On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 12:07 +0530, sunil wrote: > Dear Friends, > > On Sun, 2009-10-04 at 20:57 +0530, Krishnakant wrote: > > I wanted Sunil's response not to know what and why his organisation > > takes a certain stand, but to know the view behind that. > > > > If some individual or organisation favoring proprietory technologies > > was > > in question then there is no point debaiting. > > But Sunil is one of my friend and I know him to b a great supporter of > > FOSS. He also has his view and since he has taken the stand in > > question. It is very essential to know his understanding or idea. > > First, apologies for taking so long to respond to this thread. I have > been traveling with limited access to the Internet. > Never mind, I too came into action just a few days back after recovering from my accident. So responses just get delayed. Infact I was the one who responded pritty late.
> There are several questions that have been raised in this thread - I > will try and address as many as I can. I will be happy to answer any > additional questions if people point them out to me. > > 1. Status of the policy in the formulation process: At the moment > we have had two closed door meetings. An initial draft of the > policy has been prepared by Barrier Break and NCPDEP. This draft > has not been considered ready of public circulation. The second > draft will be shared for public feedback - at that point > FOSSCOMM as a whole or FOSSCOMM members individually are > strongly encouraged to send feedback. The above mentioned organisations are not representatives of FOSS. Infact barrier brake strongly supports proprietory screen readers like Jaws or dolphin. No wonder FOSS gets no attention. The point is absolutely correct that it is about standards. But time and time again I have tryed to explain the long-term effects of inviting proprietory organisations for designing standard based policies. They act like good agents of their proprietory friends and so platform is made ready for such proprietory interests in public policy by means of participation in such policy decisions. I don't have any doubt that WCAG must become a part of the policy. But I am worried about the entry points we are opening to proprietory technology. > 2. Participation in the closed door meetings: If FOSSCOMM members > who are interested in participating should write to Dr. Govind > <drgovind AT nic DOT in>, N. Ravi Shanker <nravishanker AT nic > DOT in> and SK Aggarwal <saggrawal AT mit DOT gov DOT in> with > details on their involvement in accessibility. The bureaucrats > concerned are quite friendly and progressive - therefore I am > quite sure that FOSSCOMM members will be invited. I was indeed invited by Jaijit from SUN to represent the FOSS community but I had to have my back broken just 2 days before the meeting. Never the less I will surely make it this time. Off late we have started to see some success in FOSS based technology being excepted in the policies of the malaysian government. I will be going there next month and after that some document will be made public. We can do similar things in India. > 3. Deletion of Open Source: The DIT had asked us (Nirmita and I > from CIS) to provide feedback to the policy based on our review > of other national accessibility policies. We reviewed the > policies of Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, > Korea, New Zealand, The Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, > United Kingdom, United States and European Union. We have > prepared a 100 page analysis of these policies called > "Accessibility policy making: an international perspective." > This report will be shortly published online for public/peer > feedback. I am happy to share it in advance with FOSSCOMM > members who send me a personal mail. None of the policies we > examined had pro-FOSS language in them. This is not surprising > since accessibility policies deal with standards and not > software. Therefore I recommended the deletion of "Open Source" > in order to ensure that the Indian policy follows international > precedent. As an afterthought, I offered that we could > explicitly mention both FOSS and proprietary software. But > having read emails on this thread from Krishnakant, JT and > Anivar - I now feel that the solution I offered harms the > interest of the FOSS movement. I offer my sincere apologies to > the community - and as a member of the drafting committee will > do my best to ensure that all references to software are deleted > from the next draft before it is available for public feedback. Thanks for considering the feedback so valuable. Actualy the point is about who gets involved and about who has the say the policy making. We have no objection on standards but the question is that will it be done by means of another "simon commission" and will we need to say "go back ". We are only concerned because as I explained above, the openings are there to be exployted. So should the policy be done only by these commertial or pre proprietory organisations? > In order to fast track this policy and take advantage of the > proactive bureaucracy - I would request FOSSCOMM friends not to > push for pro-FOSS language in the policy. Let me assure you that > mandating WCAG will go a long way in ensuring rapid adoption of > FOSS tool for producing and consuming web-content. The only worry is that commertially waisted interests particularly exist in such large scale policies and although not directly, There are indirect advantages to proprietory technology makers. What's more, due to lack of awareness and little representation, FOSS is not recognised unless strongly brought to the notice. Proprietory technologies as it is don't need any such recognition. My point is obvious from your research which states that no one is using terms like FOSS. So to ensure that your aim of helping FOSS a long way by open standards, we must get the representation in and very strongly because FOSS needs that recognition and support. And what best plase we can have such recognition other than in the policy making body? Sunil, thanks a lot again for sending in your views. I personally would like to thank you for this and I oppologise if any of the mails worried or hert your ideas. Happy hacking. Krishnakant. _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
