[wilhelmtux-discussion] Catering other NGO's ..?

[Robert Ribnitz]

Hello,

as it was pointed out, by those visiting WSIS PreCons, we should collaborate
more with other NGO's. "Brot für Brüder" (Bread for All), and other like-minded
organisations should be our allies, because:

- Signing/Encrypting using GnuPG can provide a "secure" channel to voice
opinions (I am sure the NSA, and other bodies have ways to decrypt such
messages, but the avg. ISP does not). And given the amount of mail circulating,
and that even for the NSA "considerable" time (I think, in the order of 10-20
minutes should be assumed), it is unlikely they pick "your" mail.

Also, the Web of trust mechanism does not require you to trust anyone. If you
receive a key ultimately trusted by 3 people you dont know you'll attach
different "confidence" than if it is signed by your 3 closest friends.

- Free Software can be "free of cost" (if those ocsts are taken over by these
NGO's). CD-Rs (and CDs) are "cheap to produce", easy to read. We could envisage
collaborating with them to produce a "Software Environment" for the use in
developing countries. As a first plan, this should include:
              1) Software to browse the net
              2) Software to read/write mail, and support encryption
              3) A Database application
              4) Some Text Processor

Of course all of it should be Free, possibly using linux as a System below.
Ideally it would also feature an automatic installer, as you cannot expect tohse
people to be able to install it.

If we follow suit, our next steps should be:

- Identify potential organisations possibly interested
- Create documentation explaining the benefits of Free Software with regards to
the humanitarian field. This should be non-technical documentation, poining out
the benefits to freedom of expression, independence of a few large companies, as
well as the boost to local economy.
- For each organisation, identify one or more contacts (technical)
- Create a mailing list to coordinate activities

What the people of gnuwin [1] have done is a good start, but unfortunately we
cannot depend on linux. Knoppix [2], based on debian [3] is another good
starting point.

Anyone interested in following up?

Robert

[1] http://gnuwin.epfl.ch
[2] http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/
[3] http://www.debian.org