I had forwarded a cc to Holger Blasum, one of the maintainers at ffii.org, wishing them more victories on this front. He requests Indian entities also to join the campain against "software patents" by signing up at http://www.economic-majority.com/ Please do so, as India or Europe being free from "software patents" is not sufficient, and soon enough the scene should shift to the US. If you distribute your software in the US, then the campaign is immediately relevant to you. It is ironical that such a campaign has to be done in US, which was once upon a time, a model state for the ultimate in liberty and freedom, but today, it stands as a symbol for a shackled state with all its "Software Patents", DMCA, DRM and even more unconceivable things like corporate run "prisons" (California alone has 21 (yes, twenty-one) mostly corporate run prisons and more about this at: http://improbablevoices.net/intro_frameset.html ). Digital anarchy and industrial prisons make a deadly and dangerous combination making it a serious concern to netizens. Fortunately, these aberrations are very recent, and could be nipped in the bud. Your participation could make a big difference to the momentum of the movement, that may help in restoring sanity where it is most required.

Ramanraj.

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Fwd: EU Software patents directive crushed in the flat new world] Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 00:41:35 +0200 From: Holger Blasum holger@blasum.net To: Ramanraj K ramanraj.k@gmail.com CC: campaign@codeliberty.org References: 42CF50FD.400@gmail.com

On 07-09, Ramanraj K wrote:

<quote> Declaration

Our enterprise is worried about plans to legalise patents on software solutions ("computer-implemented inventions").

We rely on software copyright. We need to be sure that we own what we write.

We need to be sure that we can publish and distribute our own programs.

We need to be sure that, as long as we respect the rules of copyright, we can run any software on any office or network computer.

We urge legislators to confine the patent system strictly to the limits of applied natural science. In principle, only knowledge which had to be obtained through costly experiments with forces of nature should be eligible for the broad, slow and expensive monopoly protection which the patent system offers.

</quote>

Note that care has taken (unlike petition.eurolinux.org) to make this pledge perfectly signable everywhere you want ... Indian companies are welcome too ;)