OSFC - Open Source for Canada

[Russell McOrmond]

On Tue, 20 Oct 2009, Wm. Stewart wrote:

> Hi, for info this organization is a bit related
> http://www.goslingcommunity.org/ however is by nature informal and not a
> public lobbying organization.

   GOSLING is intended to be where we learn about things through having 
cross-sectoral discussions (IE: including government employees, private 
sector, educational sector, etc).

   CLUE http://cluecan.ca is intended to be the organization we can then 
use to do the actual lobbying work.

   There is obviously overlap (besides myself: co-founder of GOSLING, CLUE 
policy coordinator) between the organizations.  Both can use more people 
in more places across Canada.  GOSLING currently only has an active 
chapter in Ottawa (A Toronto group started, but didn't last), and CLUE is 
in need of additional volunteers to grow.

   If someone wants to create a new group then go ahead, but I think it 
would be more valuable to work to strenghten existing organizations.

Etienne Savard wrote:
> Personally, I think Canada is most of the time behind USA and (far
> behind) Europe in term of Open Source usage in both public and private
> sectors. 

   I suspect this is something that is harder to evaluate than you may 
think.  Once we move from the question of Microsoft Office and the desktop 
operating system, you find a lot of FLOSS in the federal government. 
What you don't see is understanding of the different business models. 
FLOSS is most often treated identically to non-FLOSS in aquisition and 
other policies, effectively wiping out most of the advantages of FLOSS.

-- 
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