Discussion page for the ShortIntroEn document

The original intent of the ShortIntroEn document was 1) to be short, and 2) to be an introduction. The original author (me) had noticed that a newbie who wondered what this is all about would quickly get lost in tons of documentation, and I wrote it so that a newbie would get oriented and become able to understand the other documents.

The contributions made greatly enhanced it, but at the same time people were naturally tempted to write more detail. It was still short, but not so short. Still an introduction, but with detail that might be inappropriate for the newbie. At some point it was split (not by me, incidentally) in two versions: a shorter one (ShortIntroAltEn) and a longer one (ShortIntroEn). I worked a bit on the short one, reversing many of the, ehm, amendments that had been made to it, and restoring it to something close to an intermediate version.

So. First, choose which version you like. If you choose the short one, keep it short, sharp, and to-the-point. Don't add details just because they're pretty; only add details if they really help make it better with respect to its intent. I prefer deletions to additions (and I've deleted a bit of my own writing). I'd like a document that would grab your attention, flow right through to the end within 3 minutes, and give you a very good idea of what's going on.

If you disagree, that's fine. I don't want to impose what I think is right. But it would be silly if you did some editing and then I went and did some more editing, incompatible to your editing. So first we need to agree on what we want. This page might evolve in a guidelines page for editors of that document, and if people prefer something else than I prefer, that's fine. I hope that ultimately we'll throw away one of the two versions, because it's bad to have two.

Go on, add your comments below or edit my text above.

Comments

Arebenti

Pls rename it -- Software Patents in Europe: A Short Overview to "Software Patents debate in a nutshell"

Denmark link goes to swpat kunst wiki site ---> this does not make any sense.

I would like to create a banner for the start page.

phm

Explaining the patent claim context and the different kinds of claims is imho essential for any attempt to understand the debate. Same for the distinction between JURI and the other committees and the knowledge of who the patent establishment is. These are places of frequent confusion. OTOH it would be quite possible to leave out things such as that BSA had to do with the directive proposal or that some diplomats performed ridiculously at the Council session. These may help in many advocacy contexts but they do little to further understanding.

Petr

Divide the text by headings.

In general, continous text appears to be long (and thus boring) while structuring the text makes it feel condensed.

Arebenti:

• Last paragraph is not uptodate anymore

• This page has to be named ShortIntroMetaEn