Re: [Fsfe-uk] Young Greens moving on FS

[Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley]

Ye.  Someone from the green party told me it was Chris too. He's the
webmaster of http://youngreens.org.uk/ (reachable at
mailto:address@hidden).  I'll get in touch.

>>forge some stronger links between the UK Greens and the AFFS<<

I think AFFS should not be seen to officially support GPEW though; just
liase in the common cause of trying to get more free software in the
public sector (while of course, making it clear that we are perfectly
willing to work with other political parties on this).

I may try and see if GPEW can get a manifesto policy along the lines of,
off
the top of my head:

"We will only use free software within government
bodies (if we get into power) and our own party (except in cases where the
software does not have access to information protected by the Data
Prtection Act; free software for the relevant application* does not
currently exist, and the cost of writing or contracting the writing of a
free software solution would be substantially more than TCO of existing
proprietary software for the given application"

in at the next GPEW AGM if you like.  I think it has been tried before
though.  As explained, there's a very low limit as to how many chages can
be made to the manifesto each year.

[* Clearly, some *applications* require proprietary software such as
testing, teaching the use/design of, reverse engineering or investigating
the lawfulness of proprietary software]

 
>>If you're an active YG in your area<<

I'm active, young, green and in the green party.  Not really, an active YG
though; I don't actually believe that the YG is very active generally. 
IMO, it is questionable why one would want a seperate young division,
although the other parties seem to do it--not that that is a good reason.

>>then the help would be welcome!<<

Do you know what official solid policies/plans AFFS, YG, GPEW, FFII UK, or
any liason between those have on encouraging free software in educational
institutions and how this should be done?  Or do you personally have a
plan as to how we should go about this?  If you have, I'll do what I can
to help.

I do think we need to discuss some kind of common policy on persuading
educational institutions to switch (and helping them utilise free
software) with the organisations above (obviously), as well as existing
uni LUGs and FLOSS groups (I'm trying to start one ATM--Student Order for
the Freedom of Computer Software <mailto:address@hidden>), young
Lib Dems (who supported us on the patent directive), the GNU.Org edu list
<mailto:address@hidden>, the FSFE edu peeps
<http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/education/> <mailto:address@hidden> ,
the Mozilla.Org educational-institution evangelism list
<mailto:address@hidden>, these guys
<http://www.gnufans.net/fsedu.pl/>, http://www.schools.lug.org.uk/ ,
http://www.students.lug.org.uk/ , http://www.young.lug.org.uk/ , OFSET
(Organisation for free software in education and teaching)
<http://www.ofset.org/>, the UK UNYSA (United Nations Youth and Students
Association), <http://schoolforge.org.uk> (organsation for free software
in UK edu institutions), http://www.cetis.ac.uk/,
http://ipas.ngfl.gov.uk/, http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/, anyone else you can
think of who has an interest. Are schoolforge supposed to be an existing
umberella organisation for this?

Is there a Wikipedia article/Dmoz entry on free software in education? 
(Looks like not.  Maybe I should add some stuff to the small
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Educational/ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Software pages later. Is
there a central repositry of links on this sort of think?  


GTG,  Yours,
Joe Ll. G. Blakesley


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