[linux-government] Re: linux-government mailing list
- From: Joachim Bauernberger <joachim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: MJ Ray <mjr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 22:52:23 +0200
Hi there,
sorry in advance for this lengthy mail.
Your message is already valuable input for the list so hope you don't mind if
I post it.
On Friday 24 September 2004 01:35, you wrote:
> Joachim Bauernberger,
>
> Thank you for your message which reached me and others through
>
> lug.org.uk - It said:
> > I would like to promote the list linux-government and ask you if you
> > would
> > consider linking to it from your site.
> >
> > the lists url is: //www.freelists.org/list/linux-government
>
> I'm interested in this list. I'm surprised you picked a narrow
> linux-only scope instead of looking at government adoption of free
> software in general.
I thought of this too and I agree with you that something like "opensource in
government" might fit better.
Since Linux has gotten a lot of attention in the media over the years, I
figured there will be more people who know Linux than those who are familiar
with the concepts of "Open Source" in the traditional sense.
(Didn't want to scare those with a less-technical background away, especially
since this is as much about political activism, as it is about technological
decsisions...)
> I maintain some information on UK and EU
> government activity at http://www.affs.org.uk/government/
>
Your site seems interesting. However (just about leaving for a 3 week
vacation) I haven't had the chance to look into it closer.
I will go it through once I get back in mid. Oct., from first glance it surely
looks interesting.
> Sadly, I'm not sure what will appear on this list, although I know
> about your project aim from the list description: can I suggest that
> you set up a web page with some of the information suggested by
> "Advice for Mailing List Owners" by Kirrily Robert at
> http://www.ibiblio.org/oswg/oswg-nightly/oswg/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/mla
>dvice/mladvice/ - If you let me know once that's done, I can make a more
> informed
> choice about from where I should link.
>
Good point.
I have only set up a very brief description which doesn't really say much ...
This is big on my todo list however - hopefully the content that should/could
go on the webpage will grow in the next few weeks and gradually get updated.
I got the idea for this list when the town of Munich (where I live), started
to think about deploying Linux and Open Source and giving Microsoft the boot
for good.
It was a very enthusiastic start and the local linux community was very
excited about it.
As of this time the project has been frozen for reasons that I am still trying
to find out.
The problem I see is that once towns or other large institutions start a
migration the go for BigBlue or other large reputable companies and actually
think they can deploy Linux (or Open Source) by simply buying an out of the
box product and everything is fine.
I think that governments wanting to deploy linux/open-source, should consider
involving the local community in it and maybe even cosider handing out some
contracts within the community/town (rather than giving it all to another
large company outside the country)
Secondly we know very little about how governments actually fare after a
migration. If a migration went not well - it would be interesting to know
where the challanges were and how the problems have been dealt with.
I think the reason why we know little about these things is that the whole
project is in the hand of one or two firms which "represent" linux.
I can understand that they want their share of the cake and eat it to, however
Linux always has been about community spirit and sharing.
Unfortunately I can not see that happening in this case!
> Your list description contains a typo ("governemnts") by the way.
>
fixed :-).
> Thanks for reading,
thanks for sticking with me so long!
best regards,
~/joachim
--
http://www.bauernberger.org/
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