Australia seems to be headed for software patent legislation in 2010. The bad news is that there was a consultation, and we missed it. The good news is that the consultation was just a preliminary step, so if we start organising now, we can still participate fully in the legislative phase. Other good news is that when I discussed software patents with people in Australia six months ago, there was plenty of interest.
To work on the current consultation in Israel, we’ve launched a public mailing list. There’s one for Australia too since there’ll be work to do there very soon, and some others are being set up. Why public?
I need help contacting groups in Israel. With a February deadline, the Israeli patent office is asking if it should grant software patents. To help, join this mailing list: israel-public-discuss@endsoftwarepatents.org. As usual, the small businesses, individual programmers, and software user groups don’t seem to have noticed this consultation. This is common in public consultations – but you can bet the lawyers groups and the multinationals are aware and working on their submissions. So I need help with informing people in Israel now so they have some time to get prepare submissions. More info below.
I was recently asked to give an introduction to our perspective on software patents. Below is a quickly edited copy of what I sent. The purpose was to help someone prepare for a meeting, so these are starting points, not an overall summary.
Analogies are useful for explaining the issue to people who don’t have the same background. There’s no single best analogy, so it’s useful to have a few to choose from when the need arises.