Article from Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (English)

(Links in French and German are not yet available)

"The Committee for Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI) was justly labelled a 'legislative sausage machine' by its vice president Willi Rothley shortly before its misguided vote on software patents. This sausage machine has been turning out a seemingly never-ending stream of poorly crafted and shoddily reasoned special-interest legislation for many years, including directives on database exclusivity, gene patents and copying prevention. Now perhaps for the first time the sausage machine is meeting significant public resistance at a stage where there are still chances of stopping and questioning it. We may cautiously hope that we are part of a process of change for the better in the culture of lawmaking in Europe. "

This is good news for Linux and Free Software, as it allow more time for discussion of the issues and perhaps a defeat of the proposed legislation. Even though this release is dated 26-June-2003, ZDNet reported as late as Friday 27-June-2003 that "European software patents are a 'done deal'".

There is also a link to the Sausage Speech (German) at the bottom of the page.