One of the Groklawyers posted a comment that the SSC was drafting a Bill to
make Software Patents possible in NZ.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20060301213210833&title=The+NZ+%
26quot%3BGet+the+Facts%26quot%
3B+Style++Report&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=415176#c415190
"Instead they took the word of a law firm that has a direct conflict of
interest
with open source. Not only this, but the SSC is somewhat responsible for
drafting a new Patent Bill which will make software patents possible in NZ,
and
at the same time the warn (admit?) that patents will be an issue to open
source.
The thing is that it will be a problem for all software developers in the
country, not just OSS."
Does anyone know if this is so? If so, I think I just might take them to the
Human Rights Commission. I think I've got grounds to do so - I'm trying to do
something positive with all the free time being unemployed gives one,
rewriting some software dating back ages - yet the Software Patents tradition
is to patent the obvious prior art, ergo they'll close me out, thus making me
unemployable. And I'm "disabled" at least theoretically - Peter Waddell, one
of NZ's neuropsychologists, is on record as saying that businesses don't tend
to accept the survivors of TBI (traumatic brain injury) as employable. So
getting work depends very much on being able to prove I can do it.
If the SSC are (ir)responsible for drafting (or should that be "dafting") such
a law, I'll string them up by their short-n-curlies.
Anyone got any better information?
Thanks
Wesley Parish
Quoting Zane Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I have just got back from the GOVIS Open Source seminar.
> http://www.govis.org.nz/oss2006/oss2006.htm
> There were a lot of government IT managers there.
>
> One of the speakers was the author of this paper.
> At the time I had just spent the last day and night cut off from the
> internet and had not heard what was going down.
> Just before the seminar at the venue I was getting a coffee and got
> chatting to the guy who wrote said document and when he heard I was one
>
> of the OSS errrm cadre he started to act very defensive about his
> document.
>
> It turns out that he has discovered what the consequences of raising the
>
> displeasure of the OSS community. Apparently he had over 300 emails in
> his inbox.
> (I would think that a few of them would be a bit eeerrm flamey :-) )
>
> He has been accused of being a MS flunkey on Slashdot,Groklaw and even
> in parliament.
>
> At this talk he went to extreme lengths to ensure his audience that he
> was not anti-OSS and when I considered his demeanour later he seemed
> beaten.
>
> I felt sorry for him. FWIW I don't think that any of the "big boys" at
> that seminar (ACC, IRD etc) were swayed by any of the talk of
> "infection" as most of them don't distribute software so it doesn't
> apply. However I did challenge him on his recommendation to completely
> dismiss OSS if in doubt. He did concede the point that BSD style
> licences should be OK.
>
> I think that his implication that OSS use exposes an organisation to
> extra fault risk is dodgey though and I regret that I hadn't read ./
> before going to the seminar.
>
> Regards,
> Zane
>
>
>
>
> Steve Holdoway wrote:
> > This piece was brought to my attention by /. this morning. What it's
> a
> > piece of, I'm not too sure. IMO Chapmann Tripp should be shot for
> using
> > such inflammatory language, but I suppose that without any licenses
> to
> > write, they'd be going out of business. Altruism isn't a word they
> > understand in this context, I take it.
> >
> > Some of the highlights:
> >
> > "Understanding the Infectious Effects of Open Source Licences" - so
> > they're all bad for you then?
> >
> > "64 As its standard position, all Development Agreements should
> prohibit
> > the use of any open source code in the supplied software." - so how
> are we
> > going to develop ( eclipse ), compile ( gcc ), publish ( apache )...
> it
> > then?
> >
> > It's put me off my morning coffee, that's for sure.
> >
> > http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-source-legal
> >
> >
> > Steve.
>
>
"Sharpened hands are happy hands.
"Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands"
- A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge
"I me. Shape middled me. I would come out into hot!"
I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the
other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press
