Turkey's Erdogan visits Microsoft, Apple, Google

[Vicen Rodriguez]

Hi,

Yesterday I read this press release:


http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/05/20/country.seeks.bids.on.106.million.tablets.for.students/


<<The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, has been touring
Silicon Valley companies this week, on the heels of a similar tour by
Turkish President Abdullah G?l last month. Both men received VIP tours
of facilities at Microsoft and Google, and met privately with officials
from Apple. All three companies are hoping to land a contract to supply
the country with at least 10.6 million tablets for the country's
students>>.

Do you think it could be a good idea to send a message to Mr. Recep
Tayyip Erdo?an and to Mr. Abdullah G?l regarding the advantages of the
use of devices with free software in an educational environment?

If yes, how do you think it could be done?

Could it be done from the FSFE?

Best regards

Vicen
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[Sam Tuke]

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
Do you think it could be a good idea to send a message to Mr.
Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and to Mr. Abdullah G?l regarding the
advantages of the use of devices with free software in an
educational environment?

Yes.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
Could it be done from the FSFE?

Yes.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
how do you think it could be done?

It could be a simple open letter, sent in physical and postal form to
the Turkish government, and published on fsfe.org.

Are you happy to start drafting it? Please use pad.fsfe.org so that
others can participate. You can reuse arguments from the FSFE
education team pages. I recommend keeping the text simple.

Thanks for working on this opportunity :)

Sam.

PS Editors added in CC.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Vicen Rodriguez]

Hi Sam,

I think my English is not good enough to write that kind of letter. I've
written a draft in Spanish an tried to translate it into English. Here
are both versions:


https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan


Best regards

Vicen

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Post by Vicen Rodriguez
Do you think it could be a good idea to send a message to Mr.
Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and to Mr. Abdullah G?l regarding the
advantages of the use of devices with free software in an
educational environment?

Yes.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
Could it be done from the FSFE?

Yes.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
how do you think it could be done?

It could be a simple open letter, sent in physical and postal form to
the Turkish government, and published on fsfe.org.
Are you happy to start drafting it? Please use pad.fsfe.org so that
others can participate. You can reuse arguments from the FSFE
education team pages. I recommend keeping the text simple.
Thanks for working on this opportunity :)
Sam.
PS Editors added in CC.
- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
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[Sam Tuke]

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan

Excellent, I started editing the English version, but had to take some
calls and ran out of time today. I've put the editors team in CC in case
someone there can help out.

Ideally this should get sent this week, but that may not be possible
depending on who's available (I'm on holiday until next week, and some
other FSFE staff are taking days off after working the weekend at
LinuxTag conference).

I have also put Sinan Doganli in CC, who has campaigned on Free Software
issues in Turkey in the past and may be able to help.

Best,

Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
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Subject: Turkey's Erdogan visits Microsoft, Apple, Google
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Subject: Re: Turkey's Erdogan visits Microsoft, Apple, Google
Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 12:39:45 +0200
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[Sinan Doğanlı]

Hello,
how can I help, do you need a turkish version or something else?

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
I think my English is not good enough to write that kind of letter. I've

written a draft in Spanish an tried to translate it into English. Here are

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan

Excellent, I started editing the English version, but had to take some
calls and ran out of time today. I've put the editors team in CC in case
someone there can help out.
Ideally this should get sent this week, but that may not be possible
depending on who's available (I'm on holiday until next week, and some
other FSFE staff are taking days off after working the weekend at
LinuxTag conference).
I have also put Sinan Doganli in CC, who has campaigned on Free Software
issues in Turkey in the past and may be able to help.
Best,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

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[Erik Albers]

Hello, how can I help, do you need a turkish version or something else?

I think that would be great! A Turkish und an English version, so both can
read it. If you are willing to translate, that would be really much appreciated!

Best,
Erik

- --
Erik Albers | https://fsfe.org/about/albers/
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) - Campaigns & Community
Support us now: https://fsfe.org/support/?eal

Free as in Freedom!

[Sam Tuke]

Sinan,

Post by Sinan Doğanlı
how can I help, do you need a turkish version or something else?

Yes, help with the Turkish translation once the English draft is ready would
be extremely helpful.

Also we'd welcome your views on the English version as you know Turkish
culture better than any of us non-Turks.

We also want to be careful not to appear insensitive to the momentous
political situation currently gripping Turkey.

