[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [CRIS Info] article "Open Source Ardor Cools at WSIS"

[Carlos Afonso]

Dear Sasha, these fires are catching up strongly here in Brazil. I tried to 
send a small document to crisinfo on this but Myriam says attachments are 
not allowed, so if you or anyone else are interested, I can send it 
individually (English, PDF, 74 KB).

rgds

--c.a.

At 15:18 09/10/2003, Sasha Costanza-Chock wrote:
>It seems we'll have to restoke the fires of FLOSSy ardor...
>sc
>
>---
>Open Source Ardor Cools at WSIS
> >From Computerworld, October 9, 2003
>By Stephen Bell
>
>A push at a series of international "information society" conferences to
>adopt open source software as an aspect of electronic "common land" has
>assumed a lower profile with the apparent entry of lobbying from proprietary
>business interests.
>
>A "plan of action" being prepared for the December World Summit on the
>Information Society (WSIS) championed wide adoption of open source software
>in June.
>
>Suggested text in the draft then promoted open source awareness, the
>creation of intellectual property mechanisms supporting open source, and the
>formation of a UN "Programmers Without Frontiers" body to support open
>source software (OSS) in developing nations. "Open-source/free software
>shall be adopted by all public authorities and bodies," the draft stated
>ambitiously.
>
>The Club of Rome economic think-tank came out particularly strongly in
>favour of open source in its submission to WSIS in August. It labelled OSS
>as one of the "common goods of mankind" and an aid to advancing the
>productive use of ICT in developing countries, where proprietary software is
>particularly expensive in real terms.
>
>The latest form of the plan of action, however, replaces the open source
>endorsement with a recommendation to "encourage research and promote
>awareness among all stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different
>software models, and the means of their creation, including proprietary,
>open source and free software, in order to increase competition, freedom of
>choice and affordability, and to enable all stakeholders to evaluate which
>solution best meets their requirements."
>
>Observers at the latest preparatory conference to the summit (Prepcom-3) in
>Geneva, said the changes were made after input from several nations uneasy
>with excluding mentions of proprietary software from the plan, and from the
>business lobby, which came out strongly against open source.
>
>Delegates from the US and European Union, they said, were prominent among
>those asking that commercial software interests get a fair representation.
>
>The summit itself is due to be held in Geneva in December. Prepcom-3 was to
>have been the last preparatory conference, but emergency meetings have been
>scheduled next month to knock still vague documents riddled with alternative
>phraseology into a more definite shape before the summit.
>
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Carlos A. Afonso
Diretor de planejamento e estratégia
Rede de Informações para o Terceiro Setor - Rits
http://www.rits.org.br
A partir de  / From 15/10/2003 - novo endereço / new address:
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