Re: [Fsfe-uk] A new workgroup suggestion

[Alex Hudson]

On Fri, 2004-02-20 at 12:21, Tom Chance wrote:
> Two weeks seems sufficient for people to think about this, or at least to 
> give 
> a preliminary response, so given that nobody has responded, I'm assuming that 
> nobody is interested.

I'm not sure that's the case; although I am surprised no-one responded. 

> I admit I'm a little disappointed, because it seems to 
> me like a very obvious opportunity to get a lot of people actually *doing* 
> something to promote and protect Free Software, rather than just talking on 
> mailing lists and news sites.

In terms of AFFS & FFII-UK, we continue to enjoy good relations and do
work together (although I think time, certainly on our side, has not
permitted). Although there is no specific programme, we do have a good
idea of what is going on (IPRED is another area FFII are active in, that
so far AFFS hasn't done much about, at least as an organisation). As for
CDR, we did talk to them a while ago and I know people involved in CDR
watch the FSFE-UK list. I don't know what they're actively doing at the
moment though, I did recall that they also suffer a surfit of time.

A new workgroup? We could set one up. But, we have enough trouble
getting people actively interested in software patents (there are some
people working on this), education (there are some people working on
this), and general "government" (law etc., there are no people working
on this afaik). It is something I would like to look at again - people
obviously *are* interested in these issues, so the problem is definitely
with the way we're trying to attract people. However, part of the
problem is that there isn't really a continual practical basis for work:
Government/law tends to work fairly slowly, so there tends to be
cyclical activity which doesn't work well with group-building.

One thing these groups tend to require is an individual/individuals who
can dedicate time not only in goodly amounts, but on a consistent basis.
Most people don't tend to have that, not even students these days. There
must be another way of doing this, but it has eluded me so far. 

Cheers,

Alex.