[kwlug-disc] Parliament adjourned ... bills dead (again!)?

[R. Brent Clements]

In terms of official government use of FLOSS software and
technologies, I think appealing to the elected officials is quite
irrelevant.  They don't make decisions like that in the House of
Commons.  They decide to spend money on Parliament infrastructure, it
gets sent to their IT departments and various consultants, who come up
with a solution and say "this is how much we spent on it".  And
frankly our PM and MPs do have far more important matters to deal
with.  Furthermore even making them understand the underlying concepts
of FLOSS is gonna take time better spent.  Spend the time going after
the people actually making IT decisions for the government.  It sure
isn't the House of Commons.

Other related topics like copyright legislation are quite relevant.  I
can't believe we get a third chance to poke them about this one.

Brent

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:31 PM, Paul Nijjar <paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 04:43:02PM -0400, Adam Glauser wrote:
>>
>> My thought is this: There were many groups representing
>> industries/constituencies important to our region which spoke out
>> against the problematic TPM protections in C-32. I'm thinking of groups
>> like national student, teacher, library and software/technology
>> organizations.  A good question would be, given the concerns of these
>> groups, what does the candidate intend to do to ensure that these
>> concerns are addressed in future legislation?
>>
>
> So I have been thinking about this. I disagree with Russell that
> individuals matter much, at least for our ridings. At the same time it
> would definitely be helpful to make sure our potential MPs have this
> on their agendas.
>
> I am not sure there is a useful way to ask a candidate a question
> during an all-candidates meeting and get a useful response. Certainly
> if you frame the question as a FLOSS supporter you are likely to get
> an answer that consists of FLOSS-friendly murmurs.
>
> So what can we do?  I am interested in finding out a few things:
> - Is this person actually an ally for FLOSS?
> - Does this person know anything about the issues involved?
>
> I also know that these candidates are not people, but politicians.
> They are out to get votes -- often (but not always) yours. So here are
> two approaches that might yield useful information:
>
> 0. Be completely neutral in your wording: "What are your opinions on
> the advantages and disadvantages of Bill C-32 -- the new Copyright
> Act? Please be specific."
>
> 1. Take the opposite approach to copyright and see whether the
> politician takes the bait: "The last government released a bill which
> makes piracy legal. What will your government do to protect the rights
> of content creators from this kind of piracy?"
>
> I don't know whether either of these ideas is any good, but that's
> what I have so far. Thoughts?
>
> Also: if you are looking for all-candidates information (and responses
> to surveys) for your riding then you might check out
> http://www.wonderfulwaterloo.com . These guys were the best source of
> municipal election info last year, and I will be posting whatever
> all-candidate meeting information I find to that site.
>
> - Paul
>
> --
> http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
>
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