebration toast, so we will make a detour through the Champagne region itself. To me it is still kind of strange that Europe is so small! You just don't go by car from Stockholm to the nearest European capital... Brussels-Paris is like Malmö-Göteborg and almost a distance people in the north of Sweden would go to dance on a Friday night. Btw, the blog banner picture is from my family's summer house in Norra Västerbotten, 2,365 km from where I am right now.

Celebrating software patents are still unenforceable in Europe... in Paris.

Erik — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:20:00 +0200

There is still some work left to make this blog look like I want it. I have to find out how to make the most important message visible somewhere: Celebrating software patents are still unenforceable in Europe.

Anyway, it turned out Alexandra Combes was also tossing around ideas on how to celebrate, so we had lunch the other day and decided to make something happen i Paris. July 6 is a Friday this year so a party would be nice :-)

Free July 6, 2005, Europa.

Erik — Sun, 27 May 2007 07:59:00 +0000

The day of the rejection of the software patents directive seems to be important enough to be mentioned in wikipedia's list of July 6, 2005 events. So I added a link to the EP's "Daily Notebook" which says "No directive on software patents", "Pas de brevet pour les logiciels", "Richtlinie zu Softwarepatenten abgelehnt" and "Europaparlamentet förkastar mjukvarupatentet" in my own language, etc.

Wikipedia has hosted a long discussion about what to call the directive (I made some comments in 2006), and it seems to still go on. What is at stake here is of course which terminology will be used in the history books of the future, so let's see if my entry survives the CII-zealots ;-)