Category: Government

Janet Hawtin has by far created one of the most relevant reads for Software Freedom to the average person. Check it out!

“It has to start some place, it has to start some time,
what better place than here, what better time than now!”

RATM

Software Freedom Day is upon us! Rock! We should hopefully be on Hack tonight about it, and all the teams are kicking ass. Check out what is happening in your town 🙂

Sydney is all set to go, we are handing out CDs in the city, whilte also running an installfest, demos and talks at UTS. All the details are on the Sydney webpage and on the SLUG website. We’ll be having balloons, tshirts, stickers and more! Yay team!

Yay! Just to be clear I said the first “Linux Australia” SFD, not the first Aussie one, last year both Canberra and Melbourne did something for SFD, but this year is the first one LA is involved and is a first national SFD!

OK, so it isn’t that exciting but Kfish and Andrea from CSIRO managed to convince me to do a spur of the moment interview about why SFD rocks, and what Australia is up to. Enjoy! What are you doing for Software Freedom Day?

For anyone looking for all the Linux Australia podcasts, they are all available in the one place. Rock on James and his lovely wife Karin!

Today I met someone who taught me a lot. She is a homeless woman in Glebe, and has been living on the streets for about 7 years. As I walked past she asked for a $1 as she is living on the streets because of domestic violence. This struck me and I asked if she’d had dinner (this was about 7pm) and invited her to eat as I hadn’t yet either. We ended up talking for sometime. She was really into the idea of computers, and had a computer she had found but couldn’t sell as it was locked (windows login) and her sister wouldn’t buy it unless she could use it, so I gave her an Ubuntu CD, and she was stoked!

Anyway, she is an Aboriginal woman from the Griffith area who was taken from her mother as a baby and brought up by foster parents in Sydney. For those unaware of this practise, it was the policy in Australia in those days to take young Aboriginals from their natural mothers for a “better” life, a disturbing and destructive practise that obviously still has victims dealing with the consequences today. At any rate she felt she had a good upbringing as the foster parents treated her well, and hated her natural mother. She is 34.

She had a partner who apparently still stalks her and beats her up. She can’t get into refuges for women, as they prioritise for women with children, and she can’t get a restraining order against him as she is homeless. So she can’t get assistance or protection against someone who decides to hurt her for whatever reason. I had not thought of this loophole in the system, and it disturbed me greatly. Many homeless people in Australia don’t receive any government benefits as they don’t have an address to collect them from, another loophole.

She told me about her aspiration to write a book about the Queen of the Land and the King of the Sea, bringing a traditional Aboriginal story to print. She draws and told me how she had been given $10 for her birthday by a sister, and had spent $9.98 on a huge set of textas on sale at the store. Before she left, after eating maybe 1/4 of her meal (“That is a HUGE amount of food for me sister!”) she made me promise to come find her again when she writes her book to see it. I thought she meant to buy it but no, she just wanted me to see she could do it. She had a brother hanging around by that stage and had to go, she gave me a massive hug and thankyou before leaving and immediately giving the brother the leftover food, ancouraging him to eat it. At any rate, it has really made me think about yet another perspective, and set of social issues that it is easy to discuss over coffee with friends, but not easy to understand from the inside.

What was amazing was when she relaxed a bit and made or listened to a joke, her face lit up with this inner light, and she was so hopeful. She had a beautiful face, but then she would bring the walls up again, and have fear, pain and uncertainty etched on her face.

So there has been another flare-up of the trademarking the word Linux in Australia idea. LA are getting some very mis-informed hate mail about how it is wrong to trademark the word Linux because it is wrong to charge for the use of the word Linux. I want to clarify something from my perspective:

• Do I think it is wrong for Linux Australia to trademark the word Linux? No. We are in dangerous times, and we need to ensure that the trademark is owned by a non-profit community organisation with a community elected committee to avoid a company trademarking the name and the either forcing people to pay for the name, or disallowing them to use it, which they would be well within their rights to do. Imagine we were not allowed to _use_ the word Linux because someone completely outside the community owned the trademark! SLUG for one would become TUFKASLUG (The Usergroup Formerly Known As SLUG).
• Do I think it is wrong to charge to use the word Linux? Yes. Life is hard enough for Linux companies in Australia without extra costs and I am personally not interested in charging for the use of the Linux name by companies. If LA owns the trademark then the community has the ability to stop someone using the word inappropriately, such as calling a company “Linux World” when they only sell proprietary systems or not allowing others to use the word at all. Having said that I can understand the LMI needing to charge to sublicence the Linux trademark, as they need funds to survive and to protect the name if is challenged, and thus if anyone _wants_ to sublicence the name and pay for it, rock on, you are supporting another worthy Linux project, however if you don’t want to pay for it and are using it appropriately then I personally feel this should be ok.

The confusion seems to be that people think owning a trademark is synonymous with charging for the use of it. This is not true. Owning a trademark in our case is as a protective measure and to retain credibility for the word.

What a fantastic term! For Software Freedom Day the team in Perth have put together an awesome schedule including the chance for loads of projects to give a 10 minute demo, aka speedgeeking 🙂 Rocking idea Perth! Check out what all the Aussie SFD teams are doing, and even add your own team. I have an excess of SFD cd’s, stickers and other foo for any teams that haven’t got anything organised yet and want some help. Also check out the sfd online store for cheap tshirts and such for your team. I’m encouraging all Aussie teams to use the Linux Australia Grant Scheme to cover some costs and to help make their teams look sexy 🙂 Otherwise you could just do what Jeff and I did for the Education Expo in Sydney and wear something noticable with stickers 🙂

Rock on Australia!

Yesterday I went to my first Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications (FITT) meetings. It was pretty interesting and there was a talk from IDC on what keeps CIOs awake at night, as well as from HP on women in IT. I have to say I was disappointed with the latter, as she said that countries such as India with more women in IT probably only have the numbers as there are more call centres there (in her opinion, not HPs). I asked the questions about Malaysia, and how perhaps declining numbers of women in technical roles in Australia is more related to us getting more conservative rather than it being not interesting to girls as she implied. They were looking at ways to improve getting women into IT, (without looking at how to encourage young girls, for many women they already have grown up with a certain mindset about IT so it is too late) while simultaneously trying to downplay the “nerdiness” of technical jobs. I was I have to say a little insulted. Most women in this group are working in IT in PR, HR, or office admin roles and trying to get more women into IT without tackling the bigger problem of women being discouraged from a very early age in technical, scientific, political or even executive roles being. I think whilever these groups are trying to “encourage girls into non-traditional roles for women” as another similar group put it, they are projecting a message that simply is going to have an opposite effect. Keep calling it non-traditional and that it will stay. It was in short, a little disappointing to find yet again that women are often the biggest propogators of maintaining a less than desirable situation status quo for women.

On a lighter note, I’m very proud of Jeff for the recognition of his work in the community at OSCON. Rock on Bubby!