Alan Bell wrote:
> I am going on a little adventure to Broadcasting house in London on
> Friday to be interviewed for the Click ON programme in relation to the
> general election and in particular the http://votegeek.org.uk website.
> At the moment it is suffering a bit of voter apathy and I don't have as
> many interesting comments on it that I can talk about as I would like.
> Please spare a few minutes to email your candidates and ask them all
> about their position on an issue that matters to you, and share your
> email and responses. It could be anything from the farce that is the
> Digital Economy Bill to the Digital Britain agenda, universal broadband,
> Free software in the public sector, teaching Python in schools, anything
> that has a geeky angle and matters to you. Even if you are in a safe
> seat and you don't think your vote matters you can join in.
The recent Action Plan published online from the Cabinet Office about
software re use and Open Source benefits contains some strong stuff.
Even if there is a change of Government, the current Opposition have
expressed rather similar objectives for getting greater benefits from IT.
Other things being equal, the lack of understanding(1), adverse
momentum(2), and confusing terminology(3), all affect the greater
recognition and use of Free Libre Open source Software (FLOSS).
The document
'Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan'
(Unclassified)
is worth becoming familiar with. It bangs the drum a bit but also
highlights how bids may be affected by licence discounts, and how that
practice shall be stopped, and looking forward to Cloud use, how free
software can hopefully save a complete generation of licensing, and
can save buckets of money nationwide.
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/318020/open_source.pdf
I can dream that with wider recognition of Libre Software, then there
may also come a better understanding of what 'freedom' in a modern
context really means.
Notes:
1) People think there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that you
only get what you pay for. This is substantially quite correct, with
very few exceptions. Unfortunately FLOSS is one of the exceptions. The
lack of a centralised FLOSS marketing activity allows the ground to
be commanded by proprietary interests with excellent marketing
organisations.
2) There is both a retail monopoly of Windows, and a cultural monopoly
of existing Windows users. Such an environment of users as cannon
fodder for proprietary products is very good for proprietary businesses.
3) Concepts of Freedom are a bit theoretical for the person in the
street, in a fairly affluent society. This is particularly so if any
actual sacrifice is needed to gain freedom. An example would be a loss
of functionality in some software, until manufacturers caught up using
FLOSS..... Given the high principled debate in favour of freedom
software, there exists the self inflicted marketing killer of
confusion with free as in free of cost and free as in freedom in the
social political sense. There is lots of gratis software, for Windows,
for example, which in no way provides freedom. As a committed user of
FLOSS, it took me several years to really appreciate the wider
benefits of FLOSS. What chance does the average punter have?
I hope Friday goes well for you
--
alan cocks
Ubuntu user
