rants
Random rants and thoughts about my activities in and for the Free Software community.
it’s a victory!
Well, we finally won. The directive on software patents has been trashed by the European Parliament. While everybody preferred to have a directive amended, this was the best result possible. But cancelling the directive is not the victory I see. I am more impressed by the results of this army of loosely coupled people, volunteers. All MEPs were informed of the directive, which is a big thing per se, and many of them knew its content and its implications. The debate on July 5th gave good hints of the amount of energy spent informing all political groups. The credibility gained by FSFE and FFII as positive forces is the biggest asset, the clear victory we all bring home as a movement. I have worked closely with the volunteers from Italy and I was impressed … no, I was happy all the time. I was never worried that the directive could be approved, I didn’t care to a certain extent. I was (and am) confident that with such people fighting for freedom we can never lose, in the long run. I want to thank the it-help of ffii team: Marco Menardi, a new friend in the arena, has fought night and day to coordinate with the rest of FFII in Europe; Roberto Galoppini, has spent lots of energies talking with politicians and companies; Carlo Strozzi, who contributed significant time writing and calling MEPs; and finally the hero Mimmo Cosenza, that escaped from the hospital earlier just to be able to go to Bruxelles to meet Italian MEPs. Of course this is not the whole crew, the complete list is much longer and includes companies like Engineering and Zucchetti, associations like RegistroInformatici, the University of Udine, and all those that have contributed raising public awareness on the issue. Now we deserve a little rest, but we will have to keep guarding because the threats to freedom come from any corner. Thank you to all fellows, keep up the good work.