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On Friday 20 August 2004 2:23, Brough, Tom wrote:
Consider a situation where an organisation has researched a symbol set to be used to assist communication to / from / between people with learning difficulties. Lets assume that this set of symbols if not universally recognised,
Problem #1. A restricted set never will become globally acceptable. You'll need to persuade them of the benefits of open standards, freedom to modify and adapt and the impossibility of one charity in the UK coordinating all flavours and all versions across the globe.
is recognised nationally here in the UK. For the organisation in question ( a charity ) the main form of income for continued R&D are "royalties" from selling the symbol set under copyright.
They can still sell under copyright once it is free - Richard Stallman's talk was about copyright and there is no conflict between GNU and copyright. GNU relies on copyright - as originally defined. Solution: The charity can make the basic set free and continue to develop a supported and 'value-added' version. This is the Sun StarOffice/OOo model. The fear that the value added version might not be enough for the charity R&D is groundless - the whole point of making it free is that the R&D is ALSO FREE. The challenge for the charity is making the 'value added' version sufficiently appealing. The charity would be off-loading most of the R&D onto the community. This will typically lead to more rapid merging between this model and all existing models in other regions, decreased divergence, increased acceptance and increased scope of the set as a whole.
So the options are (among others): 1. Persuade the charity in question to open up their symbol set. This is the preferable solution but considering that the charities main income source is through selling the symbol set as a resource (and other training products based on the symbol set) its going to be difficult to persuade them to let go.
Then show them the light. It's not about letting go, it's about setting free. They aren't dropping the R&D, they are contracting it out whilst cutting their own bills.
2. Purchase a set of symbols (for development purposes), develop FLOSS but then tell the end user that they are going to have to purchase their own set of symbols in order to use it (which goes against the philosophy of GNU
Pointless.
3. Purchase a set and then develop an (open) derivative set using the same concepts. This could be a legal grey area. A legal challenge would do neither the charity nor the originator of a free version of the symbols any good, although there may be a few more lawyers going around in flash cars afterwards.
Even if the legal challenge doesn't materialise, developing a new version in the GNU model is only going to reduce the income of the charity indirectly - at least once the free version is any good.
The irony is that I can see a point in the future where the charity in question has to fold or at least curtail R&D because the market could not bear the cost of the product. In this case nobody (least of all the children and adults with learning difficulties) wins.
Then you have to persuade the charity of your concerns. Join the charity, get involved and get yourself heard.
It would be nice to see some FLOSS development based around this resource, but until the status quo changes I can not see how this can be achieved.
As always, from the inside. Charities are tightly regulated and must stick to the rules.
I would like to try to persuade the charity to open up the database, but such a request would have to be very carefully worded and the arguments well crafted. Anyone got any ideas / comments to add to this ?
Don't send a letter from the outside. Get inside, make friends, influence other decisions, get their respect - then change the model. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk/ http://www.dclug.org.uk/ http://www.isbn.org.uk/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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