[Parl-user] EC and Debian / FLOSS - message forwarded to DG DIGIT ICT Helpdesk

Tue Jun 10 14:42:38 UTC 2014

Dear Jonas,

DG DIGIT acknowledged the receipt, and is "working on the document" (whatever that means). For the moment I just have phone calls and a few scant message, i.e. nothing worth sharing, but I hope this will happen. I could then copy the parl-user at lists.alioth.debian.org in "cc" to allow you to follow-up. 

Thank you for your the positive reception. Indeed, the bonuses are sizable, and I remain convinced indeed that FLOSS must be the boss and that it will percolate through the legal floodgates. 

A number of QE and PE (questions asked to Commission in writing or oral), and in the context of the hearing of the Commissioners will keep the focus sharp. Commission cannot be inconsistent: it recommended FLOSS in its policy documents.

I was aware of the problem of edits: I moved the part that Gijs had added / edited to the third part, because of which the left & right (yellow/green marking) do not correlate anymore. I added more text under the "risk to political fall-out" and redrafted the conclusions. 

I understand from your patient explanation that when I save the text before amending, versions are saved and allow retracing amendments. I did not know that. Thank you for the formatting and editing! 

Best regards,

Jaap

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonas Smedegaard [mailto:dr at jones.dk] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 3:41 PM
To: VERRAES Jacques (RTD); parl-user at lists.alioth.debian.org
Cc: ehj at iimas.eu; gijs at hillenius.com
Subject: Re: EC and Debian / FLOSS - message forwarded to DG DIGIT ICT Helpdesk

Quoting Jacques.Verraes at ec.europa.eu (2014-06-07 16:43:53)
> I sent today the collectively produced Debian/FLOSS document to the 
> ICT Helpdesk. I would like to thank in particular Erik for his 
> mentoring, Jonas for his steady focus, and Gijs for his content 
> contributions.

That's great!

Please keep us updated with progress in this exciting dialogue.

Is the dialogue perhaps public accessible somewhere, so that we can more 
directly reference and promote it to others interested in this matter?

> Please check the final text at 
> https://wiki.debian.org/DebianParl/EC#preview

For the record, a lasting address to your specific edition of that wiki 
page is this: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianParl/EC?action=recall&rev=9

> I hope that the document is pleasing and convincing and that FLOSS is 
> further generalised in the EC and other EU institutions. Writing the 
> text, I found that the EC has been constantly promoting the use of 
> FLOSS in public administrations. I hope it is now convinced of its own 
> arguments, insights and wisdom.

The document itself is in my opinion really really good.

Nice bonus that writing it helped you learn more about EC use of FLOSS!  
Another bonus was that our collaborative proof-reading it and your 
getting me down to meet had me work closer with Gijs!

To be honest, however, I am still sceptical that this document will open 
the eyes of others in the EC, but am happy that you are so optimistic, 
it is very inspiring - to me, and perhaps also to those we address with 
this document :-)

NB!  It took me quite some time to read your edit, because I not only 
wanted to read it as a text on its own, but also wanted to follow what 
you had changed (and try guess *why* you did).

Here are a few suggestions for future wiki editing:

  * Add a single newline after each sentence.
    (unlike double newline it has no visual effect but helps detect
     changes when comparing line-by-line)
  * Try group changes in smaller parts.
    (e.g. save your "rewrite this section" before "tidy that phrase")
  * Save changes before and after moving whole sentences around.

That eases following your changes.

At https://wiki.debian.org/DebianParl/EC?action=diff&rev1=8&rev2=9 you 
can see (as yellow/green coloring) how the wiki system thinks your edit 
is largely a rewrite of the whole text.

It did not recognize that you changed first sentence only by a few 
words, because you also added a sentence at the end of same paragraph, 
and the whole paragraph was written on one line.

It did not recognize that you moved the "Using FLOSS" section down, but 
saw it as erasing it at the top and adding it at the bottom.

I manually took the pieces apart and put them back together again.  I 
like your document (if not how you saved it).  I like it a lot!

 - Jonas

P.S.

I am actually working with librarians to develop tools to aid machine 
mapping of revisions of loosely formatted texts.  Those tools will - 
when finished - be part of DebianParl, to help track progress of 
legislative documents (even including unofficial drafts): 
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianParl/Desktop#Legislation

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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