Software Democracy vs Capitalism.

(From Business and Finance)

Software Democracy vs Capitalism

Although the controversial EU directive on software patents seems to have been killed, the debate that it spawned will be with us for some time to come.

Matthew Clark reports.

Unbeknownst to most people in Europe, the European Union came within inches of passing a new law that would have dealt a devastating blow to small firms and software developers across the continent. At least that's the accusation that many campaigners and Open Source advocates made each time the socalled Computer Implemented Inventions Directive was placed before EU politicians - a directive that was gunned down in a European Parliament committee this month.

While already protected by copyright, an EU-wide system for patenting software would give big software …