Hi Massimo
[sorry for replying only today, we had an itterruption of internet connexion yesterday]
On 01/14/2011 06:01 PM, Max-B wrote:
Hi, as I told you I found that most of the municipality website of the regione Piemonte, more or less 90 bugs, have a similar site [1]. I saw that all those websites are made by ePublic s.r.l. and are a part of the circuit PiemonteWeb.it. So at the beginning of january I wrote an email to both the ePublic s.r.l. and PiemonteWeb.it […] Here is the long answer of ePublic. I translate some points I would like to discuss.
Good job ! Now that we have their attention, it's definitely the time to contact them ;)
- They are criticize the fact that in our communications was not
present a phone contact and that the municipality have contacted ePublic for clarification. That's true for the email I sent to ePublic s.r.l. and PiemonteWeb.it and through the web form but not for the letter we sent by Priority Mail.
That's not a very important point, we just have to take care that all our contact data are very clear in any future discussion with them.
They also say that some of the municipality have
interpreted our letter as a declaration of copyright infringement.
I don't see where they come up with this from ! We have nowhere even evoked the idea of copyright, only competition.
- They say: "Your proposal to include multiple options, although
interesting and correct point of view, it is difficult to implement on a technical level [...]. Please note that the list of options recommended by you must be multiplied for the file. doc. xls. dwg, etc ... We ask for a "technical" suggestion on the implementation of a web page containing this type and quantity of information that meets both requirements of accessibility and usability."
Recommending several programs is no more complicated that recommending only one, they just have to get used with the idea.
I think that I could write theme that Public Institution should not use proprietary file. I can extract some part from the letter we recently send to Comune di Scandiano about Opens Standard [2]. What do you think? Please let me know.
I think we shouldn't ask institutions to move away from .doc towards .odt, else they will make themselves inaccessible for all MS Offcie users, and get angry at us. We should rather explain them the problem there is in using these formats (as is well done in your letter, second paragraph "La specifiche techniche ... utilizzando Standard Aperti")
They say :
We ask for a "technical" suggestion on the implementation of a web page containing this type and quantity of information that meets both requirements of accessibility and usability."
We should ask them to propose the documents in the two formats (and clearly state that *we are available to help them make this conversion and implementation*). - We should give them a list of correspondences (.doc <=> .odt ; .xls <=> .ods ; .dwg <=> ? ...) - we should propose them some formulation like was the case in the PDF readers' letter [1] - "to open this PDF file, you need a PDF reader. You can download one of the following programs (list is not exhaustive)"
For the other formats : - to open this spreadsheet, you can either use Microsoft Excel [Format .xsl] or Free Software Programs [Format .ods] - this document is available in .odt and .doc format, depending on which software you are using (I have a preference for the second version)
- They are asking about Free Software for reading of digital sign
documents. I don't know much about that. Please let me know.
I've asked pdfreaders@ and am waiting for answers...
- They say: "We inform you that at the end of November, we have sent a
communication to all our customers municipalities to explain the objectives of the Foundation FSFE and nature of the campaign carried out by you. On that occasion we requested to communicate any changes to the Official Website. Most municipalities have not yet made a decision. We are not therefore in a position to be able to tell, what and when, will be made on your proposal."
We should thank them for having taken the time to transmit our message, and state that we stay at the municipalities' disposal for advice on how to best change their website, or any question with respect to Free Software or Open Standards.
Unfortunately I think that without the permission of the Municipality ePublic cannot change the websites.
I'm not sure this is that unfortunate. This way, we are sure that when an institution changes, it is because they have integrated our argumentation. But it might take some more time.
There are some update about it. 3 institutions of Piemonte wrote me by email after the reminder I sent last friday. They are all agree with our request and they asked ePublic to modified the page.
If however you say that already 3 institutions contacted you, it's good news ;)
ePublic answer to theme that is waiting for our suggestion on how to do it. So this weekend I wrote down a possible answer to their request. You find it in attach. It's in italian, please let me know if you cannot understand it?
We would need here to have precisely what they want to change (all formats, only PDF readers ?), then propose them formulations, formats for their documents, links for download and links for more information on open standards.
As I said earlier, I think it would be beneficial to ask them to make the documents available in both formats (proprietary and free). I also think the letter shouldn't be too long to mind drawning them under information. The first two paragraphs of your proposal seem good to me. For the sake of shortness,I wouldn't quote their letter, and only refer to it with "you asked if we could..." "you wanted to know..."
I have no more time today to draft it more, we could try to work on it simultanously on Etherpad on day or I could try to write a skeleton of letter to make myself more clear about what should be in there (but I'm not a paradigm of concision either ...)
Tell me how you'd better work on this,
Regards