Updated Aug 4th 2005. (See additional comments below)
Not so long ago I called for the re-ignition of EFF Ireland and Bernie also talked about it too. Since then there’s been nothing from it as far as I can tell.
I wonder how many people see a need for it and how many would commit to supporting it? What would be needed? Would funding be needed, resources, how would it be structured, what would be its remit? Lots of questions, but not even these questions seem to be asked by others.
There was a lot of good discussion at OpenTech 2005 about setting up a UK EFF and Danny O’Brien weighs in more here about the need for one and what can be done with some money. He talks about pledging a fiver a month via direct debit but only if 1000 others do the same. Good idea that.
What can you do with a monthly budge of 5000UKP a month? … we did some back of the envelope calculations after the talk, and agreed we could do something: Probably two staffers and an office.
…The biggest lesson for me with NTK was that your best way to influence the agenda, and generate support, is to generate stories, and point people to the right experts. Just having someone at the end of a phone, handing out quotes and press releases, and pro-actively calling journalists to make sure they know what’s going on, putting them in contact with all the other orgs in this area in the UK, is half the work.
The rest of the job is actual activism (one person can do a lot, if they don’t need to cram all their white paper writing, research, and lobbying between contract coding sessions, and finishing their university degree) and bootstrapping more funding.
Good wisdom there, some that I may be able to use for other projects. So, if the money was there, could EFF Ireland work?
Update August 4th 2005:
Graeme the Irish Liberal says he’d be up for it.
The Freestater (sorry I don’t know your name) is also of the opinion we badly need something like the EFF. I must say I’m quite impressed with that post. Very very well researched.
Further Update: I started an EFF Ireland discussion thread on boards.ie
Dick O’Brien has added his thoughts too.
BTW, I tried to open up comments and it didn’t work for some reason. I’ll commit to upgrading the site over the weekend to get them working.