VNU: European software patents row continues

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

European software patents row continues
By Mark Ballard [07-07-2003]
MEPs and lobby groups clash over EU laws on 'patentability'

http://www.vnunet.com/News/1142086

Pretty good piece.  Gets over the message effectively that when it comes 
to this directive, presentation and reality may be two quite different 
things.

Possibly most notable for the curious acroynm for Foundation for a Free 
Information Infrastructure, the FEII.

One minor glitch is that the 'FEII' is seen as taking on 'the MEPs', 
without any deeper analysis of where the political faultlines are, or 
how up-in-the-air the political balance still is.  But that is a small 
gripe.

But several well-researched paragraphs like this one, which for once 
seems to get the important 'who represents what' question just right:

"The MEPs claim to represent the interests of small software companies 
and large vendors of proprietary software such as Microsoft, while the 
FEII lobbies on behalf of engineers of both open source and proprietary 
software".