Re: [Savannah-hackers] submission of Patent WIKI site - savannah.nongnu.org

[Elfyn McBratney]

Hi,

I'm evaluating the project you submitted for approval in Savannah.

On Fri, May 28, 2004 at 04:25:59PM -0400, address@hidden wrote:
> A package was submitted to savannah.nongnu.org
> This mail was sent to address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> 
> Carsten Svaneborg <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
> License: gpl
> Other License: 
> Package: Patent WIKI site
> System name: ziki
> Type: non-GNU
> 
> Description:
> http://gauss.bacon.su.se is a website currently presenting roughly 23K 
> software patents, that has been granted by the European Patent Office (EPO).
> 
> The purpose of the site is to present software patents in a easy readable
> way, such that politicians, journalists, SME, and OSS developers can see
> which patents have actually been granted. The purpose of the site is to
> raise awareness about software patent matters, which in turn allows people
> better to influence the political processes, that are currently trying to
> legalise the software patents that EPO has granted.
> 
> Some of the features of the site is links in patent documents to
> "related" patents, like in a WIKI, and WIKI annotation of patents.
> Furthermore, most of the patents are in the software field, and
> all have been granted by the EPO.
> 
> Existing patent services such as ep.espacenet.com are targeted for patent
> professionals, not software developers. Hence, it's difficult to find
> software specific patents, and especially those that has been granted,
> and it takes some knowledge to interprete the results.
> My scripts are a perl interface to ep.espacenet.com, that can
> automate searches, and vetting of patents into granted or applications.
> 
> The project consists of the set of scripts (perl & bash) that
> generate and maintain the website, as well as the set of scripts
> that I have used to generate the database. I also have a satelite
> project of modifying spamassassins Baysian classifier to distinguish
> between software and non-software patents. The plan is to vet all
> patents granted, and thus make a complete and uptoday
> database over granted software patents. I'm currently waiting for 
> reply from EPO for permission to distribute the patent database
> itself.
> 
> I have many ideas about how to improve the scripts, the site
> and the database. However, I don't have the time for realising
> those ideas. I have GPL'ed the scripts, such that people can
> improve them, and asked for assistance, and a number of people
> are interested in contributing, as a result we need infrastructure
> for hosting the project.
> 
> Note there is nothing in the code or site that is particular for
> European patents, given a database of US software patents, a similar
> site could be running within no time.
> 
> The relevant source code and database can be downloaded from
> http://gauss.bacon.su.se/download

In order to release your project properly and unambiguously 
under the GPL, please place copyright notices and permission-to-copy
statements at the beginning of every file of source code.

In addition, if you haven't already, please copy a copy of the plain
text version of the GPL, available from
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt), into a file named "COPYING".

Additional instructions are available from
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html.

The GPL FAQ explains why these procedures must be followed.  To learn
why a copy of the GPL must be included with every copy of the code,
for example, go to
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhyMustIInclude

> It runs happily on a linux server with requires bash, perl and apache.

"Linux" is just a kernel of a more complex system that we like to
refer to as GNU/Linux, to emphasize the ideals of the Free Software
movement.

Would you mind changing references to Linux as an OS to GNU/Linux?

For more information, see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html.

If you can get the above fixed, and point us to a tarball containing
the fixes, we can approve your project.

-- 
Elfyn McBratney

PGP Key ID: 0x456548B4
PGP Key Fingerprint:
  29D5 91BB 8748 7CC9 650F 31FE 6888 0C2A 4565 48B4

pgpp_BKlWdiY1.pgp
Description: PGP signature