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Fraunhofer FOKUS and the Software Patents Lobby in Germany

Fraunhofer ISE
Photo by Joachim S. Müller



Summary: Fraunhofer continues to do a disservice to software freedom and instead does a service to Microsoft (which is among Fraunhofer's sources of income)

Yesterday we wrote about Knut Blind from Fraunhofer FOKUS. Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat wrote his name as "Kurt Blind" and quoted him as saying that a software patent "reduces transaction costs". This was not at all shocking to us given the similarities, intersections, and payments that go between Fraunhofer, Microsoft, and even the Gates Foundation -- a subject we previously covered in:





Professor Blind (yes, that's not a pun) has initiated this survey which led Carlo Piana to writing: "Answer en masse to the questionnaire... or it'll be slanted twrds royalty-bearing FRAND standard policy." Blind's background is in finance, not software development. He is influencing the EU's legislators, so this is important.

“Answer en masse to the questionnaire... or it'll be slanted twrds royalty-bearing FRAND standard policy.”
      --Carlo Piana
Florian Müller is meanwhile attacking all of Microsoft's big competitors (yes, again). He labels them a threat to software because of software patents while so conveniently leaving companies like Siemens (see previous post as well as older ones [1, 2, 3]) and of course Microsoft out. That's just why we urge people not to trust Müller and we'll carry on showing his bias.

Unlike Fraunhofer, S.u.S.E. was a big pusher for the end of software patents, but when Novell bought the Germany-based S.u.S.E. (with IBM's help) it turned SUSE into Ballnux, which is all about paying Microsoft for "IP peace of mind", meaning software patents in Linux. OpenSUSE 11.3 is here, but does anyone care? There are not even many reviews of this release (here is one). Money from companies like Novell and IBM has shattered SUSE's views on software patents and Microsoft's payments to Fraunhofer (Bill Gates pays Fraunhofer too) can't help Europe, can they?

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