Florian Müller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Florian Müller (born January 21, 1970 in Augsburg, Germany) is an author, entrepreneur, consultant, and the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign.
In 1985, Müller started writing articles for German computer magazines. A year later, at age 16, he became Germany's youngest computer book author.
From 1987 to 1998, he specialized on publishing and distribution cooperations between US and European software companies. He initiated and managed such alliances in various market segments, including productivity software, utility software, educational software, and computer games. As a consultant to and representative of Blizzard Entertainment, Müller was involved in the marketing campaigns for WarCraft II, Diablo I and StarCraft).
In 1996, he co-founded an online gaming service named Rival Network, which in early 2000 was acquired by the Telefónica group. From 2001 to 2004, Müller advised the CEO of MySQL AB, developer of the namesake open-source database management software product.
In 2004, Müller received the support of corporate sponsors 1&1, Red Hat and MySQL for launching the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, which opposed the European Commission's proposed directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. Following several years of intensive lobbying by many parties, this heavily amended proposed directive was rejected by the European Parliament on July 6, 2005, with 648 out of 680 votes cast.
For his political activities, Müller received several awards in 2005. A leading publication for intellectual property lawyers, "Managing Intellectual Property", counted Müller - such as the Chinese vice premier Wu Yi - among the "top 50 most influential people in intellectual property" (renominated in 2006). IT-focused website Silicon.com listed him among the Silicon Agenda Setters. A jury of EU-focused weekly newspaper "European Voice" elected Müller as one of the "EV50 Europeans of the Year 2005", and handed him the "EU Campaigner of the Year 2005" award. Jointly with the FFII, Müller received the "CNET Networks UK Technology Award" in the "Outstanding Contribution to Software Development" category.
[edit] External links
- Florian Müller, No Lobbyists As Such (2006). 377 page play-by-play memoir of the story of Florian's part in the campaign over the EU software patent directive.
- Florian Müller's personal blog
