Good news from Europe

No, I'm not talking about Paris losing the bid to host the 2012 Olympics - nor even about London winning it. That's news from Singapore, anyway.

The good news is that the European Parliament threw out the EU Council of Ministers' Software Patent directive - by 648 votes to 14. I complained about the Council of Ministers' shenannigans earlier.

This means that the current unsatisfactory system, where some states issue patents for trivial algorithms and some don't, continues. On the other hand, it avoids the even more unsatisfactory situation where they all issue daft software patents and mess up the entire European industry.

This one will be back, I think. But for today, it's good news.