Community Addresses UK Parliamentarians
In a half-day session in Westminster, members of the Free Software community gathered to inform British parliamentarians and civil servants of how Open Source software may impact the public sector and British industry in future.
Notable contributions to the Westminster eForum were made by Alan Cox of Red Hat, Tristan Nitot of Mozilla Europe, Mark Taylor of the Open Source Consortium and jounalist and author Glyn Moody. Nick McGrath of Microsoft was also present in order to give the proprietory perspective.
The forum had been split into two sessions one investigating the potential impact of Open Source in both the public and private sector and investigating the future of Open Source. In the first of these sessions, chaired by Dr. John Pugh MP, presentations were made by Specsavers and Alfresco detailing the success of these organisations in both using and developing Open Source. Michel Kahn, CIO of Specsavers, cited the use of Open Source as a crucial element in the success of his organisation's rapid groth across Europe in the last few years.
When it came to use of Open Source in the public sector,however, most speakers were positive about the potential for Open Source but were concerned that the UK public sector's overly conservative approach to software procurement and development may continue to be a barrier to adoption.
Much of the future impact session looked at how as Open Source adoption grows in the UK we shall see a rise in service based companies offering all the deployment, support and training required to make adoption viable. Glyn Moody concluded this session by making explaining that the biggest development in perception of Open Source occur when the public sector realises that Open Source is a social phenomenon advocating collaboration.
The meeting, as a whole, was very informative and should have been very useful to the senior parliamentarians present. However, the content and audience were both tipped in favour of Open Source, making the meeting unbalanced. As a result, the meeting was more successful in displaying the passion of the UK's Free Software community than it was at getting across a healthy balance of the facts.
comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
There's a New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle is a Linux AI assistant that can work with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
-
FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.