[CREATE] Ideas for Bruxelles

[Yuval Levy]

hi all

after the last messages flowing, may I assume that Bruxelles it is?

I am still traveling and wanted to record a few ideas in the middle of a 
sleepless night.

I think we should use the opportunity of the European parliament being 
in walking distance to engage politicians in constructive discussion. 
After all, different intellectual property based industries have a quite 
powerful lobby there.

The Business Software Alliance keeps telling the parlamentarians that 
copying is bad. The parlamentarians should know how copying is good for 
Open Source.

The BSA keeps telling that it loses money because of copying. We shall 
show them how the general public actually saves money because of legally 
copying Open Source software.

BSA members regularly give universities and educational institutions 
free licenses. The advocate the big savings. We shall show them that the 
short term savings come with long term lock-ins that are even more 
expensive, and that there is actually even more global benefit / 
savings; local jobs; and local pride; in opepning up the bidding process 
to Open Source driven local businesses.

The current budget deficits in most western countries are an opportunity 
  for them to get back control of their IT destinies by converting to 
Open Source - it offers more opportunities for customization to local 
needs by local knowledge workers; it builds up a sense of sharing and 
community; in the long term it is more predictible and maintainable; and 
it is not subject to the profit interests of third parties who care more 
for their own pockets than for anything else.

keep the flow going - these thoughts are quite raw and can use some 
refining.

yuv