Best,

Sam.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Sam Tuke]

Hi all,

I've finished my English draft of Vincen's original letter to Erdogan. Please
take a look and comment:

https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan

I changed the tone to be less flattering and more direct. Bear in mind that
this letter is being written more for its impact on Turks and the wider
political and software community than it is for Mr Erdogan himself (he'll only
be interested in reading it if lots of other already found it interesting).

We have to be careful to be sensitive to the other shocking events still
taking place in Turkey, and I recommend we preface the letter with a brief
statement about how we are aware of those events and recognise this is not an
ideal time to talk about software, but that the decision will soon be made
about the tablets and freedom must not be left behind in the debris of Taksim
Square.

Again many thanks to Vincen for his first draft!

Best,

Sam.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Daniel Pocock]

He may have fresh motivation to look at this if it is framed in terms
of independence and privacy of communications - The Guardian is just
reporting that Britain hacked Turkey's delegation to the G20 and they
are very unhappy.

Regards,

Daniel

Post by Sam Tuke
Hi all,
I've finished my English draft of Vincen's original letter to
https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan
I changed the tone to be less flattering and more direct. Bear in
mind that this letter is being written more for its impact on Turks
and the wider political and software community than it is for Mr
Erdogan himself (he'll only be interested in reading it if lots of
other already found it interesting).
We have to be careful to be sensitive to the other shocking events
still taking place in Turkey, and I recommend we preface the letter
with a brief statement about how we are aware of those events and
recognise this is not an ideal time to talk about software, but
that the decision will soon be made about the tablets and freedom
must not be left behind in the debris of Taksim Square.
Again many thanks to Vincen for his first draft!
Best,
Sam.
_______________________________________________ Discussion mailing
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[Sam Tuke]

He may have fresh motivation to look at this if it is framed in terms of
independence and privacy of communications - The Guardian is just reporting
that Britain hacked Turkey's delegation to the G20 and they are very
unhappy.

Good point - the letter now reads:

Finally, for better security of both schools and students, Free Software makes
its code available, providing evidence of how it functions. This week's
revelations surrounding British Government spying on Turkish politicians at
the G20 summit highlight the importance of software security and privacy -
educational computers should not provide back-doors for foreign Governments
and companies.

Sam.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Matthias Kirschner]

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan

Looks good.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
We have to be careful to be sensitive to the other shocking events still
taking place in Turkey, and I recommend we preface the letter with a brief
statement about how we are aware of those events and recognise this is not an
ideal time to talk about software, but that the decision will soon be made
about the tablets and freedom must not be left behind in the debris of Taksim
Square.

Yes, we have to do that.

Best Regards,
Matthias

[Sam Tuke]

Edits from Filip and Daniel have been incorporated!

I'll now work on the opening paragraph to accompany the online version.

Best,

Sam.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Sam Tuke]

My draft of the opening paragraph is done:

https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan

In the next few hours Lucile will prepare the letter for publication, so
please make any final suggestions / changes before 15.30 CEST today!

Sam.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Vicen Rodriguez]

Hello friends,

I know it is a little bit late to propose any change in the draft, but I
think 'Last week you visited America [...]' should be 'Recently you
visited America [...]' or 'Some weeks ago you visited America [...]' or
something similar.
Anyway, the letter looks good. The initial draft was very soft and it
may be convenient at times to use a more direct style. I think it is
very appropriate to include the reference to the current situation in
the streets of Turkey.
I think the success of all the proposals that we can make on issues
related to investments like this in technology for students are very
important right now. The future is being played in schools... and
proprietary software manufacturers know it.
Yesterday I read this news:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lausd-chooses-ipads-for-pilot-20130618,0,6957151.story
Bad news. All students should have the opportunity to learn to enjoy the
benefits of free software.
Going back to the letter for Mr. Erdogan, it seems there is a GNU/Linux
distribution called Pardus [1][2] developed by the Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey [3][4]. I think it could be a
good idea to try to send a copy of the letter to the group in charge of
the development of that GNU/Linux distribution.

Best regards

Vicen

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardus_%28operating_system%29
[2] https://www.pardus.org.tr/
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_and_Technological_Research_Council_of_Turkey
[4] http://www.tubitak.gov.tr/en

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
https://public.pad.fsfe.org/p/MrErdogan
In the next few hours Lucile will prepare the letter for publication, so
please make any final suggestions / changes before 15.30 CEST today!
Sam.

