Category: Government

The Open Source Forum on anti-circumvention was AWESOME. It didn’t draw the crowds we expected, however I put that down to most people not understanding why it is relevant to them. The DVD story is great to initially explain how it affects you as a user, but those of us who can say “bugger it, I’ll play my DVDs no matter what”, and don’t see that processes such as legitimate reverse-engineering for interoperability are being directly threatened. Anyway, I’ll have the talk slides up on the OSF webpage in a few days and you’ll see what I mean. Vendors have the opportunity to use unclear precedents to create artificial technology monopolies. Copyright owners (and not just the big bad movie companies 😉 are desperately trying to protect their works, and sometimes unwittingly creating situations where, for instance, only Windows users can access their works legitimately, which obviously means they then lose the rest of the market. There are ways we can work together to find a clear line between copyright holders and users/developers rights. While the line isn’t clear, copyright will continue to be used as a tool to restrict interoperability. Anyway, it concerns me greatly – check out the Lexmark and Blizzard cases to see how relevant they really are, and check out the slides when they’re up.

Now for something a little different, Jeff and I are taking a whole TWO days off everything work related to take a brief rest. Honeymoon late July, and then we’ll be sweet. It has been an amazing but tiring and stressful few months.

So on thursday we are running another Open Source Forum and the topic is anti-circumvention. The discussion will no doubt also cover Fair Use (and the lack thereof in Australia) and it will be recorded. I’m looking forward to this one heaps, it’ll hopefully highlight some of the in my opinion biggest issues we face, that are also the least known about. It’ll be recorded and posted on the OSF webpage after the event.

Jeff is in Germany for GUADEC (which I really want to go to one year), and the house smells lovely ;P

I had a long interview that resulted in a few lines in a fairly well written piece by ZDNet. Unfortunately the piece didn’t really address trying to look at younger people, and the opportunities available to them, which ultimately defines the opportunities available to adults. Offering a woman all the opportunity in the world in IT isn’t going to help if she’s been brought up to think IT is utterly uninteresting, and a boys job. I believe that trying to look at getting equal opportunities and more equal expectations is the key.

I don’t believe the problem is the opportunities facing women so much as the opportunities facing girls. I was lucky enough to be the daughter of a computer technician/programmer, and growing up in a town where basically no one was using computers, so there wasn’t any negative expectations or environmental glass ceilings on me until I actually entered the ICT industry.

I’m going to be talking to a school in Armidale in a new scheme called Digi-Girls (see page 6 of http://www.women.nsw.gov.au/PDF/Archived/ap02-04edu_train.pdf) where I’ll be presenting to school age girls about the awesome world of computers (and Open Source) and the opportunities available to them. Through Open Source I have had the opportunities to travel the world, meet many people, and expand my job and life studies dramatically, and I’m hoping to bring the same opportunities to them. I believe this is where the future lies. I don’t believe achieving equal numbers in ICT for the sake of it is useful or relevant, but ensuring that equal opportunities are presented to children ensures that individuals are able to clearly chose their own future, without having their options restricted artificially. I also believe that Open Source offers an equal playing ground, which may (hopeflly) influence other areas such as politics, the corporate and scientific worlds, where in many countries and certainly in Australia women are also expected to not participate. Being expected to not participate in an area is actually worse than being actively told not to participate, because people often rally against opposition, but usually accept the status quo without noticing.

This month is crazy, I’ve got so many events I’m involved in or organising. Check out the list below for things that might be of interest to you 🙂 in chronological order

• Whoever participated in the Education letter you rock! We’ve already made a bit of a dent in the issue. Yay!
• 17th May – Talk at Meadownbank TAFE about Linux and FOSS and why it is good for the education system from both an infrastructure, and learning aspect.
• 24th-26th May – Cebit – OSV have a booth there (rock on guys!) and I’m helping out as a Volante person.
• 25th May – Evening talk at UTS by Sebastian Rahtz from the UK. Should rock! Awesome job by SLUG to get a venue and urn organised on such short notice. Thanks! 🙂
• 26th May – Volante Open Source Seminars – Please note this is a work thing, but still pretty exciting 🙂 I’m pretty proud to be working for an Aussie owned solutions provider doing Open Source 🙂
• 27th May – SLUG of course!
• 2nd June – Open Source Forum – Anti-circumvention. This forum looks to be very interesting, with speakers from both sides of the fence. Information to be emailed out soon, but some initial info is up and speakers nearly confirmed. The last two forums have been graet. Every two months seems reasonable timing to keep them going 🙂
• 16th June – Digi-girls presentation to Armidale School – This event I’m really looking forward to, introduce young women to the world of FOSS 🙂 If someone had done that for me, I’d be miles ahead of where I am now 🙂 I’m looking forward to helping bring that opportunity to new blood.

