After a three year struggle, the EU Parliament voted against Software Patents on Wednesday the 6th of June, which is a huge victory for the Open Source community - small industries and individual programmers who can't afford to buy patents will still be able to conduct business without the fear of being sued by huge business conglomerates.
An overwhelming majority of the voters in the European Parliament (648 out of 732) realized that forcing programers to patent their software will result in an increase in unemployment and a decrease in software development, which would only hurt the economy.
The fact that this bill has been rejected means that everything will remain as it has been until now. Software manufacturers can still apply for patents, they will still be \"protected\" by them... and the everyday user still has the option of using free programs. If the bill had been approved , it could have marked the end of open source software in the EU, as most of the companies and people that produce open source software could not afford the legal costs involved in procuring patents.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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