Re: [fsf-community-team] [project seed] San Fransisco adopts a new software policy

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 20:53, Simon Bridge <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 00:22 -0500, MBR wrote:
>> I wish San Francisco luck.  They're going to need it!
>>                         Mark Rosenthal
> Lets not rely on luck then ;)

I have contacts in the Mayor's office. Chris Vein is in charge of Free
Software for San Francisco.

> Lets rally the San Fran activists to this cause.

I'm posting this to the LUGs where I have spoken in the past, SF,
Silicon Valley, Peninsula, Fremont, and OLPC-SF.

> Close monitoring and active lobbying has worked well to counter FUD and
> dirty dealing. Its not as hard as it looks.

They have invited us to participate. They can save serious money, not
only with office software and servers, but by replacing textbooks with
Free Software and Creative Commons content. Textbooks cost much more
than OLPC XOs and even some of their commercial competitors.
California has a program for free as in beer textbooks, and we need to
push for the next step.

I prefer the XO over the Intel Classmate and the others because the XO
team has replaced even the BIOS with Free Software: Open Firmware,
written in FORTH. (The only serious programming language whose source
code can be read and understood in its entirety by ordinary
programming students who know an assembly language.) Contrary to the
FUD that has been about in the last year, there are no XOs being sold
with Windows, and the next generation will run on ARM architecture
processors, for which there is no Windows. I wonder what Microsoft
will do?

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-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/