Re: [Patents] Re: FFII: Brussels 2004-04-14 Events

[Xavi Drudis Ferran <xdrudis@tinet.org>]

I said I'd leave the thread. I lied :( 

El Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 05:16:56PM +0200, Marcel Martin deia:

> Now, no, this is not off-topic. At least, much less than the  
> epistemologico-crappy delirium of a Greg.
>

two off-topic don't make one on-topic. And possibly Greg is 
more on topic. The problem is that he is often repetitive
(and wrong, imho).
 

> > If we had had a list of politicians to whom they could write postcards,
> > we would have pushed that forward as well.  But nobody has compiled such
> > a list.
> 
> Setting up such an action would at most take you half an hour. All

If compiling a list of politicians who are relevant to the Council 
decision on the swpat directive for all 25 member states and are 
accountable to public takes you half an hour, please make me an offer
and I may pay for your time out of my pocket. 

I once took the phone and decided to call a ministry to find out who
to address questions or opinions on this directive (only for one
member state) and after almost one day of being refered back and forth
calling everywhere I ended up where I started. There was an email
address for a civil servant at the state's patent office, but no
politician who could answer to electors or deputies (and therefore
care about the opinion of the public). Once there was a debate in a
committe in the Spanish Senate, and IIRC someone from the patent
profession (I'm not pretending she was representative), said something
more or less like "of course the directive is not popular, but that is
irrelevant: if you asked people about patent law we wouldn't have a
patent system, nobody wants monopolies, that's not a reasoning".
And that civil servant in that email address may or may not think 
the same. I don't know because he didn't reply.

> you have to do (you or someone else at FFII) is to send to all 
> Eurolinux petitioners a post with
> 1) the postal address of the European Commission;
> 2) a date to send a postcard on which the sender would have written
> his/her name, address, profession, and the message "NO SOFTWARE 
> PATENTS IN EUROPE". 
> 

I'm not in FFII and I won't speak for them, but I think I know them 
well enough to say they won't mind if you do that in your own name. 
Not only that they can't stop you, but that they won't probably even 
want to. 

Believe me, FFII hasn't patented the fight against swpats. 

If you feel they're doing something wrong, if you don't like how 
they work or if you don't agree or don't feel they listen to you, 
it's easy: do it yourself. After all you seem to think the FFII
sucks and they won't get anything right. Fine, go your own way and
do things better. Just don't keep telling them how to do "their job" 
or how bad they do it. Warning: it takes more time that it seems,
and more than posting here.
 
> 
> It perfectly summarizes the problem. I know that you have a lot of 
> work and that sometimes suggestions made by people who don't clearly 
> understand the situation might be boring. But reacting the way you do, 
> in short "I know what is good for you whereas you you don't know, so 
> the best is that you do what I say and you shut up", is definitely 
> not a good communication strategy. 
>

Nor is mine (posting off-topic and kind of killing the messenger), nor
yours (charging against the people who is working). Let's all just do
something more positive.


-- 
- jo també vull una Europa lliure de patents de programari  -
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Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis@tinet.org