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[Matthias Kirschner]

hi Vicen,

it is already published, but does not contain the problems with the
"week" you mentioned any more:
https://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20130620-01.en.html

Best Regards,
Matthias

[Sam Tuke]

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
I know it is a little bit late to propose any change in the draft, but I
think 'Last week you visited America [...]' should be 'Recently you visited
America [...]'

You're right, already fixed.

or 'Some weeks ago you visited America [...]' or something similar.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
Anyway, the letter looks good. The initial draft was very soft and it may
be convenient at times to use a more direct style. I think it is very
appropriate to include the reference to the current situation in the
streets of Turkey.

Agreed; we added an opening paragraph for the web edition so that online
readers will have the letter put in context. I hope that way that it is
worded, it wasn't easy to write.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
I think the success of all the proposals that we can make on issues related
to investments like this in technology for students are very important
right now. The future is being played in schools... and proprietary
software manufacturers know it.

Absolutely. If we can make impact on this decision it'll be a good thing. I
tweeted the article using erdogan's twitter handle, and the project fatih
hashtag, so hopefully turkish media might pick it up.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lausd-chooses-ipads-for-pilot-20130618,0,6957151.story

Bad news. All students should have the opportunity to learn to enjoy the

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
benefits of free software.

I saw that too, but a pilot isn't the same as a done deal. Looks likely that
Apple will get the contract though.

Post by Vicen Rodriguez
Going back to the letter for Mr. Erdogan, it seems there is a GNU/Linux
distribution called Pardus [1][2] developed by the Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Turkey [3][4]. I think it could be a good
idea to try to send a copy of the letter to the group in charge of the
development of that GNU/Linux distribution.

Excellent idea, we'll do that.

Finally, I'd like to improve collaboration for when we handle press releases
like this in future. If you had SVN access, would you have been interested in
helping write the HTML version of the letter (published on FSFE.org)? Did
ether[ad work as an authoring tool for you? If FSFE had guidelines for writing
letters like this, would you have wanted to read or use it?

Best,

Sam.
- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Vicen Rodriguez]

Hi Sam,

I don't know SVN. Do you mean Apache Subversion, a software versioning
and revision control system? If you are talking about it, I will read
how does it work.
I would have been interested in helping write the HTML version of the
letter, but I'm not sure I would have had enough time.
Etherpad did work as an authoring tool for me.
If FSFE had guidelines for writing letters like this, I would have
wanted to read it.

Best regards

Vicen

El vie, 21-06-2013 a las 14:52 +0200, Sam Tuke escribi?:
[...]

Post by Sam Tuke
Finally, I'd like to improve collaboration for when we handle press releases
like this in future. If you had SVN access, would you have been interested in
helping write the HTML version of the letter (published on FSFE.org)? Did
ether[ad work as an authoring tool for you? If FSFE had guidelines for writing
letters like this, would you have wanted to read or use it?
Best,
Sam.

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[Sam Tuke]

Hi all,

Just so you know, the English version of the letter was sent to FSFEs press
contacts (hundreds of them). Thanks to Lucile for handling that process.

I haven't checked to see if the story was picked up by news agencies etc. I
will look next week.

Thanks again to everyone who worked on the letter and made its publication
possible!

Sam.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Sam Tuke]

Flbk: Not this time, HTML is not my language yet. ... Flbk: sure, I'd like
to read them.
If FSFE had guidelines for writing letters like this, I would have wanted
to read it.

Thanks for the feedback. In future we should have those guidelines available.

I don't know SVN. Do you mean Apache Subversion, a software versioning and
revision control system? If you are talking about it, I will read how does

it > work.

Yes that's what I meant. For making changes to the fsfe website we use that
tool to ensure that no changes are lost.

I would have been interested in helping write the HTML version of the
letter, but I'm not sure I would have had enough time. Etherpad did work as
an authoring tool for me.

Thanks for your feedback both :)

Sam.

- --
Sam Tuke
Campaign Manager
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke at jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org

[Filip Lobik]

Post by Sam Tuke
Finally, I'd like to improve collaboration for when we handle press
releases like this in future. If you had SVN access, would you have been
interested in helping write the HTML version of the letter (published on
FSFE.org)?

Flbk: Not this time, HTML is not my language yet.

Post by Sam Tuke
Did ether[ad work as an authoring tool for you?

Flbk: It was a nice experience. Everything was :) simple.

Post by Sam Tuke
If FSFE had
guidelines for writing letters like this, would you have wanted to read or
use it?

Flbk: sure, I'd like to read them.

Post by Sam Tuke
Best,
Sam.

Best,
Filip