Open source group rubbishes ICT minister's claims over FTA
Open source group rubbishes ICT minister's claims over FTA
Claims by the recently appointed ICT Minister Helen Coonan that the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement posed no threat to Australia's ICT industry has been dismissed as woefully inaccurate by one of the country's leading advocates of open source software development.
Senator Coonan issued a statement which attacked the Democrats and the ALP over fears expressed by both parties that the FTA would harm the Australian ICT industry.
"Senator Lundy asserts the AUSFTA will impose the US Patents System on Australian software producers and that small software producers will be vulnerable to anti-competitive bullying, and Senator Greig has raised the spectre of software giants stifling competition and the agreement hindering the development of open source software.
"Predictably, they are both misrepresenting the AUSFTA and attempting to frighten Australian businesses for their own political purposes."
Coonan continued: "The AUSFTA will not have an effect on Australia's current approach and treatment of applications to patent computer software nor will it affect Australian open source software producers."
Not according to Pia Smith, chairman of open source group Linux Australia, who says the software development community very much echoes the concerns expressed by the opposition parties over the FTA agreement.
"I find it really disturbing that she is saying there's no problem and that open source development won't be affected, because it's completely untrue.
"What the FTA does is it locks us into changes we've made in recent years that were still under scrutiny. Under the Digital Agenda Act, we had some changes to our patent laws which brought us more into line with how the U.S. operates, so currently it's quite similar, but it's under review and we are able to change it locally. However, with the FTA, we are locked into that because it's an international trade agreement and we can't change it, so we will probably see a massive influx of patents in Australia which can and will have a negative impact on projects in this country."
Smith recalled one example of an Australian software development team who were working on an application that would have brought great benefit to the wider community. Trouble was that a U.S. company owned the patent of part of the software code used in the application. The U.S. company wasn't interested in developing the software itself, but it also blocked its use by any other developers, killing the project dead.
"Patents are a way for large companies to hold a monopoly over the industry. It's basically used as a bullying mechanism.
"They are also extending copyright which means any project that starts to get vaguely competitive can be taken down if they don't have a large patent portfolio, which is quite an expensive thing to maintain. So basically anyone who creates software in Australia is at risk, particularly in the open source community because you can see the code which makes it easier to prove that a patent has been violated."
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