Today’s the last day for the Gov.UK Consultation on Forced ISP Snooping: Please Say NO.
I didn’t get to LinuxExpo, partly because of Monday Machine-Mangling Madness but I saw LinuxExpo 2008 — Robert Castelo from the Drupal point-of-view. I also didn’t get to Public Sector Online (report by Andrew Lewin with links to more) and I definitely didn’t travel to Toronto, so the report on the Free Software and Open Source Symposium from Randy Metcalfe is pretty welcome.
I wrote about the Social Enterprise Photography Competition and Cooperatives South-West Trade Fair last Friday – the photography competition deadline has been extended to 7 November. So you’ve still time to capture a vision of a more progressive approach to business that values people and the planet as well as profit.
Last Friday was Get Online Day but TTLLP didn’t do anything for it this year – I took one look and reached similar conclusions to Graham Jones: Get online…! Oh – you are…! Related to that: on Tuesday, I got really annoyed about how many branches of government (national, regional, sub-regional and local) are obsessed about the private sector and are paying even less attention to other types of businesses, includingbuying off-the-shelf software which doesn’t conform to their stated policies about accessibility and interoperability. (Sorry if you saw evidence of that outburst… yes, local councillors are pretty powerless and get as annoyed about incompetent government services as everyone else.)
It seems I’m not the only one feeling that good cooperative businesses are being overlooked. The ICA have recently sent an open letter to the Governments of the G-8 reminding them that co-operative financial institutions are an alternative secure, stable and sustainable model of business owned and controlled by people.
Finally, a bit of advance notice here: “The inaugural Creativity & Business International Network (c&binet) will take place at The Grove in Hertfordshire from 26 – 28 October 2009” – is this something that free software and free culture supporters should get involved with? (And why did they pick a name that includes an XML special character?)