Hi,
On Tue, Jul 03, 2012 at 03:54:31PM +0300, Otto Kekäläinen wrote:
Hello,
2012/7/3 Karsten Gerloff gerloff@fsfeurope.org:
Right. So the content of our story would be as follows:
please find the first draft below.
Please review (you're quoted!), and have a stab at the FIXMEs. The title could be snappier too, I'm grateful for ideas.
I've pasted the whole thing on the pad, too. Pick either the file or the pad for modifications -- just tell me which it is to be.
I'd leave the procurement project out of this
no, I strongly believe we should include it. It's an important project, and will benefit from any exposure we can give it. Also, since both this PR and the project deal with procurement in the Finnish public sector, anyone except the recipients of this mail would need a microscope to tell the two apart.
If there are any risks in mentioning the two together, please tell me.
and empasize on that a) Helsinki calculation suspicius, nobody else should dismiss LIbreOffice based on Helsinki's intrepretation
Got that.
b) the fight is not over, a new initiative requires that LIbreOffice at least installed as secondary office suite to decrease MS dependency over time
Hmmmm... Sumuvuori's new initiative is mentioned. But perhaps we can add a second quote.
Best regards, Karsten
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<html newsdate="2012-07-05"> <head> <title>City of Helsinki refuses FSFE's Freedom of Information request</title> </head> <body> <h1>City of Helsinki refuses FSFE's Freedom of Information request</h1>
<p newsteaser="yes" id="introduction"> In a row over its approach to buying software, the city of Helsinki has refused to release information about how it calculated the cost of deploying Free Software on its systems. On [FIXME: date], FSFE filed a Freedom of Information request, asking the city how it had arrived at a surprisingly high cost estimates for running LibreOffice on the city's workstations. The city of Helsinki has now denied this request. </p>
<p> "If anyone was looking to Helsinki for a pragmatic assessment of the costs and benefits of Free Software, this should give them pause," says Otto Kekäläinen, FSFE's Finland coordinator. "If Helsinki won't explain how they came by their figures, how can anyone take those numbers seriously?" </p>
<p> Johanna Sumuvuori, member of Helsinki's city council, has been pushing for greater use of Free Software in the city's administration since 2010. Together with more than 50 other members of Helsinki's city council [FIXME: are those signatories actually city council members?], she is now <a href="http://www.sumuvuori.net/node/178">urging the city council</a> to at least provide users with up-to-date LibreOffice installs in parallel with the riproprietary office suite currently in use. </p>
<p> During 2011, the city of Helsinki ran a pilot project, trying out the Free Software suite on the laptops of 600 city council members. A report released in December 2011 claimed that rolling out OpenOffice (now LibreOffice) across the administration would cause significantly higher costs than the proprietary alternative. <a href="http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120412-02.en.html">FSFE's analysis points to a number of severe deficiencies</a> in both the pilot project and the report. Even though the city's claims appear unrealistic, Helsinki's administration refuses to explain how the figures were calculated. </p>
<p> FSFE is running a <a href="http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120619-01.en.html">project to improve public sector procurement practices</a> in Finland. Public sector bodies frequently make mistakes in their calls for tender that leave Free Software companies at a disadvantage. FSFE works with public bodies to fix mistakes in calls for tender, and to spread best practices. </p> </body> <tags> <tag>front-page</tag> <tag>fi</tag> <tag>procurement</tag> </tags> </html>