One of the reasons I love Vermont is that we have a fairly open legislature,
and I've found relatively easy access to our elected officials. As a point of
fact I know all of the reps running for state office from Milton. Now, I've
always felt lobbying wasn't necessary if you can convince your local rep of the
issues at stake, why it's important, and how the state and people can benefit
from it. I think we can all on this list agree that FOSS could be a great
benefit to VT. I would make the recommendation that we each speak w/ our local
reps, actually schedule a meeting, sit down with them and present the facts and
ask them to work within the system to make these changes (I don't think we have
to worry about the Microsoft lobby at this level!). However, before I would
ever do something like that, I want to walk in with data at hand of how things
are wrong, how they can be fixed via FOSS, and what kind of ongoing benefit (be
it in freedom, economic,
etc) it would be to the people of this state. Can the vaguerites provide such
a listing of data and examples that a like minded person could then take to
their reps and make a clear cut argument? I'm ready to do some talking, but I
just don't have the time to hunt down all of the data.
Any thoughts?
Mike Raley
> My Point: If the stars who've descended from the likes
> of Gte, Ibm, and of course Champ. College,
> can't effect change on a large scale what hope does
> vague have? The only way to really make a change
> would be to have a FOSS lobby that gets Montpelier to both
> broadly adopt FOSS and offer some kind of
> incentive to it's service providers to do same.
> What're the odds of that happening?
> (Also, I have still yet to read that Montp is a
> 'wireless' city. Wasn't summitTech supposed to
> get that
> done? Or did they just quit at the State-house lawn?
> What's become of MontpelierNet and their project?)
>
> just my .02
>
> Rion
>
>
> --
> "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are
> cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -
> Bertrand Russell
