Ye. Someone from the green party told me it was Chris too. He's the webmaster of http://youngreens.org.uk/ (reachable at mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]). I'll get in touch.
>>forge some stronger links between the UK Greens and the AFFS<< I think AFFS should not be seen to officially support GPEW though; just liase in the common cause of trying to get more free software in the public sector (while of course, making it clear that we are perfectly willing to work with other political parties on this). I may try and see if GPEW can get a manifesto policy along the lines of, off the top of my head: "We will only use free software within government bodies (if we get into power) and our own party (except in cases where the software does not have access to information protected by the Data Prtection Act; free software for the relevant application* does not currently exist, and the cost of writing or contracting the writing of a free software solution would be substantially more than TCO of existing proprietary software for the given application" in at the next GPEW AGM if you like. I think it has been tried before though. As explained, there's a very low limit as to how many chages can be made to the manifesto each year. [* Clearly, some *applications* require proprietary software such as testing, teaching the use/design of, reverse engineering or investigating the lawfulness of proprietary software] >>If you're an active YG in your area<< I'm active, young, green and in the green party. Not really, an active YG though; I don't actually believe that the YG is very active generally. IMO, it is questionable why one would want a seperate young division, although the other parties seem to do it--not that that is a good reason. >>then the help would be welcome!<< Do you know what official solid policies/plans AFFS, YG, GPEW, FFII UK, or any liason between those have on encouraging free software in educational institutions and how this should be done? Or do you personally have a plan as to how we should go about this? If you have, I'll do what I can to help. I do think we need to discuss some kind of common policy on persuading educational institutions to switch (and helping them utilise free software) with the organisations above (obviously), as well as existing uni LUGs and FLOSS groups (I'm trying to start one ATM--Student Order for the Freedom of Computer Software <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>), young Lib Dems (who supported us on the patent directive), the GNU.Org edu list <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, the FSFE edu peeps <http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/education/> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> , the Mozilla.Org educational-institution evangelism list <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, these guys <http://www.gnufans.net/fsedu.pl/>, http://www.schools.lug.org.uk/ , http://www.students.lug.org.uk/ , http://www.young.lug.org.uk/ , OFSET (Organisation for free software in education and teaching) <http://www.ofset.org/>, the UK UNYSA (United Nations Youth and Students Association), <http://schoolforge.org.uk> (organsation for free software in UK edu institutions), http://www.cetis.ac.uk/, http://ipas.ngfl.gov.uk/, http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/, anyone else you can think of who has an interest. Are schoolforge supposed to be an existing umberella organisation for this? Is there a Wikipedia article/Dmoz entry on free software in education? (Looks like not. Maybe I should add some stuff to the small http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Educational/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Software pages later. Is there a central repositry of links on this sort of think? GTG, Yours, Joe Ll. G. Blakesley -- This mail sent through http://webmail.bangor.ac.uk _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
