Paul Jakma <paul at clubi.ie> writes:
> On Sun, 23 May 2004, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> Right, but as i understand it, the Council essentially will get the
> last word if no settlement is reached.
Here's what's left in the legislative process:
The Coucil still has to confirm it's vote - there is a chance that some
minister(s) will retract their vote. But this is rare, and since our
minister drafted the "compromise" amendments, it would probably be a waste
of time to ask Ireland to retract it's Yes vote.
Then the Parliament (in their "second reading") have the option of adopting
the Councils version, or bringing back some of their original amendments.
If they do the latter, a Conciliation Committee will be set up to find
agreement between the Parliament and the Council. (If they do the former,
we're screwed, software is patentable.)
If the Conciliation Committee fails to find agreement, the directive dies
(and the current legal uncertainty continues - so we want don't want the
directive to die, we want it fixed and adopted.)
So we need either (A) the Councils decision to be discared or (B) the
Parliament to bring back the good amendments, and the Conciliation committee
to
I think (B) is quite possible because we already know the parliament can be
on our side, and I think the Council only voted for software patentability
due to lack of understanding of the text. So if the Parliament is on our
side, and if we make the Council understand the text of the directive, I
think we can get the Conciliation Committee to rule in favour of blocking
software patentability.
> Any tips on what $joe-linux-user can do? (i havnt really kept up)
Not yet, give me a week.
The people working on this are having such a tough time figuring out the
legislative process and the legal interpretations that no one has had time
yet to document what we're learning.
I know a 2 page HOWTO style document would be a big help to getting others
involved. It's on my todo list for next week - hopefully nothing spring up
between now and then.
In the mean time, http://swpat.ffii.org has improved greatly, and the latest
info is always available at: http://kwiki.ffii.org/index.cgi?SwpatcninoEn
--
Ciarán O'Riordan
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/
Irish Free Software Organisation: http://ifso.ie
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