Mailing List Archive: Anti-patent blackout?

Anti-patent blackout?

Mar 26, 2004, 8:25 PM

Post #1 of 7 (98 views)

It appears that FFII, the main anti-software-patent body in Europe, is
planning to organise an "online demonstration" against software patents
some time around April 14/15. (There's a European Council meeting to
discuss allowing sw patents in Europe around that time.)

The details aren't quite firmed up yet, but it'll probably be a couple of
days or at most a week.
(http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/Demo14and15aprilOnlineDemo)

What's involved? It's a matter of replacing a website's front page
temporarily with a "protest page", detailing why the site looks different,
what the issues are, a link to a "more info" page, and a link to the
"real" front page. Other, internal pages of the site, are not
affected.

I'm strongly against sw patents, so last time, I did this for most of my
sites, but not SpamAssassin's. This time around, I thought I'd find out
in advance if we were in agreement, since SpamAssassin joining the demo
would be quite high-profile, IMO.

So -- devs/PMC people -- anyone object to doing this? Anyone
agree it'd be a good thing to do?

Sander -- is it acceptable by Apache policy to do this?

--j.

Re: Anti-patent blackout? [ In reply to ]

matt at nightrealms

Mar 26, 2004, 12:36 PM

Post #2 of 7 (97 views)

Permalink

On Saturday 27 March 2004 03:25 am, Justin Mason wrote:

> So -- devs/PMC people -- anyone object to doing this? Anyone
> agree it'd be a good thing to do?

I'm OK with it.

--
Give a man a match, and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on
fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Advanced SPAM filtering software: http://spamassassin.org

Re: Anti-patent blackout? [ In reply to ]

parkerm at pobox

Mar 26, 2004, 8:31 PM

Post #3 of 7 (97 views)

Permalink

On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 07:25:59PM -0800, Justin Mason wrote:
>
> So -- devs/PMC people -- anyone object to doing this? Anyone
> agree it'd be a good thing to do?
>
> Sander -- is it acceptable by Apache policy to do this?
>

I'm +1 if it's not against an ASF policy.

Michael

Re: Anti-patent blackout? [ In reply to ]

felicity at kluge

Mar 26, 2004, 9:03 PM

Post #4 of 7 (97 views)

Permalink

On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 07:36:30PM +0000, Matthew Cline wrote:
> I'm OK with it.

Ditto (aka +0.5).

--
Randomly Generated Tagline:
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments." - Zen Musings

Re: Anti-patent blackout? [ In reply to ]

quinlan at pathname

Mar 26, 2004, 10:58 PM

Post #5 of 7 (97 views)

Permalink

Theo Van Dinter <felicity@kluge.net> writes:

> Ditto (aka +0.5).

-0.5

It really seems more like an ASF decision since it's general to all
software patents and not solely an anti-spam issue. I think I'd rather
defer the decision to the ASF board -- and I'd encourage the ASF to have
the entire apache.org website (including any projects that wish to join)
in the blackout.

--
Daniel Quinlan anti-spam (SpamAssassin), Linux,
http://www.pathname.com/~quinlan/ and open source consulting

Re: Anti-patent blackout? [ In reply to ]

duncf at debian

Mar 26, 2004, 11:13 PM

Post #6 of 7 (97 views)

Permalink

On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 07:25:59PM -0800, Justin Mason wrote:
> I'm strongly against sw patents, so last time, I did this for most of my
> sites, but not SpamAssassin's. This time around, I thought I'd find out
> in advance if we were in agreement, since SpamAssassin joining the demo
> would be quite high-profile, IMO.
>
> So -- devs/PMC people -- anyone object to doing this? Anyone
> agree it'd be a good thing to do?

I'm +1 even if it is against Apache policy ;-)

I'd be pretty surprised if it's against Apache policy, and if it is,
then maybe the policy needs to be reviewed/changed.

--
Duncan Findlay

Re: Anti-patent blackout? [ In reply to ]

striker at apache

Mar 27, 2004, 6:55 AM

Post #7 of 7 (97 views)

Permalink

On Sat, 2004-03-27 at 06:58, Daniel Quinlan wrote:
> Theo Van Dinter <felicity@kluge.net> writes:
>
> > Ditto (aka +0.5).
>
> -0.5
>
> It really seems more like an ASF decision since it's general to all
> software patents and not solely an anti-spam issue. I think I'd rather
> defer the decision to the ASF board -- and I'd encourage the ASF to have
> the entire apache.org website (including any projects that wish to join)
> in the blackout.

Thank you for this sensible followup ;). This is indeed the case. We
did join the previous protest, however, not with a full blackout as was
suggested then. We wanted to keep serving our users.

Anyway, August 27th last year all project main pages were replaced with
a temporary protest page, which linked to the original main page. This
round no one has brought this up yet. So currently there is no
coordinated effort planned.

Sander

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