Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fsfe-uk] portugal and free software]

[Chris Croughton]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 02:16:50PM +0100, Graham Seaman wrote:

> Dunno- I cut and pasted html (the translated text is on my open.egov
> site) into thunderbird, told it to send as plain text, and it
> splattered asterisks everywhere... It was actually from windows, which
> I don't know my way round on very well, so I may have some settings
> wrong somewhere.

Probably some character not in your font, I find that several browsers
(and mutt for email) do that if they don't have an equivalent character
to display.

> In some ways it looks way better than what's happening here, in others
> they are a bit behind - for example, the pilot projects at council
> level kind of map to APLAWs and related things here.  What we should
> be pressing for now is not setting up the pilots, but for the outcomes
> to be opensourced. For example, the protocols the pilots developed for
> data exchange are as far as I know not released publicly, so the
> little clutch of proprietary firms that know about them get to keep
> their monopoly. But then I'm not in that process and may be talking
> rubbish - this is mostly surmise.

>From a brief reading of the message you posted, it looked very good to
me, and it's encouraging that it got all-party support there.  I may
think about moving to Portugal.  Except that I don't speak Portuguese...

> No, I don't know how the process works. I can give you more links
> (discussion on the Communist party's forums, discussion on the ANSOL
> (== AFFS in Portugal) list, supporting speeches by various MPs etc, if
> anyone wants, but they're all in Portuguese. And that was quite enough
> translating for one week already.

Just don't use Google's translator.  I once wanted a translation of a
recipe for pina colada, and it told me to take a "fragmentation hand
grenade and some stones" (a 'pineapple' and cherries)!  Now that's would
be a drink which would really blow your mind!

Chris C