[edu-eu]Re: Edu-EU digest, Vol 1 #131 - 4 msgs

[Wiebe van der Worp]

As a reaction to your request to form an educational task force of the 
"Free Software Foundation" here is a short reply

I do send a copy to our Dutch EU member P. Plooij, hoping she gets the 
point and sees the challenge in what is written below.

> If you want to be part of this effort (which means that you are devoted to 
> it, not just observing), we have some requirements:
> - experience with GNU/Linux, Free Software and education
> - a clear "No" to non-free software
> - advantageous: previous work in that field
> - you should live in Europe (i.e. NA, India and China have their own FSF
>   educational efforts, so please join them if you live there)

We just started the Dutch vrijschrift.org initiative. Our first concern 
is translating patent stuff to Dutch and our second is education. Count 
on me personal, although I don't have much time and I don't meet all 
requirements.

> Because of that, they encounter a high resistance of their non-technical 
> collegues to anything else than MS Windows. Some politicians are kicking in 
> their neck as well: It is only a minority who calls for Free Software in 
> schools; most of them haven't understood what's it about. Big software 
> enterprises promote the use of their proprietary stuff with millions of 
> Euro/Dollars/..., because they know how weak their case is.

I agree. Here in NL I see a government pouring money to organizations 
top down, and what we have to achieve is making people aware. Those 
people form our foundation Then we climb bottom up.

Help from our several governments can speed up this process. But they 
are not aware of principals to, so we have to explain.

That is why I did send this message to a Dutch EU member P. Plooij 
hoping she sees what we mean, and by giving her this text hoping she is 
willing to take action by seeking a discussion with us.

Look at http://www.vrijschrift.org/actueel/overheid_01.html to read what 
I mean.

> Besides whining ... yes, we all have got to build better networks. That's the 
> reason for the FSFE educational task force. I really do invite anyone to 
> join. Anyone who has contact to politicians in Europe is called to contact us 
> and set up some campaigning plan with us. I'm doing this in Germany and it 
> looks quite good. Someone just has to invest some time and good will.

A lot of teachers are idealistic. Once they understand our social 
principals we have our own snowball! Besides politics, target on media 
too. And don't forget your own local groups. For example the Dutch 
OpenOffice.org and Linux user groups are going to help translating 
patent stuff on ffii.org because of their idealism.

I am new in this group, so missing some information, but as said willing 
to achieve our common goals.

It is true. We don't have money for campaigns. But..

...we have better arguments by far!!!

Ms. Plooij, please help us to make people aware.

Regards Wiebe van der Worp, address@hidden, http://vrijschrift.org