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Re: [Fsuk-manchester] What would you ask government top brass re: Free S


From: Giacomo Lacava
Subject: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] What would you ask government top brass re: Free Software etc.
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:44:12 +0000

The Government should promote the use of open standards for electronic
documents, in order to guarantee future access to public data. At this
time, most of the documents internally produced are in proprietary
binary formats (MSOffice). What is being done to migrate to open
standards for day-to-day use?  We risk ending up in a situation where
we can perfectly analyse all sorts of internal documents produced by
administrations up to the Thatcher years, but not after them.

>From a security point of view, the use of closed products (built by
unaccountable foreign companies and completely un-auditable) for
redacting classified information is a terrible weak spot. The use of
Open-Source software, which can be audited and verified in detail,
would eliminate the threat of eavesdropping by these foreign entities,
which is real and proved in at least one case (a Swiss-based
cryptography vendor was compromised for years). China already does
that. Does the UK Government have any plans on that?

Also, what is the government doing to promote those UK-based companies
which choose to produce open-source software (that benefits the
community much more than proprietary software)?




On Nov 13, 2007 12:02 AM, Tim Dobson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Distributed *Thinking* Project:
>
> This Wednesday I *may* be in a situation where I can talk to some of
> the top brass of the brown government.
>
> Instead of being worried about my local
> bypass/school/hospital/cut+pasteMP, I have chosen to do my best to get
> some answers on behalf of the Free Software Community to various
> questions.
>
> ------
>
> This is where you come in:
>
> What questions would *you* ask a government minister about, relating
> to Free Software, DRM and any other issues technology related;
> (Copyright reform, software monopolies...)
>
> ------
>
> Here is one example of a question, I will be asking if I get the chance:
>
> "Important trading funds such as the Ordnance Survey, UK Hydrographic
> Office, Royal Mail and Highways Agency are funded from the public
> sector by as much as 50% and yet charge exorbitant amounts to use the
> data they collect an impose onerous copyright restrictions that
> prevent re-use. What is your position on the campaigning [1][2] to
> overhaul this archaic system so that tax-payer funded data is freely
> available for use by the public."
>
> Examples: Ordanancy Survery maps, Postcode geocoding.
>
> [1] Free Our Data (http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/)
> [2] Public Geo Data (http://publicgeodata.org/)
>
> Question Courtesy of Noah Slater.
>
> ------
>
> Any information I find out, I will publish under CC-BY-SA  or possibly
> even a less restrictive licence.
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
>
> Please post any suggestions to the mailing list as soon as possible,
> this may allow the question's structure to be improved upon etc.
>
> --
> www.dobo.urandom.co.uk
> ----
> If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us
> still has one object.
> If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now
> has two ideas.   -  George Bernard Shaw
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Fsuk-manchester mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsuk-manchester
>



-- 
Giacomo Lacava




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