12.16.19
Gemini version available ♊︎Recharging for 2020
Summary: Techrights prepares for another big year with more coverage than past years (we have become more efficient and our team grows)
Colourful seasons have gone. It’s cold. It’s dark. But we’re ready to rise again in 2020, maybe with a new operating system (we’re going to experiment around Christmas, as upgrades are long overdue). The site will definitely look the same, irrespective of what runs at the back end, as backward compatibility is very important to us and we don’t intend to change the look-and-feel any time soon, not even for so-called “smart” or ‘smart’ devices. The way things stand, the European Patent Office (EPO) is our top priority because nobody else covers it (not properly; puff pieces quoting EPO press releases don’t count), the USPTO affairs/matters at a policy level (pertinent court cases go into Daily Links), and we’ll keep an eye on software patents in Europe, which the EPO hopes to legitimise by smothering the national courts (with UPC, which António Campinos supports as much as Battistelli did).
“We’ll keep fighting, we’ll fight for those who need it.”We don’t expect 35 U.S.C. § 101 to be successfully undermined, no matter what the hive of lawyers keeps telling us. So we won’t pay too much attention to that. Instead we’ll focus more on GNU/Linux and attacks on it, including the attacks on GNU/Linux that we see coming from the Linux Foundation (it nowadays helps Microsoft more than it has helped actual GNU/Linux users). As always, we welcome but refuse to beg for financial support. We accept donations through PayPal and we’re grateful for any contribution readers can make, even if as meager as a jar of coffee’s worth (I pay less than 2 pounds for a jar of coffee, which makes about 100 cups to keep me awake, to keep me reading and writing). My wife and I run the site at our own expense and we reject corporate money for the sake of complete autonomy. We live a very frugal life; almost all the food we buy is significantly price-reduced and we mostly walk (sometimes public transport gets used; I haven’t owned a car in over a decade). We never turn on the heating unless there’s a guest. The upside is, that’s good for the environment as well. My birthday is tomorrow and I’ve planned nothing for it; I will be writing, as usual…
We’ll keep fighting, we’ll fight for those who need it. European patent examiners (let’s face it, the scientists/examiners do want increased quality of patents!), Free software users, and marginalised people in need of privacy and a platform through which they can blow the whistle. We got dozens of those in 2019.
2020 will be our fourteenth year as we’re proud to say that all our sources have been kept safe. We definitely intend to keep it that way whilst ensuring maximal level of transparency (reducing opportunity for mischief and misconduct). █
ᶃ Gemini Space
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