zoobab 1249149605|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
"Before he knew it, Josefsson was part of a movement which claims to be saving the world from corporate control. In 2002 he became one of the leading opponents of the EU's software patent directive. He co-founded the Swedish chapter of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) with Engström and, without any knowledge of how to lobby politicians, he spearheaded the campaign against the directive. “When the directive was proposed in 2002, I and many others started following this from scratch,” he says. “We were computer programmers, students or entrepreneurs, and we knew nothing about how the EU worked. “It eventually developed into a grassroots movement equal in strength to the business associations and lobby groups you normally find in Brussels, to those whose views are normally heard and listened to,” he says. […] By early 2005, more than 400,000 people had signed a petition against the software patent directive and later that year it was rejected by the Parliament. Although Josefsson is keen to stress the collective effort involved in stopping the directive, it was also a personal victory."
zoobab, 1249149605|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
