Category: Government

Open CeBIT on today!

Come check out the Linux Australia stand, OSIA stand and the Open CeBIT Seminar Theatre where there are talks happening about Open Source for the entire 3 days of CeBIT. Todays schedule is below:

  • 11:05 Introducing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 – Martin Zierer – Red Hat
    Red Hat redefines value in the IT industry. Again. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, released in March 2007, contains more than 1200 components with development spanning over a two year period, so there are a huge number of new features covering a broad range of functionality. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 provides CIOs and IT managers with the means to reduce costs while improving operational flexibility throughout their computing infrastructure. Join us in this session to learn more about these features and how you can apply them within your IT environment.
  • 11:25 The use of Asterisk IP PABX in SMEs using 2 case studies – Maria Padisetti – Digital Armour
    Digital Armour (DA) is a leading Open Source provider for Asterisk implementations, customisations and support. Digital Armour has significant expertise in customizing Compiere and a number of other open source business applications. DA’s focus is to help level the IT playing field for SMEs through the use of open source business applications. DA has helped several SMEs achieve productivity and amazing business benefits through the use of innovative open solutions.
  • 12:05 – Linux in the Data Centre – Is it ready yet? – Paul Kangro – Novell
    This session examines the attributes of a modern data centres and looks to see if Linux can provides all the required services. In particular we look at aspect of security, high availability and the virtulisation – we also examine some of the trends around virtualising applications.
  • 13:05 – Ideas for Innovators… Get Inspired. – Bruce Bogart – IBM
    Bruce’s presentation will be covering IBM’s commitment to Open Source development and applications for Service Orientated Architecture (SOA). He will explain that through combining IBM WebSphere with Linux and Open Source products, SOA projects can be achieved with lower hardware, software and services costs whilst still maintaining quality and flexibility to respond to business changes.
  • 13:25 Synergy’s Forms Integration Hub – Peter Faulkner – Synergy Plus
    Does your organisation process large amounts of forms across mutliple channels, including internet, email and direct post? Now is the time to learn about this innovative technology simplifying forms delivery. Based on IBM’s Workplace Forms, Synergy’s Integration Hub is a web-based administration tool that allows organisations to build integrated forms solutions faster and cheaper, to streamline the implementation of a number of common scenarios, including: Support for paper and electronic forms Data capture and straight through processing Centralised forms processing Connected or disconnected electronic forms
  • 14:05 The OKL4 Microkernel – A High-Performance Virtualization Platform – Gernot Heiser – Open Kernel Labs
    Open Kernel Labs (OK), a spin-out from NICTA, will introduce OKL4, a high-performance virtualization platform for mobile and consumer electronics devices. OKL4 is currently deployed on the latest Qualcomm CDMA chipsets and other mobile phones and consumer devices. The talk will cover basic virtualisation concepts and its benefits to high-end embedded systems and also offer a view into the future plans of this new company.
  • 14:25 The Advantages of Open Source Communities for Embedded Developers – Mark Phillips – Automated Test Systems
    One of the greatest problems in embedded system is the shear size of the interface domain. This not only includes a large number of interface chips, some (most) with proprietary add-on’s to standard interface protocols and busses but also includes the shear no of different processors combined with differing memory types and layouts. Entry into embedded systems for the first time can be daunting. Thankfully Open Source is built around the concept of on-line social communities helping one another to achieve their respective goals. This is especially true when it comes to embedded systems as finding specific information needed to solve a specific problem across the wide range of interfaces is time consuming to say the least.
  • 15:05 The Inevitability of “mixed-IP environments” – Alan Facey – Black Duck
    Alan will discuss the risks and complexities inherent in developing software in a mixed-IP environment. He will introduce Black Duck Software’s protexIP solution that lets software engineers and lawyers analyze, manage, store, and share software compliance management information in order to reduce those risks and complexities.
  • 15:25 Ingres – Justin Bullock – Ingres Australia Ingres – The Open Source Model you want with the Enterprise strength you need.
    Ingres, the leading Enterprise Open Source Database company with over 10,000 customers worldwide, has proved the strength of the Open Source Model for mission critical applications.

