CianBlog

I’m taking the chance to spread the word about a new initiative at the European level.

I paste there the content I received from Alix Cazenave in charge at the April organization, the main French association to promote Free Software. I hope the invitation will be taken in consideration and Romanians will take some action to write to the people they elected or they will elect. Till now, I didn’t see any topic related to Open Source and Free Software in any Romanian political platform. Unfortunately. Her is the message I received:

"

Dear colleagues,

I am a representative from association April, which is the main French association for the promotion and defence of free software. I have met some of you during the previous months.

I was contacted by Mr Cottigny’s assistant (French Member of the European Parliament) about written declaration 46/2008 (see attachment - I can provide you with translated versions in all EU languages).

Several members of the European Parliament have initiated a written declaration in order to support free software. It aims at:
- having the EU support free software R&D;
- having the European Parliament switch its computer system to free software.

About a hundred MEP’s have already signed the declaration, but a total amount of 393 MEP signatures is required before september 25th. MEPs will be able to sign the declaration during the next plenary session - i.e. during week 39 (September II). A promotion operation will be organized inside the European Parliament, in order to inform MEPs and encourage them to sign.

Mr Cottigny’s assistant asked me to contact you so that you could help and support this declaration. It would be very helpful if you could email your MEPs and ask them to sign the declaration. In attachment you may find the brief that was sent to MEPs by their colleagues to inform them about free software.

Please let your members/friends know about this declaration, so that they too can contribute to this free software promotion action.

Thank you in advance for the help you may provide !

Sincerely,

– Alix Cazenave Chargée de mission – April http://www.april.org/

"

I attached here the three documents received:
1. EN-European-Parliament-Written-Declaration.pdf
2. europarl-carteD46.pdf
3. why-choose-free-software.pdf

I’m back to Canada! Yes, after spending 3 months in Europe, mostly in Romania but also visiting some other countries, this is my first day at work. There are lots of things which happened in the meantime and I strongly hope I will have more time to share it here this time: how we feel Romania after living there again for 3 months, how we feel Canada now when we turned back, how was eLiberatica 2008, what plans we have for the future of the conference and the Romanian Open Source Initiative, some stories from our Black Sea Coast vacation in Bulgaria and so on. But for now we just try to use again to the Vancouver time (still having some jet-lag and vacation-lag ;). And, because I can not stay without mention it (although you already know it I bet); coincidentally, today Google launched Chrome! Also coincidentally, I just have some conversation in the last weeks about browsers.. I was mentioning to my chat partner, that probably the main improvement that I would do it if I would be involved in a browser design, would be to simplify the interface, to remove buttons and so, eventually to implement different interface profiles: a profile for geeks, one for developers, one for my parents ;) , I mean for ordinary people and so on. And looking at Chrome, I would say that I was right. They did it! Again. This is why we wish to have Google again at eLiberatica for the next year. Ah, and Chrome project is Open Source! A well written story here: Inside Chrome: “The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web“.