Sanjeev While Narendra's (and followup mails in this thread) may not be excellently drafted from a legal or even a social perspective, the sentiment was clear, and all discussions that nitpick on the shortcomings in wording and avoid focusing on the sentiment itself are to my mind argumentative and not helpful. I have no doubt that Dr Ambedkar found exactly the same problem when he steered the Constitution, and in my conversations with Vic Hayes, he certainly faced exactly the same challenges when steering the drafting of the WiFi standard (now a family of standards).
Why should we (people who care about FOSS usage) care about openness in government? Lincoln said it best, I think, while reducing the discussion on democratic governance to a few hundred words: "a government by the people, of the people and for the people". Our government has not learned this truth (nor has the US government, but it is miles ahead of us, let us be frank). In today's news, I see that Anna Hazare has demanded the proceedings of the drafting committee be videorecorded: this technology was not meaningfully usable (although available, in a sense) during the drafting of the Constitution, but it certainly is today. Mr Hazare may not be very uptodate on tech matters, or else I have no doubt he would endorse Narendra's sentiment: that all aspects relating to the Bill be conducted in an open, transparent and accessible manner. Any fears about the constitution of a drafting committee in which nobody is accountable (and only a handful have been any elected in any representative capacity, none for this post) will be minimised if not entirely laid to rest by such an action. Since I want to avoid argumentative and unhelpful posts, let me rephrase the original suggestion (and request all discussants to tear it apart, certainly, I do not claim any divine ability to draft correctly or perfectly, but for goodness' sake make your own alternative suggestion rather than merely finding fault with others'): 1. The website must be compatible with internationally accepted standards for openness and accessibility, as endorsed from time to time for use, and avoid the use of proprietary formats that force users into purchasing or accepting restrictive proprietary conditions. 2. Transaction methods for payments made under the provisions of this Bill must allow for the widest variety of methods legally enforceable for commercial transactions available and in use from time to time, including both physical and virtual transfers. The Rules under this Act must focus on enabling the highest degree of convenience for persons wishing to take advantage of the provisions of this Act, and draft Rules must be transparently available for discussion concurrent with the drafting of the Bill, in order to ensure its rapid applicability once it passes into law. On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 10:00 AM, Sanjeev Gupta <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 08:34, Sanjay B <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > <snip /> >> > >> > What modification we want ?? website must be compatible to Firefox, >> Chrome >> > etc, Website must not contains FLASH etc, Document must ODF and >> Multimedia >> > must be OGG. >> > >> >> Please do not promote ogg as the only free format multimedia option - I >> saw something recently also about ogg (which I'm guessing implies theora / >> vorbis) as the recommended multimedia format for govt websites - it does >> seem, at this point, that WebM is an equally good, if not better, option >> as a free codec (with support in firefox 4.0+, chrome, ie9). Sorry for the >> OT rant, just seen this come up often, and multimedia 'must be OGG' may be >> a bit wrong statement to make - "multimedia must be in a free format, > > > Excellent! > > >> eg. >> ogg, webm", > > > Oooops! What about YAAAC? Why not use that for Audio? Who do I lobby to > get my Codec in an Act of Parliament? > > With all due respect to Mr Hazare (who I had unfortunately not heard of > till a few weeks ago), why concentrate on the Lok Pal Bill, for equal and > open access to a website? > > > -- > Sanjeev Gupta > +65 98551208 http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane > > > _______________________________________________ > network mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in > > -- Vickram Fool On The Hill <http://communicall.wordpress.com>
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