Compliance Toolkit

Story: EU votes through software patent changes

Posted by: Corine (Wednesday 19 May 2004, 10:11 AM)

Fight, sure, but how ???

OK, we can tell our MPs, but they just don't care, sadly.

I feel the problem is we'll find it hard to get people together to fight this : people who work in computing in France are not enough aware of what's looming, and the future implications. And they're not ready to act.

That may be a hard statement …

But I teach computing students at university and I've tried to make them more concerned about all this, preparing whole files of articles for them to comment on the patent problems…

Their reactions are just frightening: first, they don't know anything about the problem (??!!!) then, they usually answer "yeah right, but we can't do anything against that, can we?"

Well, yes you can. But I feel you won't and that's why I'm so angry.

The file I'm preparing for next year is still more gloomy and will take at least a whole month lessons to complete, and I'll do it enthusiastically, although I know only maybe 5 per cent of them will react…

I've made a poll with my first year students: only 3 out of 90 students had "heard of" the problem.
Those students are the future of computing, and I feel sad.

And, to make things still darker, if it still is possible … , the researchers at our lab never get one email about this and some don't even know there is a problem…