Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Mcr MS IT schools provision -- [Fwd: Re: [OSA-Members] ZDnet frontpage]

[Iain Roberts]

As far as policy goes, I don't think any of the main parties (except for the 
Greens, if you count them as a main party) have a specific policy on FLOSS.

However,
- For the Tories, George Osborne (Shadow Chancellor and MP for Tatton) has an 
interest in Open Source, has contacts in the FLOSS community and has made some 
positive noises:
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=135394
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6430069.stm

- The Lib Dems again have no official policy, but senior Lib Dems have met with 
FLOSS advocates and Lib Dem Southport MP John Pugh has been active in promoting 
FLOSS:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2007/gb20071011_019649.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business

- Labour, at least at a senior party level, have shown no interest in FLOSS 
than I've been able to find, though I'd love to track down someone who was 
interested.  The Government have made some very vague noises and policy 
statements about FLOSS over the last few years but they amount to very little.
e.g. http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/oss_policy_version2.pdf sounds good 
but has proven to mean little.

Dr. Brian Iddon is a Bolton Labour MP who's shown some sympathy towards FLOSS.

Last year we wrote an Early Day Motion (a petition only MPs can sign) which was 
submitted by John Pugh MP and signed by 130 MPs.  The petition read 

"That this House congratulates the Open University and other schools, colleges 
and universities for utilising free and open source software to deliver 
cost-effective educational benefit not just for their own institutions but also 
the wider community; and expresses concern that Becta and the Department for 
Education and Skills, through the use of outdated purchasing frameworks, are 
effectively denying schools the option of benefiting from both free and open 
source software and the value and experience small and medium ICT companies 
could bring to the schools market."

It might be worth seeing if your MP was one of the signatories:
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=31752

Iain

----- "Paul Waring" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Noah Slater wrote:
> > Perhaps we could all contact the counillor for our area (me
> excluded
> > as I'm not a resident) and someone should formally contact
> > Manchester's MP as a representative of our organisation.
> 
> Manchester has lots of MPs (depending on how you define 'Manchester',
> 
> but I can name five or six off the top of my head), and most will want
> 
> you to be a constituent in their area in order to reply to 
> letters/emails/faxes.
> 
> I don't think any of the major parties have a particular policy on
> open 
> source (Tories might like it because it offers a cut to budgets
> though) 
> and I bet they all use Windows in their HQs, but as it's not a big 
> manifesto issue each MP can probably make up their own mind about
> their 
> stance without feeling party pressure, so it may be easier to convince
> 
> them that open source is a good way forward.
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Fsuk-manchester mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsuk-manchester


-- 
Iain Roberts
Axiom Tech
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