Hello dear Waikato Linux Users Group, Just wanted to make sure you saw this massage and call for action from the Free Software Foundation. Best, Aleksey Tsalolikhin UNIX Sys Admin ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Peter Brown <peterb(a)fsf.org> Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 2:35 PM Subject: [FSF] New Zealand in urgent danger of software patents To: info-fsf(a)gnu.org The director of the End Software Patents campaign Ciaran O'Riordan writes to warn of an imminent threat of software patents in New Zealand: Dear Free Software Supporters, The New Zealand government has proposed allowing unlimited software patenting. They are accepting comments until July 2nd, but participation from the people who will be harmed seems very low. The details of how to participate can be found on swpat.org: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/New_Zealand Participation of the free software community is particularly important because, although SME federations and consumer rights groups are sometimes the most influential lobbies against software patents, it's often the free software community that raises awareness of the issue and gets these other groups moving. The July 2nd deadline is very close, so work is needed now. We thus urge you to participate in the consultation, but also to raise awareness on blogs, news sites, and among email groups, and to contact related interest organisations and companies to ask them to get involved too. Some other swpat.org pages that may be useful: http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Organising_a_campaign http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Software_patents_harm_SMEs http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Studies_on_economics_and_innovation http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_to_standards Ciaran O'Riordan Director End Software Patents Tel: +32 487 64 17 54 email: ciaran [at] fsf.org end. -- Peter T. Brown Executive Director Free Software Foundation www.fsf.org www.gnu.org info-fsf mailing list info-fsf(a)gnu.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-fsf