[Fsuk-manchester] [Fwd: [Debian-uk] EU OSS policy meeting - suggestions?]

[Tim Dobson]

this looks interesting...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Debian-uk] EU OSS policy meeting - suggestions?
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 13:23:42 +0100
From: Wookey <address@hidden>
Organization: Aleph One Ltd
To: Debian-UK <address@hidden>

I seem to have got myself an invite to a meeting as an 'expert'
(representing Free-Software using SMEs to advise on EU software policy
for the next few years with respect to FLOSS and SMEs. I am surprised
to see that there are only 7 of us, and 2 are DD's. (Chris Halls is
the other)

This is potentially a marvellous opportunity to steer EU policy. I
would welcome suggestions as to points we should be making.

What things should be enshrined in EU regs?

They appear to have already had the 'proprietary people' meeting which
seems to have produced a lot of guff about 'Software 2.0' and cloud
computing and SaaS. (I haven't read it all yet).

The most obvious points I can think of are:
0) Understand that public good is maximised by Free and Open
0.5) Think primarily about public good, rather than 'maximising revenue of
software economic sector', even though in fact these may well come to
the same thing.

1) Require Open standards in Govt systems and public interaction
2) Keep Software out of patent regime so re-implementation is legal
3) Allow reverse engineering for similar reasons
4) Encourage (Require?) publically funded code to be Free.
5) Fund useful Free Software services (sourceforge-alikes? translation
services? legal advice?)

Wookey
--
Principal hats:  iEndian - Balloonboard - Toby Churchill - Emdebian
http://wookware.org/

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