Aymeric sez, "I was at the Brussels demo [against software patents] today and the result, it appears, was slightly positive." That's an understatement: the software patent issue is dead again in the European Parliament and has to be rebooted from start if the other side wants to get it through!
The European Parliament has thrown out a bill that would have allowed software to be patented.
Politicians unanimously rejected the bill and now it must go through another round of consultation if it is to have a chance of becoming law.
During consultation the software patents bill could be substantially re-drafted or even scrapped.
(Thanks, Aymeric!)
Update: Tom sez, "the directive won't
necessarily be rebooted, it depends on whether or not the Commission want to.
They're free to ignore Parliament's request, and given their track record
this may happen. Hurrah for democracy."
Update 2:Ronan sez, "The implementation of the directive at hand is governed by a process called codecision, meaning both the Commission and the Parliament have to agree on it; either can veto it. As such, if the Commission disregards the restart request, Parliament can simply vote the unmodified directive out of existence. Further detail on the processes of European legislation can be found at the URL (ok, so it's not a complete red herring) in a variety of languages."
