On 12/02/12 21:32, Bianca Gibson wrote: > Rather than going off guesswork I think the proportion of people interested > in ending software patents that have a soft spot for FS would need to be > investigated before any action was taken based on it. How do we know it's > not just the active and visible people, and the ones we happen to meet?
My understanding is that we're *already* going off guesswork. We're guessing that going against software patents completely is a better approach to any of the alternatives, without having consulted with any legal experts. Unless things have changed since LCA? I'm not saying you don't make a good point, but getting an accurate figure first may prove difficult. For example, if we said to people "in order to abolish software patents entirely, after talking to legal experts we have concluded that abolishing patents from free software is the most appropriate first step", I think people would be more likely to get on board than if we just let people assume that we only care about the effects of software patents on free software. So IMO, we first need that confidence in which should be the better approach to attacking software patents, so we can be transparent with our supporters before we go chasing statistics. Besides, it could very well turn out that the approach we are already taking (abolish them all in one swoop) is best and then we'd have wasted the time and effort it takes to organise a large scale survey. Regards, Adam _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
