Respuesta de la UNESCO

Dear Sir,

On behalf of the Director-General, I would like to acknowledge with thanks receipt of your communication, in which you ask UNESCO to make public the details of the agreement signed between UNESCO and Microsoft>on 17 November 2004. I am pleased to advise you that the ful text of the cooperation agreement, together with the Director-General's speech, is available online at the following web address:

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17589&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

With regard to the comments on FOSS, please note that UNESCO remains very interested in the free and open source development model and as reiterated by the Director-General, will continue to support the ongoing and future activities in this field. UNESCO would like to emphasize that the agreement with Microsoft is not an "either/or" situation - it is not mutually exclusive of other relationships.

Yours faithfully,

Abdul Waheed Khan
Assistant Director-General for
Communication and Information

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Reacción de la CV Mistica

Dear Mr. Khan,

I acknowledge your mail, on behalf MISTICA virtual community, and we do appreciate the fact that UNESCO has made available to the public the text of the agreement, thus allowing the ICT4D community to establish independant and documented judgment on whereas it is compatible or coherent with the existing UNESCO policy as regards to FOSS. Knowing that the ICT4D global community has a consensusal position about the appropriateness of the FOSS model to support applications in the developing word, I trust it will read with much interest the firmness of the commitment of UNESCO in that direction and its claim to support that orientation, and in general transparency and open contents. With your permission, I will then publish your letter in the page which has been created to follow-on this issue:
http://funredes.org/mistica/carta_unesco.htm
Cordially,

Daniel Pimienta
FUNREDES President - http://funredes.org
on behalf MISTICA Virtual Community - http://mistica.net