EC To Provide Government Software Buying Guidelines
(L’Europe définirait des règles d’achats des logiciels pour ses états membres) The European Commission is set to lay down software purchasing guidelines for the governments of its 27 member states, the New York Times has reported.
It's official: Software will be unpatentable in NZ
(Malgré les lobbies, les logiciels seront non brevetables en Nouvelle-Zélande) Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced today that he wouldn’t be modifying the proposed Patents Bill hence software will be unpatentable once the Bill passes into law.
French legislators have second thoughts on three strikes law
(Les législateurs Français ont-ils des doutes sur HADOPI ?) Are the French legislators who passed the country’s tough new “three strikes” Internet disconnection law having second thoughts? Le Figaro caught up last week with Jean-François Copé, a leading member of the ruling right-leaning UMP party that wrote and supported the “Création et Internet” law passed last year. Copé helped rally support for the bill after it failed its first vote in the National Assembly because most UMP deputies had actually left the chamber without voting.
Sanity From the 1st Post-Bilski Decision from BPAI: In Re Proudler
(Une des premières décisions suivant l’affaire Bilski, semblant bloquer la brevetabilité des logiciels car étant abstraits) Look at this, will you? The first decision from the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences post-Bilski to reference that US Supreme Court decision, in In Re Proudler [PDF], a ruling rejecting HP’s application for a software patent, setting forth a rule stating, as I read it, as saying software is not patentable because it’s an abstraction:
ASCAP's attack on Creative Commons
(Lettre ouverte à la société de créateurs voulant attaquer le “copyleft”) The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has launched a campaign to raise money from its members to hire lobbyists to protect them against the dangers of “Copyleft.” Groups such as Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are “mobilizing,” ASCAP describes in a letter to its members, “to promote ‘Copyleft’ in order to undermine our ‘Copyright.’” “[O]ur opponents are influencing Congress against the interests of music creators,” ASCAP warns.
Brazil's copyright law forbids using DRM to block fair use
La loi sur le copyright du Brésil interdit l’usage des DRM pour limiter les droits des brésiliens.
South Korea: Super fast, and finally free
(En Corée le gouvernement bloquait de fait les usages de GNU/Linux) Imagine a country that has one of the best Internet infrastructures in the world, and yet its government effectively forbids the use of GNU/Linux through a requirement that everyone employ a decade-old Windows-only technology for many key online transactions. That country is South Korea, where 1 Gbits/second Internet connections are planned for 2012; and that Windows-only technology is ActiveX.
IEEE Hates Software Freedom, Now Makes it More Official
La IEEE prend une position de plus en plus pro logiciel propriétaire via des accords avec Microsoft et d’autres entités monopolistiques.
Creative economy is under attack: Time to act
L’Europe, les USA et le Japon souhaitent des lois fortes sur la “propriété intellectuelle” pour protéger leur économie créative selon des grandes entreprises.
BSA: Hardware Without Software Not Tax Deductible
Le lobby des vendeurs de logiciels, la Business Software Alliance (BSA) et le le ministre des finances de la République tchèque, ont annoncé que les ordinateurs vendu sans logiciels seraient surtaxés.
Why Making Money from Free Software Matters
L’auteur détaille pourquoi il est important que le Logiciel Libre rapporte de l’argent et comment le monde de la musique pourrait s’en inspirer.
Microsoft Fails the Standards Test
Il y a deux ans l’ISO approuvait de justesse le format de bureautique ouvert OOXML de Microsoft destiné a concurencer l’ODF. Mais ce format n’est toujours pas utilisé correctement par les produits Microsoft.