MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-02-12 |
| FROM | David Sugar
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] a proposed solution
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I have heard from and know that there are many people who felt they have been
misled or even betrayed by the stated and implied intent of the eGovOS
conference. Certainly I share in that emotion. We could debate the intent
or reasons for this, but that will not change any views.
Some have suggested that the organizational committee can do what would be
necessary to fix the problem with this conference from within. I have very
little expectation that is likely to occur to any significant degree. They
may make some small change in form or even have extended Q&A, but for them to
do so sound unfair to me for that would be selective treatment of speakers.
Some have suggested this conference can be fixed externally by the community.
There are many inherent risks and difficulities in that approach, and, in the
end if the conference organizers do not wish have the conference fixed there
are some ugly things they could try and do depending on the nature of such an
external fix. However, that is not my objection to this approach.
It is clear that the community needs a government advocacy conference, and
that this event will never serve that purpose. What I propose is that the
community use this opportunity to instead try and organize a replacement
conference designed specifically from the start for advocacy and education on
free and open source solutions for government use, a fosgov, if you will :).
I think we do have people who could come forward and help do this, both
honestly and competently. Perhaps time could be used during the upcoming FSF
member meeting to discuss such an idea among those present.
What we should do about the eGovOS event that is already scheduled is hard to
say. However, I think the people best able to judge what should be done are
those OS/FS speakers who are currently participating, for it was them that
were misled and put into what seems an already difficult position. It is
them who will ultimately deal with the consequence of the conference, either
as it stands, or the result of any external solution that may be applied.
Let's be most fair to those people, for they were already unfairly used once.
David
____________________________
New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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