Communicate our causes to programmers and the public at large by means of stickers, flyers, brochures, t-shirts, performances, booth equipment etc, and keep such items ready for groups that need them.
During this two-day interdisciplinary conference in Brussels, near and in the European Parliament, we will bring together programmers, engineers, entrepreneurs, law scholars, economists and politicians to explore the whole chain of causality from proposed patent law regulations to European policy goals, such as promoting innovation, competition, enterpreneurial spirit and consumer protection, unbureaucratic and target-oriented governance, legal security, favorable conditions for small and medium enterprises and "becoming the world's most competitive information society by 2010".
Members of the European Parliament are coming back to work on monday August 25th. It is the last week before the vote on the Software Patent Directive Proposal. We are organising a conference and street rally wednesday the 27th. Some of our friends will moreover be staying in the parliament for several days. Time to work decide on submission of amendments to the software patent directive proposal is running out. FFII has proposed one set of amendments that stick as closely as possible to the original proposal while debugging and somewhat simplifying it. An alternative small set of amendments would "cut the crap" and rewrite the directive from scratch. We present and explain the possible approaches.