[Fsfe-ie] Ireland OA policy

[Shane Martin Coughlan]

Hi Bob

My name is Shane Coughlan, and I am the coordinator of FSFE's legal affairs.

Bob Jolliffe wrote:
> The meeting with the minister in the end was quite disappointing.
> Whereas I had been invited to talk about national FOSS policy the
> minister seemed in fact reluctant to engage.  We had an hour set aside
> of which the first ten minutes was to discuss the school's broadband
> project.   In fact they discussed the school's broadband policy for 50
> minutes and the minister only reluctantly turned the conversation to
> FOSS with 10 minutes remaining.  Prefaced by, he has no real mandate
> to advocate FOSS in schools and that we must be mindful of the
> interests of a "certain company" down the road.
> 
> This is really not what I expected.  I can only believe somebody or
> something got to him between the December invitation and the meeting.
> The Dell announcement had been the day before and it is quite possible
> that they are all in a state of petrification regarding upsetting US
> companies.  I don't really know - it was very strange.  Anyway I did
> send a follow-up email which might, or might not, produce something
> further.  I've copied the text below.  My little bit of desk research
> does indicate that there is a far too cozy procurement relationship
> which currently between the Ministry of Education and National Centre
> for Technology in Education (www.ncte.org) and Microsoft, which quite
> likely falls foul of the EU anti-monopoly legislation.  It might be an
> issue to take up at some point but probably not yet.

Let me know if I can be any help.  I'm based in Ireland at the moment,
so I'm generally available.

Regards

Shane

-- 
Shane Coughlan
FTF Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
Office: +41435000366 ext 408 / Mobile: +353858303486
coughlan at fsfeurope.org
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