[Fsfe-france] Re: Software Patents Agenda

[PILCH Hartmut]

>       You stated your position quite clearly.

Maybe paranoid, due to an urgent desire to get things moving quickly, and
a recent experience of too much terminology warfare. Btw I am already
preparing a worldwide version of the petition, and the name
petition.eurolinux.org is more likely to step back behind the alias
www.noepatents.org in that case.  You can already find the petition behind
both, and that was always so.

We have been thinking about the pros and cons of those two names that
existed from the start.  I myself like a name like ffii.org, because it
makes the concept very clear.  But that kind of clarity may not be the
foremost function of short names.  Some people say that this kind of
abstract naming works only in Germany.  But probably that is just flattery
to the clichee of German fondness of philosophical abstraction.
Unfortunately most people everywhere do not think in doctrines of whatever
kind of freedom or openness, but in vague associations that can only at a
later stage be complemented by rigid thinking.  With most people, we don't
ever get to that stage.  The Linux penguin is a carrier of sympathy that
helped the petition grow big.  Also, it is understood to encompass some
proprietary software that runs on that platform and to stand for a
burgenoning sector in which Europe is strong.  So it is a name that can
well be associated with everything that stands behind the anti swpat
movement.  Astonishingly enough, most politicians who decide in our favor
are not motivated by a real knowledge about the danger of swpat but by the
feeling that the penguin bandwagon deserves their support.  And even on a
worldwide scale, it may not be bad marketing to present this as a movement
that is related to "Europe" and "Linux".  "no e-patents" is not all that
much clearer and sounds negative.  But we'll let people decide which name
they prefer.  We even have noepatents.com, so as to suggest that having no
software patents is a source of wealth.

A lot of work is needed and it is very good that you are pushing us to get
crucial parts like the how-to-help document relaunched quickly.

Cheers

--
Hartmut Pilch
Federation for a Free Information Infrastructure        http://www.ffii.org/
For a software patent free Europe PLEASE SIGN http://petition.eurolinux.org/