Category: Aus Community

Report on the Education Expo

Two weeks ago a band of dedicated SLUGers set up a Linux Australia booth at the enormous NSW Education Expo. The event attracts around 8000 attendees, mostly students, parents and teachers, so it was a great opportunity to take Linux and FOSS to the masses! We have set up a booth at this event for 3 years now and are very popular. The adults want to know more about this “free software” stuff, the kids love the games and job opportunities and the teachers learn more tools for education and learning. On the booth we had Red Hat calendars that were popular, computers to demonstrate, stickers, handouts (including information specific to FOSS in education), penguins and shirts. We had Ubuntu & Edubuntu, as well as slightly dated Debian, Fedora and Suse to give away as well as some leftover lca2007 stuff.

On Sunday we had the OLPC there for one day which was vey popular. A few school girls who had done a school project on the OLPC thought this was awesome and walked away saying “Linux is cool”. Hopefully that’ll be a few more in the workforce 🙂

A huge thanks to all the volunteers that helped out:

  • Sridhar Dhanapalan
  • Grant Parnell
  • Andreas Fischer
  • Martin Visser
  • Jeremy Visser
  • Rodger Dean
  • Richard Hayes
  • Robert Morris

Also many thanks to Red Hat Australia for providing some schwag, Everything Linux for providing stickers, some CDs and shirt printing on the spot for $10, Craige McWhirter for providing two great demonstration computers, and Waugh Partners for providing loads of printing and fluffy penguins.

Below are some photos that were taken with the OLPC, unfortunately we didn’t remember to take a proper camera, but these are cool 🙂

Sridhar pondering his next move
The kids loved Edubuntu!
Crowded stand
Grant doing tshirts at the Education Expo

Statement of IP Principles for Australian Government Agencies

Last year Linux Australia put in a response to an Australian Government review of their IP principles. Our response was largely based on the idea that the terms under which Government IP and maintained should be done so with the best public good in mind. We suggested that in the case where the IP was not to be commercialised (such as some CSIRO and NICTA commercial ventures) that they consider clear and open licenses (such as Creative Commons for content and Open Source licences for software), reduced complexity of access to IP (easily searchable and downloadable online rather than having to send a request which takes both time and money for every request), and storing data in Open Standards data formats to ensure sustainable long term access to Government IP.

They have just released their final statement of IP principles for the Australia Government, and although I am still working through it there are both some good and difficult points about it. The press release states:

“Government agencies will have to be responsive to opportunities for the commercial use of IP by the private sector. Sometimes it is appropriate for Government to maintain public ownership of IP such as crucial defence or national security IP.

“In other cases, agencies should consider the benefits for innovation and employment, particularly in the information technology sector, of enabling the government contractors who developed the IP to commercialise it.” – Attorney-General Philip Ruddock

I’m glad our Attorney General sees but two uses of Government IP. Commercialise inhouse or allow others to commercialise. How about the crazy notion that some Government IP should be available to the public? Government already does this in some cases and there is a lot of Government information that absolutely should be freely available to the public.

There is obviously a desire to learn how to better share Government IP:

“Agencies should encourage public use and easy access to copyright material that has been published…”

However there is also a strong bent towards commercialisation of IP, protectionism, and the responsibility of agencies to commercialise wherever possible, which although important for a number of agencies that commercialise some IP, also inhibits a realistic approach to sharing publicly funded IP. Recently the ABS started sharing their data where they used to exclusively sell it and they appear to be doing better for it. Software in particular is created and reinvented right throughout Government, and for the sake of sustainable and useful IP, much of this could be open sourced for both public use and inter-Governmental collaboration. Hopefully more Government agencies will start to realise that the real value of at least some Government data is in the sharing and use of it by Australian citizens, and that by locking up Government IP, they are doing the people of Australia a disservice.

The people’s data should be accessible by the people…

Open CeBIT business conference – special price

The Open Source business conference, a major part of the Open CeBIT expo and conference at CeBIT this year is looking great. With Simon Phipps from Sun, Mary Ann Fisher fro IBM, great local implementation case studies and loads more. Anyway, they’ve just announced a special $199 ticket so if you are thinking of going, register ASAP as the price is only available this week. I totally recommend this for anyone interested in the business applicability of FOSS, whether they be potential users, developers of or companies building a business around FOSS. To register simply call +61 2 9280 3400. See you there!

Our community is open to everyone

There have been a few posts that have been reflected on the Australian planet sites recently that people might be offended about. I would just like to say that individual rants that are aggregated on the planets are not representative of everyone’s views. Our community is a diverse combination of cultures, religions, beliefs and more, all bound by an interest in software freedom and great technology. The diversity is what makes our community special, and we are stronger through it.

That is all.

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.