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PITCH www.pitchworld.org |
European |
 Click here for the Announcement and Agenda of the Event |
First Joint PITCH-EIF Seminar |
Report of the Event
On the participation ...
The event on the future of open source models organized in the European Parliament by PITCH, together with the European Internet Foundation, attracted many participants from the European Parliament. Erika Mann and Elly Plooij-van Gorsel attended during most of the morning, and several others MEP, including Patrick Cox the President of the European Parliament, participated in the lunch that followed, as well as Jerry Berman and several Congressmen from the US Congressional Internet Caucus. Fernando Aldana, Jan Peers, and Brian Randell represented the honorary committee of PITCH, and Ioannis Antoniou, Ilya Prigogine, and Florin Filip sent representatives. Other friends or members of PITCH also participated, including Alexandra Pereira Klen from Brazil - she is the very special friend of PITCH who created its logo! - Doina Banciu, Dan Granada, and Getta Constantinescu from ASIeR in Romania. Philippe Aigrain and George Metakides, from the European Commission, also attended in part. The lunch was also attended by the European and US industrialists involved in the Transatlantic Policy Network dialogue, and provided the PITCH members, who all were invited, with opportunities for bilateral exchanges of views.
On the discussions ...
Brian Randell gave a very entertaining and documented presentation, providing background and recalling some of the milestones on the long-lasting interaction between computing technologies and intellectual property issues, and then focusing on dependability-related matters in open source software. Brian, also a member of the honorary committee of PITCH is hosting a workshop on open source software development in Newcastel, 25-26 February 2002.
Steven Weber, a researcher in economics from Berkeley, gave a quite exhaustive presentation of the socio-economics issues at stake, thus providing the much-needed context for the points that were made on legal and technical matters.
Roberto di Cosmo, a computer scientist and a mathematician, Andrea Monti, a lawyer, Jean-Pierre Laisné, from industry (Bull S.A.), Patrick Sinz, also from industry (Hewlett Packard Inc.), highlighted the issues that they felt key in the controversy between open-source software versus proprietary-source software. Each one of them made very well informed presentations based on their respective acute expertise. But they took special care of addressing the quite heterogeneous audience with all the clarity required by interdisciplinary discussions. The issue of open source models was thus addressed from a large variety of complementary perspectives ranging from legal to technical, and including political concerns.
Richard Roy, EMEA Vice President Corporate Strategy, gave Microsoft's point of view on the issue, outlining the advantages of proprietary software. Richard Roy also intervened in many occasions during the debate which was moderated by Brandon Michener from the Wall Street Journal Europe, and which followed the presentations.
The debate bore on a truly controversial issue, but was remarkably open, constructive and informative. The will to communicate and exchange views that was demonstrated by all participants and speakers, and encouraged by the moderator, was highly appreciated in particular by the policy-makers who attended - the sort of debate in which PITCH hopes to promote the participation of the community of researchers