April 24, 2015
Last week the EU parliament published a report that recommends investing in Free Software (aka opensource) to replace expensive proprietary software from the US and increase the technological independence of Europe. Such steps would also counter US/UK mass surveillance against European citizens, public institutions and companies. The report reads like an update of a previous report from July 2001 that also sought to achieve these goals.
Greece is currently in a unique economic and political situation that may make it possible to actually implement, as national policy, such recommendations. Moving funds from software import to local jobs creation and developing exportable knowledge services.
Having worked on such policies in the Netherlands, UK and Germany i’d like to talk about some of the lessons learned and discuss how these ideas could held Greece.
More expanded version:http://www.gendo.ch/en/blog/arjen/the-other-it-from-another-europe