Softwarepatents threatens GPL

Today I read some news concerning softwarepatents. The first round of softwarepatents in the EU were not so successfully as industry lobbies would have liked. Some parts were softened because a lot of IT professionals and other people raised concerns about the impact on IT and business for small companies, startups and individuals. The European Council now wants to move further for unlimited patentability.

In case such a patent law is passed, this severly threatens GPL projects. I'm strongly in doubt that pICE can continue with such a law in place, as I can neither afford the research involved to make sure that no patents are violated in pICE, nor could I pay the price for such licences. Considering trival patents (like one click payment from Amazon) it can be expected that there WILL be some violations of patents then, which I can't do anything about it.

So if you are concerned over this project and want me to continue on it, as well as many other usefull Open Source projects here on sourceforge, I strongly urge you to sign the petition on the link below and try also to talk to your friends and people you know and tell them the threat of this law.

Softwarepatents don't help the small and independent people to do some business, it only helps the big players, because these are the entities, which can afford to spend a lot of money on patent lawyers.

This law does not only have an impact on some few Open Source lunatics, but on all parts of our community as well, as computers are so widely in use, that such a law will have an impact on everybody.

http://petition.eurolinux.org

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