Ubuntu-cy reacts to laptop funding pre-installed with Vista for high school students

[Theodotos Andreou]

Savva I also considered the court solution but we may face some 
difficulties:

1) The  law regarding tenders for the public says that it is forbidden 
for a tender to ¨photograph¨ a certain program UNLESS it is imposed by 
the technical know how. The window for exception is there and they will 
of course claim that this is the software the teachers are using.

2) We are not an official organisation yet.  We need to push things 
forward to that direction.

3) We do not have the funds too go to court unless anyone of us happens 
to know a lawyer that embraces the Free Software ideals.

I am not against the idea of going to court but first we should educate 
about FOSS. We are trying to persuade them to give them a seminar 
regarding the educational perspective of Linux. This effort will fail if 
we go to court.

Savvas Radevic wrote:
> People, we already have a response for help:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jan Husar <jan.husar at skosi.org>
> Date: Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:58 PM
> Subject: Re: Ubuntu-cy reacts to laptop funding pre-installed with
> Vista for high school students
> To: "Ubuntu local community team (LoCo) contacts"
> <loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Cc: Cypriot Ubuntu LoCo Team <ubuntu-cy at lists.ubuntu.com>
>
>
> Hello,
>
>
> I can try to force them to answer via the pernament representation in Brussels,
>
> I do that next week, please forward me the names who are responsible for
> that decision, e.g. directors, attachees,
>
>
> deal here is following,
>
> what money is going to be spend on this "funding",
> for sure it's tax payers money, but is it CY? EU?
> this we need to find out, and we need to push the problem
> that they are preferably selecting a vendor and thus
> the competition rules should apply here...
>
> In such cases you can even go to court with your government, over
> not following public procurement rules and competition rules by favoring
> one vendor
>
> --
>  -----------------------------------
> |  Jan Husar
> |
> | doing what matters
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Savvas Radevic <vicedar at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> The Government of Cyprus / Ministry of Education has recently decided
>> to fund high school students to buy a laptop. The funding will be
>> about 400 EUR for each student. The website and more information about
>> this is unfortunately posted in Greek:
>> http://www.moec.gov.cy/ekpaideutiki_metarrythmisi/index.html
>>
>> The problem is that they have set a strict requirement, that laptops
>> would come pre-installed with Windows Vista operating system.
>>
>> A local newspaper has reacted to this (in Greek):
>> http://www.politis-news.com/cgibin/hweb?-A=840834&-V=archive&-w=VISTA@&-P
>>
>> Members of our local community have strictly opposed to the fact that
>> the laptops would come with Windows Vista (in Greek):
>> http://ghadjikyriacou.blogspot.com/2008/12/vista.html
>> http://ctrl-alt-backspace.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post_13.html
>> http://ctrl-alt-backspace.blogspot.com/2008/12/laptop.html
>>
>> Theodotos Andreou of the Ubuntu-cy local community has recently sent a
>> letter (by mail and electronic mail) to the Ministry of Education
>> requesting a specific reason to the question "Why Vista?".
>> Furthermore, he requested to leave the choice for the students to
>> decide whether they would want a Macintosh, Windows or GNU/Linux
>> installed.
>> He also included numerous reasons about a more convenient choice of a
>> Linux-based operating system, including freedom, speed, stability and
>> price, which make a Linux operating system a much better solution for
>> educational purposes.
>> The email has been posted in our mailing list (in Greek):
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cy/2008-December/000154.html
>> http://n2.nabble.com/%CE%93%CE%B9%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%AF-Vista--td1672094.html
>>
>> The same letter has been forwarded to major media stations in Cyprus
>> and has been posted today (Sunday, January 11th 2009):
>> http://www.scribd.com/doc/10061438/123165639623481-wwwpolitisnewscom
>> http://pdf.politis-news.com/pdf/pdf?-A=132214&-V=pdfedition
>>
>> The Ministry has not replied to the letter, neither acknowledging nor
>> acquiring more information about it.
>>
>> --
>> loco-contacts mailing list
>> loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
>>
>>     
>
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