Microsoft and Open Source – the inside story

A couple of weeks ago Jeff and I had a very interesting experience. We were invited to the 2007 Microsoft Technology Summit at Redmond. It was a small event with about 50 or 60 people from all walks of technology, and I think about 1/3 of the attendees had been invited due to their understanding on Open Source, so there were some familiar faces. Jeff and I were certainly curious to get inside Microsoft and talk to the technical people working with Open Source there.

Firstly it must be said that Microsoft are excellent hosts. They paid for our accommodation, flights, travel and all meals. They looked after us very well and it was a very pleasant trip. We even got some sunshine in Seattle, so thank you to Charles Sterling who invited us, and Nigel Watson who arranged all our travel. Both are Microsoft developer evangelists and great guys.

The summit consisted of talks by Microsoft people, including Bill Hilf and Sam Ramji. Sam runs the Open Source lab, and Bill is General Manager of Platform Strategy, started the Open Source lab and now also runs the Get the Facts campaign. There were other talks about SOA, IE7, Xbox, PowerShell and a whole bunch of stuff which was largely unrelated to our work. The talks were interesting, particularly as I haven’t really been involved deeply in Microsoft technologies for a few years, however I also spent some time in discussions unrelated to the agenda.

Some of the talks would start with Microsoft technology and then at the very end say “by the way, here is how it is better than (insert Open Source equivalent)”, which seemed a little patronising. I guess they were trying to change out minds. This was most evident in the IIS talk where at the very end the guy started seriously bagging out Apache, much to the amusement of several attendees who debated his opinion.

Bill Hilf had been talked up by several notable Open Source characters, including Tridge, however his talk (which launched the Summit) was very disappointing. It was arrogant, limited, and appeared to miss the larger picture of Open Source. He talked about how they are focused on Open Source only as a development model and business model, which would be fair enough, however he went to to rant about how he is not running a “jihad”, that Open Source is “writing and licensing software. That’s it. It isn’t freedom, it isn’t a movement”, and how he’s just here to sell licences. I questioned Bill and Sam on the sustainability of a strategy only seeing Open Source as a mechanism for driving licence revenue, as every successful company building revenue around Open Source has multiple revenue models and usually a strong services approach.

Microsoft - drinking the kool aid
Bill’s been drinking the Kool Aid…

Sam strongly debated whether it was even possible to build a sustainable business on Open Source. Unfortunately he just didn’t seem to understand that there is already an entire industry built around Open Source that is doing very well. He used Oracle as an example of the problem. He thought it preposterous that Oracle would take RHEL, build services around it and sell those services even though they didn’t build the product. However, this is explicitly allowed under many of the Open Source licences we use, which is understood to drive an open market competing on value rather than locked down to a single supply chain.

When asked about standards Bill said that Microsoft are not interested in pushing a standard, but rather selling a product. Bill and the other Open Source people in Microsoft referred often to Open Source being used as a technology weapon by competitors such as IBM, which I guess is in many ways true, however I think they’ve let this opinion interfere with their ability to see beyond that and to why people are starting to care about Open Standards. When asked why they don’t just support ODF, Bill made some comments about how it wasn’t as easy as that and it isn’t just a standard but a whole product. The ensuing discussion driven by the Malaysian guys who are strong Open Standards proponents was almost comical as Bill simply didn’t answer their questions usefully. Sam said that it was likely MS Office would eventually support ODF as the market demands it.

Sam and Bill both also made the unfortunate mistake of painting any Open Source people who didn’t comply exactly with their views as fanatics and extreme, which isn’t a great way to endear them to the community. I had to really sit Sam down and say every time you compare the vast majority of Open Source people to fanatics, you are only making it harder for yourself to successfully participate. He was, to his credit, open to constructive criticism. I can understand his position being in between a rock (Microsoft) and a hard place (the community), however I think for him to succeed he and his team really need to keep grounded through keeping in touch with the community.

