Second Reading of the EU Software Patent Directive

I’m a devout believer in the crippling effect software patents will have on software development in general, and open source development in particular. Participate in the webdemo against the EU Software Patent Directive like WE do, and/or talk to anyone you might know that may be able to influence the politicians. The vote will take place between the 5th and 7th of July. Just say NO!
There is plenty of information about what sofware patents really would mean. Basically: no vlc, no mplayer, no ffmpeg, no gimp, no OpenOffice. The list goes on and on, and as you can clearly see, strong software patents WILL mean that software will be controlled by the few big companies that can afford patents and the lawyers to go with them. It just plain stinks! #