EU Software Patents Jeopardise Munich’s Linux Migration

News Release
Friday 30 July 2004

MUNICH, Germany, July 30 /PRNewswire/ — When the city administration of Munich decided to migrate its IT infrastructure to the Linux operating system, it made headline news around the world. That project is now being threatened by a proposed European Union directive on software patents. The directive is pushed for by the governments of Germany, the UK, France, and other countries on the EU Council.

Software patents are considered the greatest danger to the usage and development of Linux and other Free Software. A cursory search revealed that the Linux "base client", which the city of Munich plans to install on the desktop computers of approximately 14,000 employees, is in conflict with more than 50 European software patents.

Today Jens Muehlhaus, an alderman from the Green Party, filed two motions in which he calls on the mayor of Munich, the Social Democrat Christian Ude, to contact the federal government of Germany on this matter and to analyse how the EU software patent directive affects Munich’s Linux project. The politician, a supporter of open source, warns that patent infringement assertions could take entire departments of the city administration out of operation. Mr. Muehlhaus expresses concern over the future ability of open source software to meet the needs of the city administration if software patents massively hinder its development. Related caveats have been voiced by the SME association CEA-PME and by Deutsche Bank Research.

A week earlier, the chief information officer of Munich, Wilhelm Hoegner, said it is "indispensable" to check on the consequences of the software patent directive to open source software. Any such oversight would be a "catastrophe for Munich’s Linux migration project, and for open source in general".

Florian Mueller, an active participant in the software patent debate, sees the EU Council on the wrong track: "Open source is a historic opportunity for Europe to save costs and create jobs. Schroeder, Blair and Chirac should demonstrate leadership and stop their civil servants from sacrificing the open source opportunity to the insatiable patent bureaucracy, lest some large corporations will shut down open source and many SMEs." Mr. Mueller is a software entrepreneur, and an adviser to Europe’s largest open source software company MySQL.

Contact:

Florian Mueller
florian@mysql.com
Tel. international: +49-8151-21088
SWM Software-Marketing GmbH