I also noticed most of the Microsoft people who mentioned Open Source differentiated between Open Source and commercial software, which was very frustrating considering how much Open Source is used, sold and supported commercially. The guys we mentioned this to were open to the issue and said they would try to fix this mistake.

I really think that Microsoft have come a long way from only a few years ago when Open Source was a “cancer”, and the Open Source people did say that every time Steve Ballmer opens his mouth about Open Source it hurts them, so I think they are doing quite a good job. I would strongly encourage them to participate more in the community so they can keep an open mind to Open Source beyond the Microsoft party line. Also I think unless Microsoft can see that there is value to Open Source beyond the development model, then they are severely limiting their understanding and missing the bigger values of Open Source economically and socially. There is certainly value to an Open Source approach when it comes to trustworthy systems through transparency (for example in electronic election systems, where access to the source code is really important to a trusted system) and sustainability through Open Standards. An open platform and approach drives innovation, competition, value and ultimately more freedom down the line. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft either doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand this.

Microsoft unfortunately regard an Open Standard as something they create inhouse and publish for others to comply to them, and open community as building a new community for other people and projects to join. They haven’t yet appeared to understand that Open Source is about active participation, not about creating yet more silos.

I guess although we found in the Microsoft Open Source labs some knowledge about some Open Source technologies, we were quite disappointed with the limited views held about Open Source, openness and community.

Software freedom isn’t just an idealistic philosophy. It is a commitment to technology openness and freedom which is increasingly important when so much of our lives is based on and possibly limited by the technologies we use to vote, communicate, create, share and work. Luckily this is becoming more understood by the general population. People like Cory Doctorow are driving the charge on protecting consumer rights when it comes to a digital age. Companies like Microsoft can choose to embrace a more open approach, one that will maintain the rights of software users and developers rather than locking them in to proprietary data formats, DRM, vendor lock-in or worse. Or they can choose to be left behind.

Other blogs and interviews on the event from other OSS people:

Links of interest:

  • Port 25 – a community project by Microsoft about Open Source run by the Microsoft Open Source lab crew.

Oxford LUG

Tonight I went along to OxLUG which was a small informal gathering at the pub. It was fun and there were some interesting people there. I chatted to them about LUG structure and events, and I believe they are going to start doing meetings with talks and such, so that could be pretty cool. Good luck with it OxLUG!

I’m going to go into London and hopefully meet up with some Lonix and GLLUG people this week.

Also, Phil Harper published some photos from the Software Freedom International group. Basically we only had 4 from the board meet up in meatspace to talk about the organisation direction and event logistics, however we had most of the other board members join us by IRC each day.

Some SFI board members
From the left and clockwise — Matt Oquist, Robert Schumann, Phil Harper and yours truly 🙂

AMEX on the way for lca

AMEX wasn’t initially set up for the lca payment gateway, however we’re in the process of getting this done now. So for all the AMEX card holders coming to lca, this should be done in the next 2-3 days, hopefully just in time for earlybirds with AMEX to pay. I suggest anyone in this boat (earlybird AMEX holders) should organise alternative payment plans as a backup for if we can’t get this in time for the 8th.

GPL3 event – report

So the GPL3 forum happened yesterday in Sydney hosted by the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre and supported by Linux Australia.

It was an interesting event, and a full recording will be made available in the coming week. It got an article from Computerworld which was great, and there were about 50 participants. Tridge was, as usual, utterly brilliant. Articulate, talking out the issues and benefits, and generally being very generous with his time and knowledge. There was good discussion between the panelists (although there could have been more crowd participation, I think Roger Clarke who chaired it was probably a little exclusive), and finally Eben Moglen joined us for a 45 minute phone call where he answered loads of questions. I asked him about the Novell/MS agreement and he had some very interesting things to say 🙂 I won’t try to paraphrase however when the video is available you’ll see yet another brilliant idea from Eben that works to avoid the kind of patents lock-out inherent in such deals.

