A crowd of about four hundred turned out to demonstrate against proposed European software patents legislation. It was the first "geeky", free-software related demonstration in Hungary said APC member Green Spider, organised by groups not typically used to leaving their computer screens to get their voices heard.
August 24 saw a demonstration against the European Software Patents legislation being discussed in the EU Parliament. It was the first "geeky", free-software related demonstration in Hungary. Many organisations joined, including the Hungarian Linux Users Group, the BSD User’s Group, the Hungarian Free Software Foundation, Green Spider and several others, writes Zoltan Varady of APC member Green Spider.
There were about 300-400 participants, which suprised me, as this is a very specific issue which few people understand. Lots of geek boys and girls wearing yellow t-shirts, there was a performance with enchained programmers and finally letting hundreds of yellow balloons fly, thus liberating the “source”, as original computer code is called.
Robert “Fidusz” Fridrich of Green Spider, APC member in Hungary, gave a speech about how this legislation would affect civil society organisations and campaigners, while others talked about how it would affect smaller software firms and individual programmers. All in all, it was very professional, especially taking into account that these groups aren’t very used to putting together demonstrations.
Photo: FSF Hungary
