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Hi <br>
<br>
I'll not burden you with my personal opinions, then. :-)<br>
<br>
Ten years ago, the South African government issued an excellent
strategy document, "Free/Libre and Open Source Software and Open
Standards in South Africa: A Critical Issue for Addressing the
Digital Divide", available at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.prodefinity.de/docs/floss_v2_6_9.pdf">http://www.prodefinity.de/docs/floss_v2_6_9.pdf</a>.<br>
<br>
I addresses the public policy issues rather well, I think! And
contains some rather compelling thought experiments/case studies as
well:<br>
<br>
"<br>
<p><strong>FUNEKA’S AWAKENING</strong></p>
<p>Funeka is a schoolteacher with a mission: to give her dusty,
rural school the very best. She launches a campaign to build a
computer lab and approaches various businesses for help. To her
delight, one company donates 20 computers that are being replaced,
but the company will keep all their software licenses for their
new machines. She also has to find her own educational<br>
software.</p>
<p>Delight turns to horror when she discovers that it will cost many
thousands of Rand for software licenses, including licensing the
educational software the dealer tells her she needs. To make
matters worse, casual inspection reveals that the content is
geared to American schools, using unfamiliar baseball metaphors
and the like.</p>
<p>Meantime, Funeka’s students have been doing some legwork of their
own. They have contacted a young IT company that has offered to
network the computers and connect them to the Internet. When the
company’s network guru calls by and finds computers with no
software, she installs Linux and associated free software on all
of them, sets up the network and Internet connection and even
gives the students a preliminary driving lesson on using the
software and surfing the Internet.</p>
<p>While Funeka agonises over raising a software budget, the
students spend many days probing, exploring and discovering new
things. Within a short time they have learned to do creative
projects by searching the Internet and sending email around the
world for facts they can’ find in the tiny school library. Using
tools and examples from other Web sites, they soon start designing
their own school Web site and developing content like a Web-based
newspaper covering school and local community issues.</p>
<p>When she learns of all this, Funeka is amazed at the creativity
of her students, and decides that her original idea of what
computers should do is completely wrong. She had thought of the
computer as just another passive medium of instruction. Funeka
quickly adapts to this awakening, and promptly arranges a session
on the Internet – given by her students to members of staff. They
are all amazed that all this has happened without the school
having to pay a cent in software licenses.</p>
<p>They also heartily approve when the students explain their plans
to design a community resource for guided access to government Web
sites. The one concern the students have is that they are often
unable to read files downloaded from government sites. The
problematic files are in a format that requires proprietary
software to read."<br>
</p>
<p>Anyway, I apologize if you already knew that report. :-)<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/30/2014 09:30 PM, Torsten Bronger
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:87egrg6fsv.fsf@physik.rwth-aachen.de"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Hi!
I work in a government-funded research facility. Over the past 6
years, we created in-house software for managing our research data.
I was the primary responsible person for this project. Now, I'd
like to see it being converted into an open-source project. GPL,
GitHub, etc.
My boss does not rule it out straight away. But he likes to be
convinced that it is a good move. He has only little idea about
open-source software, licences and the like. By the way, we have no
other "business plan" with this software.
My question is: Is there any material (slides, web pages, books,
case studies, peer-reviewed articles) that help with promoting
converting to an open-source model? Could you point me to it?
(I raised this question on a German FSF mailing list a couple of
months ago but the responses did only contain personal opinions.
While I agree with all of it, it does not help me.)
Regards,
Torsten Bronger.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
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