Random – Presenting to Meadowbank TAFE sometime, presenting to SCLUG and I’m probably forgetting something 😉 Also OpenEducation has been initiated. This will effectively be a sub-committee of Linux Australia, targeting education of and on FOSS. Please contact me if you are interseted in helping out on this.

In response to Mikals question about my lovely orange overalls at the Edexpo, we were thinking about putting “Free the Penguin” on the back, but that was a little controversial, so we stuck with them being attention grabbers. Not that Jeff and I need any props to achieve that aim 😉 At one point I was wandering around with a penguin stuck on my shoulder (arrr!) which made one women on her mobile nearly fall over laughing 🙂

Yesterday and today I helped out on the Linux Australia booth at Edexpo in Sydney. We had almost a dozen people helping out, handing out CD’s, and generally getting people excited. It was AWESOME! We handed out about 600 CD’s, got loads of parents, teachers and kids excited about Linux and Open Source. We had a competition, and gave out kewl prizes like fluffy penguins. Some great local companies helped out to make a great couple of days. We painted on the expo mural, had a wonderful setup showing off video, games, office software, and much more, Jeff found his old computer science teacher from school, some girls drew some penguins for us which was cool. The whole team did a great job, and Chris even got pictures from the camera uploading every minute to the SLUG website which rocked, even though there are some silly pictures there. The wall foo we organised was also pretty sweet. Many many thanks particularly to Moe and Sara who put this together and did an awesome job!

Healthy Harold was there too! Much to a happy pipkas surprise 😉 and by the end of today Jeff was looking as calm as a Buddha

Jeff and I have finally gotten over the wedding/conference foo, and then last weekend was a Kung Fu exam for me, which was awesome! I am proud to say I passed the exam bringing me one step closer 🙂 Mothers day was lovely, I was in Yass and cooked Mum (and Dad) brekkie and did nice daughterish things. Now to finally catch up on writing up notes from the last month of conversations and meetings. Some pretty kewl stuff is coming up, and I need to be well prepared for it 🙂

HA ha!

“So, I do think that Microsoft is seriously trying to reach out to the open-source community … and strangle it.” – Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (eWeek)

The Civil Society at WSIS came up with this, and someone asked me for it so I thought I’d blog it 🙂

“Software is the cultural technique of the digital age and access to it determines who may participate in a digital world. Free Software with its freedoms of use for any purpose, studying, modification and redistribution is an essential building block for an empowering, sustainable and inclusive information society.

“No software model should be forbidden or negatively regulated, but Free Software should be promoted for its unique social, educational, scientific, political and economic benefits and opportunities.” – The Civil Society Declaration at WSIS 2003

Post wedding stress has cropped up which is frustrating. I love my parents dearly, and without them the wedding could not have happened anywhere near as well as it did. Now there will be several years of making up for Jeff and my conference craziness and complete lack of foresight with what needed to be done for the wedding. Thankyou Mum and Dad!

I feel so lucky at the moment. I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks with some of the most amazing people in the Open Source community. LCA was incredible, as always, and this year was the best for me, because I now know so many people that come, from all over Australia and the world. I saw great talks, had grat discussions, found new friends, and further planned out how to save the world. Skipping from conversation to conversation my brain was buzzing all week with ideas, and awe. I feel so much a part of something, and so proud to be contributing to it. Anyway, now I have stacks of notes and idea to write up, so my next week will be pretty full 🙂

Ubuntu Downunder was fun. I was there only on and off during the week, but again I was surrounded by inspiring people and inspiring conversations. Thankyou to everyone I’ve spent time with over the last two weeks. Open Love!