“A European version of the DARPA Grand Challenge [CC] is being held in Germany next month. Instead of a race through the desert, the EU challenge is split into three events. Urban, non-urban, and landmine detection will be the ‘courses’, with multiple winners in each event. Interestingly Sebastian Thrun, winner of last year’s Challenge, has been forbidden from taking part despite being a European citizen.” From the article: “The trials will take place in and around Hammelburg, a mockup of a town used by the German military for training exercises. In the non-urban course the robots will have to contend with a one-kilometer route containing ditches, barbed wire fences, cattle guards, fires, narrow underpasses, and inclines of up to 40 degrees. The urban and landmine 500-meter trials will require the robots to negotiate doorways, stairs, partially collapsed buildings, and poor visibility from smoke or partial lighting. Along the way, they will also have to search for designated objects and report their findings back to base.”

• Slashdot | The European Grand Challenge

“In what is being widely seen as a victory for the open source movement that has campaigned strongly on the issue, the European Parliament rejected yesterday a new law that would have allowed software patents in the European Union.

The vote was 648 votes against, 14 in favor, with 18 abstentions.”

Full story:
* European Parliament rejects software patents, again

/. Sanity writes “According to a FFII report, and a Financial Times article, proponents of software patents have just won a significant victory against smaller software companies and open source software proponents as the EU’s legal affairs committee rejected most of the effective amendments that were proposed to the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, which is widely perceived to usher-in U.S.-style software patents in the EU. All is not yet lost as the rejected amendments can be re-tabled when the entire European Parliament has the opportunity to vote next month. If you value the freedom to code without worrying about getting sued, and you live in the EU, now is the time to take effective action.” And JasonFleischer writes “Richard Stallman has a piece in The Guardian
which does a nice job of explaining the problems with the EU patent directive that will be voted on next month (and for that matter software patents in general), using literary examples.”

* Major blow to opponents of Software Patents in EU – Ian Clarke’s blog

“Whoa!! This is highly embarrasing, please don’t tease us too much guys…”

Superentity writes “Computer Business Review is reporting that an official at the European Commission has called on Europe to take a more proactive approach to open source or risk missing out, and outlined steps that European businesses and governments can take to help open source.” From the article: “In the US most of the large companies have clear strategies to increase open source in their product lines…In Asia and Latin America, we see that there are many national and regional projects to develop and to work on open source.”

Slashdot | Europe Is Falling Behind On Open Source