Many thanks to Professor Graham Greenleaf, David Vaile and his team, in particular to Abi who pulled it all together! Also thanks to Linux Australia who with a small sponsorship ensured the event was free for anyone to participate.

Ballmer 0wnz us

This is just too much:

…because open-source Linux does not come from a company — Linux comes from the community — the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders

No Steve, the fact that you launch a patent for loads of trivial and pre-existing technologies (I mean come on, the smiley!) is a problem for your shareholders. The software patent system is flawed in so many ways, and it is all coming to a crunch as people realise how ridiculous it is to judge the “innovativeness” of a company based on a big purse and the ability for its many lawyers to extract IP from pre-existing and completely trivial software “inventions”. People are also hopefully starting to realise that software patents have too long a life in an industry when perhaps 5 years is the longest life you have to extract value from a new invention. As Bill Gates himself said in 1991 with a confused message of foreboding and obviously the position Microsoft chose to take since then:

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today… The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

Anyway, what started this post was Ballmer had an interview recently where he implied the deal with Novell is all about Microsoft getting “appropriately compensated… for [their] intellectual property”.

…because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft

Just when you think they are starting to get a clue. It amazes me the hypocrisy of the statement when significant chunks of the Microsoft software and infrastructure use FOSS, but it makes me even more angry for Microsoft to use this Novell deal to try to bully people into only using a version of Linux they will get compensated for. Novell, for all the good intentions I’m sure you had in this, witness the beast you have created.

Amazingly, Novell’s Open Letter to the community about the deal makes pretty clear that:

Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property.

Then Microsoft responded again making clear they think Linux infringes on their IP, however:

Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement.

Ridiculous behaviour.

GPL3 conference in Sydney

I announced a GPL3 conference being held in Sydney on the 30th November but forgot to blog it! 🙂 It is only 10 days away so register if you want to come. There will be Andrew Tridgell, Eben Moglen (via phone) and a whole bunch of people who want to know more. It is a good chance to understand the implications of the GPL3 on our community and possibly help you form your ideas for any last minute submissions before they finalise GPL3 early next year.

It should be a great event and many congratulations to the Cyberlaw centre for putting it on. Also may thanks to Linux Australia, as without their financial support, this event could not have been free for everybody to attend.

No keyboard, no hands – no problem!

There is this little project called dasher that basically can be used to “type” by zooming through sentences using an amazingly intuitive pre-emptive text tool. I’ve been showing it off to people who have an interest in accessibility for users who are physically limited, one handed, or even for mobile devices where typing can be a drag.

Anyway, one person I showed it to has just emailed me with another surprising application of this cute little tool. He has just had another child and while he is holding the baby in one hand he is able to use dasher to compose emails and other stuff with the other hand. Nice!

I had installed the program on Ubuntu when I was looking for accessibility software that may be of interest to the education sector (and boy are they getting interested!) and now that I’m looking through the website I’m flabbergasted! They can use breath or buttons, tilt sensors and an eye sensor to write!

It is great to have people working on projects like this. After all, the Digital Divide isn’t just socio-economic.

Open Source – just behind security

I’m speaking at the VITTA conference next week, which is like an ICT conference for educators. It is looking to be a great event and Donna is doing a lot of work for it, and doing a great job!

Anyway, she’s just told me my talk “Open Source: Taking education to the next level” is the second most popular talk just behind an ICT Security talk. Rock! I love it how people are starting to want to hear about Open Source, we are really getting into the minds of the mainstream!

OLPC at the linux.conf.au Open Day

Check out the linux.conf.au Open Day website, as registrations are open, and we’ve just added one of our most exciting exhibits to it, a real live One Laptop Per Child prototype! Come along and see for yourselves something that will change the world for the better, revolutionise the desktop and make Linux the most widely deployed desktop in the world! 🙂

Open Day is a free event for the public with dinner provided and over 40 exhibits including gaming, solar panel cars, making movies, podcasts and more! Let your friends and family know, and get registered!

OLPC computer