Dennis Mansell

On the 15th of October 2011 the Occupy 'movement' set up camp on the Beursplein in Amsterdam.  As in most places, the protest got a bit of publicity and then became a small local row, largely ignored by all but the most refined truth seekers on the one hand and the absolute gutter-press on the other. For those closely following the movement, it did give an interesting insight into deft political manoeuvring but for the rest, it was back to business as usual.

That is not a pity, it's actually missing the point. The world has changed, almost everyone now knows that the 'system'* we have, will (and probably should) fail at some point.  So, what to expect?

Geachte heer Flos,

Graag wil ik reageren op uw stuk in het Parool en u vragen om een reactie.  Ik zou u willen uitnodigen deze reactie te geven op het beursplein, nu dat het nog kan, zodat ook úw mening besproken kan worden.

Whatever your opinion may be on the recent 'cablegate' releases from wikileaks, blocking openness with hacking, ddos attacks and bullying is not the democratic way of doing things.  What can you do about it?

So I've just come back from the Open Source Conference 2010 in Amsterdam (twitter: #osc2010).  The title was “Delivering True Business Value by Leveraging Enterprise Open Source Technology”.

So, how was it?  Well of course the title should have been quite a good hint about what to expect.  You could rephrase it as "Consider using Open Source - it's cheaper and better". Which is fair enough, but is it worth spending a day on?