Open source advocates wary of FTA

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 20 years ago

Open source advocates wary of FTA

Australian open source developers and advocates are wary of the free trade agreement (FTA) struck with the US, saying it would lead to the acceptance of American-style patent and intellectual property laws which, in turn, would cripple the local software industry.

Linux Australia president Pia Smith said Linux and open source were becoming vital parts of the local IT landscape. "Australia has more active Open Source developers than Canada, and dominates the Asia Pacific," she said, quoting data from the Boston Consulting Group. Smith said it was equally clear that this trend would continue.

She said the growth of open source in Australia had brought into focus problems with parts of the Digital Agenda Act, "which claims to prevent piracy, but ends up banning normal activities." The ACCC has opposed the act on these grounds.

Towards the end of the year 2000, Australia amended its Copyright Act of 1968 with the amendments taking effect on March 4 the following year.

The Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act has provisions similar to those in the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act; the DMCA aimed to make US copyright laws comply with the WIPO Copyright treaties by providing legal protection and legal remedies against the circumvention of technology used by copyright owners to protect against piracy.

Smith also pointed to the issue of software patents, which were disallowed in Europe. "The FTA commits Australia to continue allowing increasing numbers of such patents," she said. "Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has pointed out that any non-trivial program will infringe on some patent or the other."

Sydney Linux User Group president Jeff Waugh likened software patents to landmines. "Like landmines, they pose a huge threat to the open source community," said Waugh, who is also the release manager for the GNOME desktop project. "Stepping on just one of these mines is enough to cripple a project, destroying years of effort donated by the project to the world."

Anthony Towns, another prominent local open source developer, said people were increasingly asking if IP policy should be used to protect big business from competition by start-ups and open source, instead of encouraging innovation. "If that's a bad idea even in the US, it's a far worse idea for Australia," said Towns who functions as the release manager for the free Debian GNU/Linux distribution.

Advertisement

Smith said there were big IT companies which were questioning the increased trend towards granting software patnets - Oracle opposed such patents; Intel had questioned the entire US patent system and the US Federal Trade Commission had complained that far too many bad patents are being granted.

More recently, the US Patent and Trademark Organisation has itself cancelled a patent granted to a small software start-up, Eolas Corporation, which had sued and won damages from Microsoft for browser technology that makes plug-ins and applets possible.

Last year, an e-commerce patent which was being sought in Australia gained a lot of media coverage but was finally granted and can now be enforced.

Most Viewed in National

Loading