Re: [Fsfe-uk] Fwd: OSS Watch inaugural conference, 11 December 2003

[MJ Ray]

On 2004-02-04 10:36:25 +0000 Andrew Savory <address@hidden> 
wrote:

> Holy cow, talk about dragging up an old argument.

I have a backlog of email on some lists.

> You see nothing in the OSS Watch Service Objectives, huh? well, I see 
> nothing 
> in the AFFS constitution about endlessly debating non-issues on the 
> mailing 
> list, but it still happens.

Stating logically disconnected reasons and a confrontational 
parliamentary tone is unhelpful. I'd like to understand OSS-Watch's 
actions and whether they are friendly to AFFS. I've had conflicting 
signals so far.

> http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=circular_3_03
> "Provision of information of potential use in personal or 
> institutional 
> decision-making (detailed information on open source licensing models 
> and 
> specific licences, and on data pertaining to the economics of 
> choosing open 
> source software as opposed to commercial software)"

This is useful information I didn't read recently. Thank you. Does it 
require involvement of proprietary software publishers? Involving 
commercial publishers of free software would seem sufficient, but the 
odd phrasing suggests it might not satisfy JISC.

> [...] What OSS Watch do to educate people is (within their JISC 
> remit) 
> entirely up to them, so I suggest you let them get on with it.

Sure, but I don't think the reasons emailed to this list followed from 
their stated service objectives. It would be different if we were told 
they invited Microsoft to participate in that debate because they 
wanted to, rather than they were obliged to in order to fulfil some 
balance requirement.

Do we know what their next event will be?

--
MJR/slef     My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
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