Rajiv Shah and Jay Kesan wrote the paper “running code as part of an open standards policy” arguing that the “running code” requirement - i.e. multiple independent, interoperable implementations of an open standard - should be part of governments’ open standards policies.
Last week the Dutch government hosted the first ODF plugfest: creators, implementors and end-users met up to improve OpenDocument interoperability for real, and it worked out well.
Continue reading ‘ODF Interoperability: Rough Consensus and Running Code’
Italian MEPs of the past legislation are told to be the best paid for least work, for sure was not easy to build fruitful relationships with most of them about digital freedom issues.
Newly-elected Italian MEPs are not much interested into these matters, only six of them actually signed the Caro Candidato Campaign (part of the “free software pact” initiative).
Marco Cappato, one of the most active on those issues, is out because his party is below the 4% threshold.
Assoli today announced that under the free software pact initiative 232 Italian candidates signed the “caro candidato” pact. Candidates signing it state that they favor the development and use of free software, and will protect it from threatening EU legislation.
Only 27 MEP candidates subscribed until now, I hope more will pop up before the elections, Europe needs MEPs informed on free software issues.
Few days ago the Italian MEP Marco Cappato made public a EC report
analyzing the feasibility of a migration to open source software on desktop workplaces.
The study was conducted in 2005, and contains two deck of slides from Gartner’s analysts Michael Silver and Nikos Drakos. Both presentations are worth reading, even if some guesses are not supported by facts.
Continue reading ‘Europe, Gartner and Open Source’
The EC in March 2009 decided to invest in physical infrastructures, in line with the conclusions of the last 2008 European Council stating the importance of developing broadband internet.
The ECDL Foundation responded with a position paper outlining why ICT investments should be complemented by investments in skills development, and I asked an opinion to Ian Lynch, education lead for the OpenOffice.org community and the man behind a family of qualifications called The INGOTs.
Continue reading ‘Skill Importance and accredited Qualifications Providers: the INGOTs’
Net neutrality is at risk in Europe, the Telecoms package keeps popping up, the European software patents war is not over and we need to choose carefully our MEP candidates.
CarloMarco Cappato has been fighting software patents since 2003, and I’m not surprised he just signed the free software pact, the initiative mentioned earlier this week. Now he asks for help, if you like what he did on digital freedoms for years it is time to help him to get elected.
ForumPA, the greatest Italian event of and about Public Administration taking place in Rome from the 11th to the 14th of May 2009, will host a round-table to talk about “strategies to increase the use of open source for public administrations“.
I am honored to have been asked again by Gianni Dominici,Vice General Director of ForumPA, to chair the session. I helped organizers to invited speakers from Italian and international public administrations to share their real experiences and best practices.
No talk, just open source action!
Recent Comments