[Help wanted] FOSS United Public Policy Charter V0

Policy
3

Thanks, @rahulporuri for starting this discussion.

Hello everyone - I am attaching an initial working draft of the charter for the Public Policy initiatives. This is to give everyone an idea of what the structure of the charter would look like.

One section that everyone can start contributing to is the Objectives section. To get this rolling, we’ve listed out 10 objectives. You could review this list of objectives and share your feedback as comments in this thread.

Here are two simple questions to help you structure your responses if you’re recommending changes.

  1. Are there things in the current list that you disagree with? Dissent is welcome. Just call out the specific item and share the reason as to why that should not be included as an objective.

  2. Are there important things in the realm of public policy in this space that are missing from the current list? Great! Just describe the objective that you would like to see included. Examples and/or reasoning as to why it should be included would also help.

Even if you don’t have any suggestions in the form of changes, but have read the charter, you could still give your overall feedback on the current draft of the charter.

FOSS United Public Policy Charter V0.pdf (64.6 KB)

Objectives

Listed below are the specific goals that the initiative aims to achieve. Every strategy that is developed and every activity that is performed as part of this initiative should help to achieve at least of these objectives.

  1. To communicate established definitions of Free and Open Source Software, FOSS, Open Source, and other terminologies to the General Public and to correct misuses of the terminologies.
  2. Educate and inform both policy makers and the community regarding the benefits of FOSSin technology policies. It is important to engage communities as they have the power to influence policy makers. Work for the policy makers becomes easier if the community is already aligned.
  3. Promote digital autonomy and technical sovereignty through FOSS – access to FOSS is difficult to restrict, FOSS usage reduces dependency on external vendors or proprietary technologies, FOSS is resistant to international trade conflicts
  4. Advocate for the development of common open standards that allows better inter-operability between entities (both public and private) and encourage data sharing.
  5. Increased allocation of public grants for FOSS projects.
  6. Enable the establishment of Open-Source Program Offices (OPSOs) at both the Union and State governments.
  7. Incorporate education in FOSS philosophy and FOSS technologies into the STEM curriculum in Universities.
  8. Increase public awareness and participation in in technology policy-making.
  9. Prevent roadblocks in the creation and adoption of FOSS in India, which includes ending Software Patents
  10. Advocate for the replacement of traditional metrics of innovation and progress, like the “Number of Patents”, with metrics that take into account FOSS.
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