hi all after the last messages flowing, may I assume that Bruxelles it is?
I am still traveling and wanted to record a few ideas in the middle of a sleepless night. I think we should use the opportunity of the European parliament being in walking distance to engage politicians in constructive discussion. After all, different intellectual property based industries have a quite powerful lobby there. The Business Software Alliance keeps telling the parlamentarians that copying is bad. The parlamentarians should know how copying is good for Open Source. The BSA keeps telling that it loses money because of copying. We shall show them how the general public actually saves money because of legally copying Open Source software. BSA members regularly give universities and educational institutions free licenses. The advocate the big savings. We shall show them that the short term savings come with long term lock-ins that are even more expensive, and that there is actually even more global benefit / savings; local jobs; and local pride; in opepning up the bidding process to Open Source driven local businesses. The current budget deficits in most western countries are an opportunity for them to get back control of their IT destinies by converting to Open Source - it offers more opportunities for customization to local needs by local knowledge workers; it builds up a sense of sharing and community; in the long term it is more predictible and maintainable; and it is not subject to the profit interests of third parties who care more for their own pockets than for anything else. keep the flow going - these thoughts are quite raw and can use some refining. yuv _______________________________________________ CREATE mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create
