giopas.eu

In questi giorni ho maturato l’idea di iscrivermi ad un LUG (Linux Group User) ed ovviamente la scelta è ricaduta su quello a me più vicino: LiLUX quello del Lussemburgo.

Tuttavia, prima di iscrivermi vorrei conoscere le attività, le persone e finanche il tempo richiesto. Ecco perciò che ho spedito al Lug la seguente lettera (in inglese).

Ometto qui nel testo alcuni nomi per motivi di privacy.

Dear LiLUX,

I’m a Linux user living in Luxembourg and I’m interested to share my interests with some other people here around.

Unfortunately I missed last Linux Day, but I’m curious to meet you all.

As far as I can see, Linux – and opensource in general – is still not so common in Luxembourg financial sector and I wonder to know if there is any project or event organized to spread opensource philosophy (or better, working approach) to it.

I try to explain my feelings telling you a short experience.

Last month, I’ve been at the Internet Security Day 2.0 organized by the “Ministère de l’économie et du Commerce Extérieur (luxembourgeois)” in order to make enterprises/companies awaken of security concerns using Internet. However, I noticed that during the entire event nobody mentioned opensource as a possible jointly held solution to improve (at least, internet) security.

For this reason (maybe someone of you was there and remembers it) I explicitly asked to the speaker (Mr. xxxxxx of CASES – www.cases.lu) what was the official CASES’ position toward the adoption of opensource solutions as instrument of improving IT security.

The embarrassing answer I obtained was that “CASES is neutral”, and that he “could not see much people in [that] conference room able to debug an opensource software like OpenOffice.org”!

The meaning was clear: “Hey boy, don’t you see that here around you are surrounded by a lot of IT consultants wandering to advertise their closed-source product for improving user security?? The opensource argument is TABOO here!”.

I already knew the answer, but I thought to be important to make this hypocrisy open and clear.

Actually, I’m not a Linux hysterical, however I’m astonished to see how a growing and reach IT financial community like the Luxembourg one is far from considering opensource a substantial solution (or alternative) for common or professional users.

So little IT companies offer Linux support in the financial sector in Luxembourg…

I hope to be wrong, of course, but I don’t think so.

For these reasons I would like to contribute in a more practical way (as long as I can, because I’m not a coder/developer/geek and unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to offer) to the opensource case. I hope therefore you could give me more information about your activities and events so that I can see if and how I could contribute to LiLUX program.

Best regards,

giopas

ps: I hope that community/working language is English or French