[Linux-aus] Re: [Osia-discuss] Open Source Standards Letter to major Pol Parties.

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi Nathan,

On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 17:54, Nathan Bailey wrote:
> This is a timely discussion.  After Pia's success at contacting her
> local politician, I decided to write to mine.  He sent out one of those
> regular circulars saying "What do you think is most important?" and I
> replied about the absence of knowledge industries/IT amongst the options,
> and the need for supporting open source.

Why not try this on a bigger scale...
Nathan, can you turn your text into a template?
We can then publish it, and people can use it to ask their own state or
federal MP. We could even collect the responses to that and publish them
too, just like would for Brendan's idea of polling the parties as a
whole.

We could later expand that to all candidates for the federal election,
to see what their clue-factor is regarding IT issues.
Of course, Brendan's poll of the parties should already find out the
general party policy.

I know a similar thing has been done for the European parlementarians in
relation to their voting trackrecord on software patents.


> He replied today and said:
> 	* Forwarded to ICT Minister for comment
> 	* He worked in ICT for 30 years, and serves on (state)
> 	  parlimament's IT sub-committee
> 
> and finally and most importantly:
> 	* "If you have a more detailed policy submission available I
> 	  would be preapred to assist with its promotion.  You may also
> 	  realise that the impending Free Trade Agreement with the USA
> 	  will have an impact on the issues you have raised."

For starters, my compliments for your local MP, regardless of what party
he might be, he appears to have a grasp on this stuff. That's excellent!


> which leaves me thinking "Yes, I have lots of ideas, but not an
> actually policy formulated."  Do we have a policy we want to advocate?
> I know this is fundamentally the roots of OSV, so surely OSV at least
> should be writing such a policy for the state environment, if not OSIA
> nationally.  What is important in such a policy?

I think this is important for both the state and the national level.
National may be more urgent, with FTA and elections.


Regards,
Arjen.
-- 
Arjen Lentz, Technical Writer, Trainer
Brisbane, QLD Australia
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com

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