Meeting on European perspectives for open source software

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

Hi,

please don't blame me for the subject ;-)

The meeting was held by EC DG Information Society
on 18 May 2001 in Brussels.
I was invited there as a representative of Intevation.

The invitation said
	Representatives of players active in open source software
	will be present in Brussels on Friday 18 May 2001 at the occasion of the
	information event organised in relation with the 2001 action line
	"Free software development: towards critical mass". We would like to use
	this opportunity to discuss the main challenges ahead and possible future
	orientations for the European research programmes in this field.
	This input will be used by the Commission services to propose orientations
	for the 6th Framework Programme of European Research and
	development (2002-2006) in this domain, and more generally in our efforts
	to ensure that the instruments, contractual rules and general
	environments meet the requirements for co-operative efforts using open
	source software schemes.

The minutes by Phillipe Agrain are attached.

My personal opinion:

The EC is definitely aware of Free Software and has quite well understood it
(the term OS is used for mediation purposes, I guess).
Still a lot of discussion is required to improve the knowledge about
Free Software, its benefits, how these can be won and also about some
misunderstandings in this field.
At a next meeting a representative of FSFE should be present.
I propose Georg as the European contact point should attend rather than
a member of a Chapter.

Cheers

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/
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