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

[Robert Burrell Donkin]

> -------- 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>

<snip>

> 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

the mind battle over open source and open standards have been won (more or less)

> 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.

too early to require: the infrastructure isn't there yet

> 5) Fund useful Free Software services (sourceforge-alikes? translation
> services? legal advice?)

need to facilitate the adoption and sharing of free software in the
public sector

need something like OSSWatch (http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/) to explain
FOSS practicalities in a neutral fashion

fund a (searchable) european repository for public sector FOSS (more
like Eclipse - tame lawyers, CLAs et al - than Sourceforge)

fund a body which could perform due diligence and license
interpretation on FOSS products to allow central approval of products,
monitoring of security issues and maintain source dumps.

all of these could be done very cheaply

- robert