[ubuntu-us-mn] Update on ShipIt request (Tony Yarusso)

[jay curry]

I agree with Richard on some of the concerns. I would most definitely agree
that burning disks to be sent is not the way to go. It is entirely too easy
to put malicious software on a CD, and while you and I trust that the
validation software on an install CD will do it's job, people in public
office are unlikely to take that sort of a risk.

You might talk to the shipit people and see if they have a program for
something already in place for distributing disks to elected officials, in
the name of a LoCo.

I personally think the obvious place to get Ubuntu into the attention of
public officials is to show them how it saves taxpayers money. Schools seem
like an obvious place to work on that to me, but I also know that schools
have been a really big target for both Microsoft and Apple over the years.
But if you can get the technology director for a district to look at rolling
Ubuntu onto systems that they would otherwise discard and replace, you could
show how much it saves the district that way.

The obvious (to me anyway) thing that State reps and senators should be
concerned with should be making sure that public record documents remain
available to the public, and are not relegated to unreadable bits because
the company that made the software that created it has decided not to
support that format any more.

I think it's likely to be as much of a problem as wrapping DRM around public
records and public domain content. All copyright work will go into the
public domain when the copyright expires. Making sure it's available at that
time is as important as making sure that the copyright holder retains
control for the duration of the copyright.

I'm not sure that specifying ODF is the way to go, however specifying that
the format be Open and 'complete and implemented as defined in the Open
specification' does sound like a reasonable requirement.

Just my thoughts though.

-Rusty
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