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

[Andrew Savory]

Hi,

Just to add to what Alex has said...

On 30 Nov 2003, at 06:46, Ramanan Selvaratnam wrote:

> One thing that is clear is tha the students are both the commodity and
> consumer here and exploitation is the only word I can think of.

I don't think that's necessarily a fair assessment of what JISC do. 
JISC's remit is pretty extensive, and I don't think any of it could be 
considered exploitation - quite the contrary, I think JISC on the whole 
are a positive force, funding lots of initiatives that are of direct or 
indirect benefit to learning, teaching and research.

> We probably have to try few times for the AFFS to be recognised as a
> body that should be kept within a loop of internal info emanating from
> the JISC.

I suspect there's probably enough people within AFFS with strong 
academic / HE / FE backgrounds to ensure that JISC can't sneeze without 
us knowing about it ;-)

Given the relative sizes of AFFS and JISC, it's really up to AFFS to 
make sure they are aware of what JISC are up to, rather than JISC 
having to keep us informed. There's plenty of JISC announcement mailing 
lists we can subscribe to for that purpose.

> eg, the original mail was sent to a wide ranging interests and we must
> demand to be within that 'circle'.

That's a problem of OSS Watch, not JISC. To be fair to OSS Watch, AFFS 
is _NOT_ the target audience for this event - we are mostly the 
converted. I'll try and make a point of forwarding OSS Watch related 
information to fsfe-uk in the future though (if OSS Watch don't).


Andrew.

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Andrew Savory, Managing Director, Luminas Limited
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