The European Parliament is on the verge of adopting a directive reforming standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms, an undefined term which has been seen as a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open Source software. The Business Software Alliance has been very active trying to get FRAND terms into the directive.

On Friday FSFE sent a letter to the European Commission to support Open Standards and interoperability. In the drawn-out battle to retain at least a weak recommendation for Open Standards in the revised European Interoperability Framework, FSFE has countered a leaked letter by the lobby group Business Software Alliance with its own thorough analysis of the relation between standards and patents.

FSFE has obtained a copy of a letter sent to the Commission by the BSA last week. In the following paragraphs they analyse the BSA's arguments and explain why their claims are false, and why Open Standards are key to interoperability and competition in the European software market.

The BSA continues to make life a lot harder for Free/libre software; message about the situation in Finland is reproduced

Very negative portrayal of Free software is tied to a lobby that's directly tied to Microsoft and also strives to criminalise Free software in the EU

"...Some people have highlighted this tension between different uses of the word for a long time. Richard ­Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and a notorious linguistic stickler, has a long list of words he finds troubling (including "free", "creator" and "ecosystem"). He believes that piracy has always been a propaganda term when used by publishers..."