Yesterday, Little Lord Bill told the Danish government that if they didn’t get the software patents law proposal through in the EU, he would close down a Microsoft-owned firm in Denmark & move it to the USA. 800 jobs would disappear. Now, I AM against software patents, for a number of reasons, but mostly, I guess, because it would mean that “real companies” can & will stop a number of small companies & open source projects. What non-commercial project would dare to test their might against the judicial powers of Microsoft, Adobe or whatever? Possibly, most people (or politicians) don’t understand the ramifications of passing the software patent law, but luckily some do- Poland, for example, was instrumental in stopping the Software Patents Bill last year.
As a reply to the Microsoft threat, Danish Social Democrats replied:
“Danish policy should not be dictated by corporations – no matter how big they might be. What’s crucial is finding a solution that serves small as well as big IT companies best. And that is not necessarily the solution that Microsoft or other software mastodons feel to be the right one”, says the Social Democratic IT spokesman Thomas Adelskov.
Good one. Understandably, Microsoft wants to see to it that they will get money, even if Windows loses ground as an OS platform/Office standard package. Presumably, they will try to stop projects such as Windows emulators for Linux and free Office alternatives such as OpenOffice and StarOffice if such a law were to be. Gimp would probably be sued by Adobe, and many of the Linux extra programs would be sued by any company with the money for a law suite.
You can read more about Microsoft’s threat at FFIIs Wiki. If you’re in Europe, be sure to sign those petitions!