Europe Says No to Software Patents Law

According to Bloomberg, [http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aikfIyenYsZg&refer=home Europe has rejected a new law on software patents]. I’m sure not all PostgreSQL users are happy about this, though [http://www.postgresql.org/community/survey.40 most probably are]. I link to the bloomberg article because it points out some things that are bad about this decision, like mainly that this doesn’t mean Europeans are patent free, they still have to worry about individual contries enacting laws. It will be interesting to see if there is a boost in open source adoption in Europe after this move, because I’m not convinced that this law would have really killed the open source industry in Europe as some people claimed. I base this on the fact that the U.S., which seems to have the worst patent laws around, seems to pump at a large amount of Open Source software just fine. Still, I think this was probably a good thing, and offer a tip of the hat to those who [http://swpat.ffii.org/ fought] [http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ against] it.