Re: [Fsfe-uk] UK Govt. OSS Policy v2

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2004-08-10 at 16:46 +0100, graham wrote:
> I'm having trouble decoding this: I'm reading it as:
> a) the new draft is open for comments  till Sep 17
> b) the contents of the new draft is not available to the general public
> c) to get hold of the document you have to find someone (yourself ;-) 
> who knows the right people, and then ask very nicely. But they can 
> only get you a copy by breaking the rule which says redistribution is 
> not allowed.

I think that's pretty much spot on - although, please note, I'm not
sending people copies of the PDF.

> This surely can't be counted as a 'public consultation'? Or am I 
> misreading your mail?

Well, to be honest, I'm not sure if it is a public consultation -
although, I'm not sure why. I have been told that they are soliciting
feedback for this redraft, but the "intended audience" are those who
responded to previous drafts.

The problem with this is that I was one of the people who had responded
previously, and I didn't get to hear about this. From the people who are
asking me about this document (some of whom I know were also part of the
consultation previously), I guess they didn't get to hear either, which
is why I'm raising this on this list. 

Of course, there is always the possibility that the people at GovTalk
will start refusing to send the document to people. I haven't seen any
evidence of that so far, though, so I suspect as long as people give the
secret wink (i.e., asking for something that they wouldn't otherwise
know about) then they will get a copy.

I should also point out that I kind of stumbled on this document because
it was passed to me by an organisation who apparently shouldn't have
published it. 

Cheers,

Alex.