[Fsfe-uk] Poll to show support for anti-softpat activists

[Nick Hill]

I have circulated this around ant-softpat friends. Received this morning 
and voted. I notice this poll is conducted by European Voice in 
association with Microsoft.

--
Dear supporter of the FFII[1],

The FFII has kindly enabled me to contact you with this campaign message 
on my own behalf.  You are soon going to receive an email from the Board 
of the FFII.  The FFII will announce this year's General Assembly, which 
is going to take place in Brussels on 29 November.  If you plan to 
attend, please make a note in your calendar!

In the meantime, please consider voting for me (and other candidates who 
I recommend) in the public Internet poll for the "EV50 Europeans of the 
Year" awards, the most prestigious series of awards in EU politics.  It 
would send a strong message to politicians, the press and the public if 
a vocal opponent of software patents were elected as the new "European 
of the Year". We can simultaneously ensure that a couple of our 
political allies, especially Michel Rocard MEP, also receive awards, 
while the proponents of unlimited software patentability (such as 
commissioner McCreevy) should come away empty-handed.

The poll is open to the worldwide public (including non-Europeans), and 
the idea is explained on this page:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/index.html
Specific voting recommendations are available on this page:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html
Those pages are available in 14 languages.  You will also find an email 
form on that site, which makes it quick and easy to inform others of 
this campaign, and banners for your website.

Richard Stallman (President of the Free Software Foundation), Tim 
O'Reilly (book publisher and conference organizer), Alan Cox (Linux 
kernel maintainer), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) and Monty Widenius (MySQL) have 
endorsed our voting recommendations in a press release:
http://www.ag-ip-news.com/GetArticle.asp?Art_ID=2254&lang=en

Should I win, the FFII will receive the prize money, and will be duly
credited in my acceptance speech and a subsequent press release.

In addition to the general information that you find on the website, let 
me also say a few things about the unique relationship between the FFII 
and myself.

By participating in an FFII conference in April of last year, I became 
more aware of the political controversy over software patents.  By 
subsequently participating in various FFII activities, I realized that 
citizens like us can indeed influence a political debate.  With the 
financial support of three corporate sponsors (1&1, Red Hat, MySQL), I 
then founded the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign as a complement to the 
FFII's own website and lobbying.  From the conceptual stage on, I 
cooperated closely with the FFII.

Without the FFII, I would not have become involved, let alone been 
impactful or successful, in the fight against an ill-conceived piece of 
patent legislation.

About six months ago, I handed the NoSoftwarePatents.com site to the 
FFII, and if you look at the voting form for the EV50 awards, then you 
will notice that the NoSoftwarePatents.com name is right next to my 
name.  I'm running on the NoSoftwarePatents ticket, and in the name of a 
website that will, hopefully, be a cornerstone of future FFII campaigns 
in the software patent context.

The FFII and I jointly received this year's CNET Networks UK Technology
Award in the Outstanding Contribution to Software Development category. 
 It would only have been fair if we had always been jointly nominated 
for such awards and honors, but even where that is not formally the 
case, it's still the way I view it in practice.

For your convenience, here is another link to the voting recommendations:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html

Thank you for considering to lend me your support, and once again, 
thanks to the FFII for everything!

Best regards,

Florian Mueller
address@hidden

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