Category: FOSS

Software Freedom at Oxford

I’m currently staying at Oxford (UK) working on some interesting projects. The last three days I’ve been meeting with most the Software Freedom International board, of which I’m president. We’ve been planning out Software Freedom Day 2007 and are aiming for the biggest global celebration of Software Freedom ever!

Software Freedom is an underpinning value of the FLOSS community, as well as others that value transparency, sustainability and the opportunity to participate in software and technology. The basic idea is that as more and more of our lives are based on technology (communication, history writing, culture creation, electronic elections, etc) it is imperative the technology we rely on is transparent (open, visible, able to be scrutinised) and sustainable (data must be accessible long term), otherwise how can we trust our basic human rights are being upheld in a world where technology underpins everything we do? How can we participate in the technology that shapes our future?

I wrote a short summary of this from the perspective of human rights and really believe that as more and more of the world becomes connected (particularly with the OLPC coming out) that bodies like the United Nations need to consider digital freedoms in their declaration of human rights, otherwise those basic human rights become compromised.

More on my other work here to come!

FOSS slogans for an artist

Elizabeth Gordon-Werner — previously the NSW Dept of Commerce Open Source guru — has gone off to fulfill her dream of studying art. Some of you may remember she has already drawn some famous FOSS people, such as Bdale Garbee, and now she has turned her attention to artwork for FOSS.

What I need is some ideas and slogans that I can incorporate into art. I’d aim to publish the artwork with some sort of open license so anyone who wants to use, add to it or disseminate it can do so.

If you have some ideas (which I’m sure many of us do!), just comment on Elizabeth’s blog post.

NSW Government ICT discussion

A couple of nights ago Jeff and I attended a discussion where Minister Della Bosca and Shadow Minister Pearce (who are both in charge of ICT for their parties) spoke about ICT generally. It was quite good because they both understand that ICT is a driving factor for the economy, they both understand the need to encourage local innovators and the Aussie ICT industry (although they disagreed on how), and Minister Della Bosca is also knowledgable about Open Source, but only brought this up when asked directly.

The Minister spoke about the Governments role in encouraging local innovation by being a smart procurer of ICT, however didn’t talk about investment in the industry. Near the end a Greens representative (I’ve lost his name!) spoke about their concerns regarding ICT and mentioned Access and equity, Education and Open Source as their three areas of great interest, which was good however his message around Open Source was a little negative (monopolies monopolies monopolies!) rather than focusing on the positive opportunities of Open Source (innovation, local economy, meeting the trade deficit through exporting specialist Aussie services!).

It was certainly an interesting event, and I for one am glad that our current Minister in charge of ICT in NSW is one of three politicians who have stood up in Parliament and spoken about Open Source, so keep up the good work Minister Della Bosca, and also to the Greens and Liberal opposition in keeping a healthy debate on the topic going. ICT is only starting to become a real platform for political debate, and it is really high time considering the weight of the ICT trade deficit (about $19b) which is about 80% of our total trade deficit. We can’t do much about most of that spending (CD players, mobile phones, etc) however we can work hard to create a strong and specialised services industry that we can export and start to meet the ICT deficit.

Pancakes and FOSS – wrapup

Jeff and I are in Brisbane and tonight we had a huge turnout to come talk about FOSS and pancakes at the Pancake Manor in Brisbane. We had about 30 people all up including OSIAns, HUMBUGs, the people from the PHP meeting that was supposed to be on at the same time (but got cancelled) and some interesting individuals from Government, industry and Microsoft (gasp!). It was all in all a very fun and interesting night, and many thanks to everyone coming along!

Jeff took some great photos (and some not so great ones) that he’s uploaded to his flickr stream 🙂

Speaking at FOSSACT

Since linux.conf.au Jeff and I have basically been catching up with work and kicking off some new projects. I’m down in Canberra with some clients today and speaking at FOSSACT this afternoon about how to grow the pie for FOSS businesses in Australia. FOSSACT is kind of like a localised OSIA for the ACT. I hope to see the day when FOSSACT partners or joins up with OSIA, as maintaining a clear message of industry cohesion and maturity is important to gaining more influence and credibility as an industry. I’m looking forward to it, as there are some great businesses doing good FOSS work in Canberra, which is particularly important when you consider government is the primary client base in Canberra.

Afterwards a bunch of CLUGers will be meeting at the All Bar Nun for drinks and catch up. Come along if you are in Canberra to meet and geek 🙂