Report on FISL 6.0
The 6th Free Software International Forum, held a lecture on software patents carried out by Suso Baleato, spokesman of the FFII's regional group at Galiza.
About the FISL 6.0
This event took place at Porto Alegre (Brazil) during the first week of June 2005. All the workshops and lectures were located in the Event's Center of the Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul. More than 4.000 attendees, the presence of relevant speakers and the high-density program turns this event in the yearly world-wide most important event of the Free Software comunity. Technologically viable, socialy just, economically sustainable was the lema this time. Software patents are a crucial item in the short term and that was the reason why FFII was invited to participate.
Lecture on Software Patents
The lecture, entitled The taste of software patents in Europe (source) covered the pro-swpats efforts to force democratic european institutions to legitimate their bussiness models describing the succesfully FFII intervention to avoid that. After a brief presentation of the FFII organization and mission, the lecture begun with a historical perspective starting at the XI century. It was described the evolution of the patent system around the world from the 'letters of mark' until the stablishment of the current patent system. There were signaled the common myths about patents using the well known examples of the telephone, the plane and the steam engine. After reviewing other subjects of patentability like inorganic molecules, enginereed bacteria or genetics, it was expounded how the patents model was expanded to include software. To illustrate that, it was described the evolution of the patent system in the United States, mainly driven by Court decisions. Then, how the posibility of patenting software began to enter Europe using the Computer Implemented Inventions euphemisms sponsored by BSA and others. After that, the tramitation process of the related directive in the European Parliament and the FFII work to move the positions to avoid software patentability.
After the lecture exposition, a round of questions was started, inviting attendees to focus on a commonwork to share different experiences in other areas, questions about the european case and ideas to help avoid software patentability in Europe and in the rest of the world.
Questions and statements were made until the deadline time, in a very creative and positive sharing of knowledge. South America attendees put special attention to the vulnerabilities of the regional pure economical projects without a social policy as an entrance way to software patents, having in mind the ALCA/ MERCOSUR and the European Union as examples. A very interesting comparison between DNA and software was made an it was found that the software patents case is very usefull to explain cases like transgenic seeds. Finally, some discussion was stablished in reference to a relationship proposed between the European Constitution rejection of France and Netherlands and the software comunity rejection of CII Directive.
Overall aspects
FISL 6.0 satisfied all the previsions, from the excellent organization to the high quality of resources available, including simultaneous translations, media equipments or transportations. The high presence of brazilian government and academic representatives, delegations of other countries, the stands of IBM and Sun, the speakers and the great amount of projects worked together to produce a very interesting and positive result.
FLOSS comunity was interested in software patents. The main amount of questions were related to the confusions between intellectual property rights and patents, and the inner nature of patentability. Developers of South America projects usually identified software patentability with genetic patents. This confusion was also present in the side of United States developers, who mainly state a clear rejection against software patents showing a lot of interest in the capacity of european citizens to stablish a so succesfull dialogue with the common administration to avoid software patents for years. European developers were very concerned and asked more practical questions as the date of votations, posibilities, strategies an so on.
The presence of IBM and Sun with big stands was an excellent opportunity to confront their patents policies with the FLOSS comunity. In different times, they were asked about the contradiction of defending software patents but investing in free software. Representatives of that companies claimed to not having contradictions as they are sharing software with the community and also liberating patents for free software use. The FFII intervention helped to clarify the nature of that 'patents liberation', as indeed IBM policy is to not use software patents against free software "unless they do something useful" (art. 5.2) and compete with their products (i.e. DB2). Also it was important to clarify that the Sun patents are liberated only for the use with OpenSolaris not for all the software or all the libre software.
Finally, the interaction with governments representatives was very succesfull also. Mainly interested in technical and procedural questions, a lot of contacts were stablished with leader projects of free software and economical sustainability of the Brazilizan, Basque Country, Colombia or Extremadura governments, who asked FFII presence in events they are organizing. The dialogue with Sergio Amadeu, President of the brazilian National Institute of Technology about IP laws and software patents was very interesting, showing all the common points with the FFII positions, and the same thing with the directors of different projects of the Health and the Defence ones. Specially interesting was the interchange with the representatives of the Basque Country government, organizers of the next International Municipal Meeting on Sustainable Technology of the UNESCO who showed a lot of interest in a free informational infraestructure as a way to support their projects focused on SME innovation.
Related links
Documentation
Foundation for a Free Informational Infrastructure
Galician FFII's regional group (Mesa Galega pola Libre Innovación)
References about Computer Implemented Inventions Directive
Annoucements and reports
Announcement of the FFII presence at FISL:
Announcement to galician-speaker community
Announcement to the spanish-speaker comunity
Report to the galician-speaker comunity
Media
Source of the lecture (Open Office)
Video Interview to Suso Baleato to event TV
20060216 - Suso Baleato: links updated, lecture source updated OpenDocument standards
20050708 - Suso Baleato <suso @ ffii org>
