Brussels, 16/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Green/EFA group in the European Parliament organised a demonstration in Brussels on Wednesday against the patentability of software, and, on Thursday, a meeting on free software, with the participation of 25 free software user-groups from the EU-15, including Alan Cox, co-developer of "Linux", and Jon Lech Johanssen, known as "DVD Jon", recently acquitted for having made the DVD code available to all on the Internet in order to facilitate the reading of DVDs with "Gnu/Linux". On Thursday, the two co-chairs of the group, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Monica Frassoni, publicly "freed" their computers by installing "Linux".
As they had done last September, the European Greens reiterated their opposition to the patentability of software and "proprietary" software. In particular Mr Cohn-Bendit spoke in favour of the need for free software in all public institutions, and Monica Frassoni saw in the Greens' initiative "a sign encouraging the e-community in its fight against monopolies and unfair competition".