I'm not getting a couple things here:
1) If the European Parliament hasn't decided yet, why have they already closed
down Knoppix?
2) Why is Knoppix being targeted? Has there been a citation of which patents
they have violated? If it's the "mouse click" patent, who holds that. If
it's not MS, then MS would have to pay royalties. This is all really
weird...
3) Why doesn't the EP spend their time doing something more productive by
prosecuting more war criminals or something important?
On Thursday 28 August 2003 01:50 pm, you wrote:
> Knoppix Website
>
> http://www.knoppix.com/
>
>
> Closed because of "Software-Patents"
> In the next few days, the European Parliament will decide about the
> legalisation and adoption of so-called "software patents" in Europe, which
> are already used by large companies in other countries to put competitors
> out of business. This can lead to the termination of many software projects
> such as KNOPPIX, at least within Europe, because the holders of the over
> 30,000 already granted "software patents" (currently without a legal
> foundation) can claim exclusive rights and collect license fees for trivial
> things like "progress bars", "mouseclicks on online order forms",
> "scrolling within a window" and similar. That way, software developers will
> have to pay the "software-patentholders" for using these features, even in
> their own, completely self-developed applications, which can completely
> stall the development of innovative software for small and medium
> companies. Apart from this, the expense for patent inquiries and legal
> assistence is high, for even trying to find out if the self-developed
> software is possibly violating "software-patents", if you want to continue
> to market your software. Contrary to real patents, "software-patents" are,
> in the current draft, monopolization of business ideas and methods, even
> without any tangible technical implementation.
>
>
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