Dear All, The following letter is being considered for publication in THE TIMES following article by Peter Serracino Inglott. Please let me know what you think before we send it off. On a slightly related note, the minutes of the AGM should be posted soon by Anton (our new Secretary :) ) on this list and the MLUG website. Rgds, Keith (PRO)
Peter Serracino Inglotts' article "ICT is an election issue" (sunday 28th october 2007) was rather refreshing to the Malta Linux Users Group (MLUG). That a person who is considered by many Maltese an academic 'elder' speaks so frankly about Open Source Software (OSS) is revitalising for an organisation who's members often feel alienated by young officials who seem oblivious to the global reality that is OSS. MLUG particularly welcomes the idea of an "Open Source Laboratory" as a public-private partnership partially funded through public funds. Yet, MLUG feels it needs to point out that there are many more local companies today, then there might be foreign members of SmartCity tomorrow, that would benefit from such a lab. Malta is quickly becoming a leader in providing IT offshore services and OSS is one of the many means to foster innovation in this area as a community. To this effect the MLUG, with the support of 2X and GO, already runs a mirror service (mirror.linux.org.mt) that anyone using Linux in Malta can benefit from. This contribution from our part, small as it might be, is the kind of collaborative environment we want to build for our ICT industry. In order to make "ICT as universally accessible as possible" a collaborative approach is essential. OSS allows even the smallest player to participate in this collaboration, and is therefore good for Malta's emerging ICT industry. An ICT scenario dominated by very few monopolistic big-players does not allow much space, or an equal footing for, smaller players, and therefore, might not be the best strategy for Malta. The MLUG, therefore, urges all ICT policy makers to, not only heed Peter Serracino Inglott's advice about "doing more in order to encourage Open Source", but to go further and make Open Source an integral part of their ICT policy. _______________________________________________ MLUG-list mailing list [email protected] http://mailserv.megabyte.net/mailman/listinfo/mlug-list
