I just received the posting found below from the FFII [Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure], and pass it on to those readers who wish to vote in the EV50 poll. Your vote will contribute to the battle against software patents [in our view, software is sufficiently protected by copyright law].
The categories to be voted on are:
Commissioner of the Year
MEP of the Year
Statesman of the Year
Diplomat of the Year
Campaigner of the Year
Business Leader of the Year
Journalist of the Year
Achiever of the Year
Non-EU Citizen of the Year
European of the Year
Please note that we support the vote for Florian Mueller but that we expressley do not support many of the other recommendations for voting made at NoSoftwarePatents.com - but you have to vote in every category to make your vote count, so we recommend you follow your own opinions as to who deserves the other awards. Here is the FFII e-mail message:
Dear supporter of the FFII,
The FFII has kindly enabled me to contact you with this campaign message on my own behalf. You are soon going to receive an email from the Board of the FFII. The FFII will announce this year's General Assembly, which is going to take place in Brussels on 29 November. If you plan to attend, please make a note in your calendar!
In the meantime, please consider voting for me (and other candidates who I recommend) in the public Internet poll for the "EV50 Europeans of the Year" awards, the most prestigious series of awards in EU politics. It would send a strong message to politicians, the press and the public if a vocal opponent of software patents were elected as the new "European of the Year". We can simultaneously ensure that a couple of our political allies, especially Michel Rocard MEP, also receive awards, while the proponents of unlimited software patentability (such as commissioner McCreevy) should come away empty-handed.
The poll is open to the worldwide public (including non-Europeans), and the idea is explained on this page: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/index.html
Specific voting recommendations are available on this page: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html
Those pages are available in 14 languages. You will also find an email form on that site, which makes it quick and easy to inform others of this campaign, and banners for your website.
Richard Stallman (President of the Free Software Foundation), Tim O'Reilly(book publisher and conference organizer), Alan Cox (Linux kernel maintainer), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) and Monty Widenius (MySQL) have endorsed our voting recommendations in a press release: http://www.ag-ip-news.com/GetArticle.asp?Art_ID=2254&lang=en
Should I win, the FFII will receive the prize money, and will be duly credited in my acceptance speech and a subsequent press release.
In addition to the general information that you find on the website, let me also say a few things about the unique relationship between the FFII and myself.
By participating in an FFII conference in April of last year, I became more aware of the political controversy over software patents. By subsequently participating in various FFII activities, I realized that citizens like us can indeed influence a political debate. With the financial support of three corporate sponsors (1&1, Red Hat, MySQL), I then founded the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign as a complement to the FFII's own website and lobbying. From the conceptual stage on, I cooperated closely with the FFII. Without the FFII, I would not have become involved, let alone been impactful or successful, in the fight against an ill-conceived piece of patent legislation.
About six months ago, I handed the NoSoftwarePatents.com site to the FFII, and if you look at the voting form for the EV50 awards, then you will notice that the NoSoftwarePatents.com name is right next to my name. I'm running on the NoSoftwarePatents ticket, and in the name of a website that will, hopefully, be a cornerstone of future FFII campaigns in the software patent context.
The FFII and I jointly received this year's CNET Networks UK Technology Award in the Outstanding Contribution to Software Development category. It would only have been fair if we had always been jointly nominated for such awards and honors, but even where that is not formally the case, it's still the way I view it in practice.
For your convenience, here is another link to the voting recommendations: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html
Thank you for considering to lend me your support, and once again, thanks to the FFII for everything! Best regards, Florian Mueller
Crossposted to LawPundit.
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