[Fellowship-Slovenia] Fwd: EU should be using Web 2.0 in a free way

[Matija Šuklje]

Pred kratkim so MEP imeli seminar[a] kako uporabljati Web 2.0 in pri tem pač 
(samo) Twitter in FaceBook.

Že nekaj časa pa sledim blogu komisarke Neelie Kroes in se mi je zdel to 
primeren trenutek opozoriti na to, da ne uporabljajo prostih rešitev in 
odprtih standardov (npr. posnetki v Flash). Moj e-mail je priložen spodaj, na 
odgovor pa še čakam.

Mogoče bi bil to primeren trenutek, da pošljemo nekaj podobnega tudi našim 
MEP.


lp,
Matija

-.-.-
[a]	http://www.euractiv.com/en/pa/parliament-wants-media-better-communicate-
eu-news-497550

----------  Posredovano sporočilo  ----------

Zadeva: EU should be using Web 2.0 in a free way
Datum: sreda 13. oktobra 2010 16:14:46
Od: Matija Šuklje <matija at suklje.name>
Za:  Cab-Kroes-NK at ec.europa.eu

Dear Mrs. Kroes,

I have been following your work and blog for quite some time now and am very 
happy that you are so courageously fighting vendor lock-in, protecting net 
neutrality, competition, open standards and improving IT in the EU, not least 
with your Digital Agenda and EIF[1].

I would also like to praise you for your grasp of modern technology and the 
insight to ask for feedback from the younger generation — very few have such 
courage!

Also it is great to see you and other Commissioners and now even MEPs are now 
with blogging, microblogging etc. closer to the citizens they represent as 
ever!

With that being said, I would like to suggest that you not let yourself be 
locked in by proprietary centralised services of Web 2.0 and move forward and 
use FOSS[3] solutions. Here are some examples:

* instead of the centralised Twitter, you could use the distributed 
Status.Net[4].

* instead of the centralised FaceBook, you could use a distributed social 
network — some of the many notable projects are Elgg[5], GnuSocial[6], 
Diaspora[7].

* for instant messaging you could use XMPP[8] (sometimes referred to as 
Jabber) and for voice the SIP standard.

* instead of Adobe Flash for video and audio streaming, you should use the W3C 
standard HTML5 and embed media in an open format (e.g. Ogg/Speex and Celt are 
optimised for voice recordings, Ogg/Vorbis for other audio, Ogg/Theora and 
WebM are great video codecs) directly into your website. Most modern browsers 
already support this feature directly and the citizens do not need to install 
a (proprietary) plug-in.

In short some reasons why those would be a wise choice:

* it is FOSS and based on open stadards — you and all EU citizens can use, 
study, share and improve it; but I am sure you are already aware of those and 
other benefits FOSS brings.

* because of its distributed design, the EC (or EU) can run their own 
Status.net server and people on other servers can follow and reach you 
flawlessly (similar like e-mail).

* all of the above mentioned solutions are very extensible and the EU, perhaps 
by using its OSOR and EUPL, could not only follow its normal user, but 
innovate on top of them.

* since these are either using or are themselves open standards, anyone can 
use them.

* you retain the full control of your content and can chose any license you 
want. This also means such content can be conserved for future generations.

For a better overview I recommend W3C's[9] recently published report on the 
state of the Social Web[10].

Thank you for your time reading this and thank you for all the efforts.


With kindest regards,
Matija Šuklje

-.-.-
[1]	I believe you are already familiar with FSFE[2]'s analysis of the EIFv2 
draft: http://fsfe.org/projects/os/eifv2.en.html
[2]	Free Software Foundation Europe: http://fsfe.org
[3]	Free/Libre Open Source Software
[4]	http://status.net
[5]	http://elgg.org
[6]	http://social.gnu.org
[7]	http://www.joindiaspora.com
[8]	http://xmpp.org
[9]	World Wide Web Consortium — http://w3.org
[10]	http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/wiki/FinalReport

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