Category: Uncategorized

DMCA checklist – all the things you can’t do anymore!

Janet Hawtin, one of the Linux Australia has put together an awesome document which poses questions and answers how the DMCA makes those actions unclear. Examples are being able to read your e-book aloud to your child, being able to install new hardware to your computer, and all kinds of scenarios that make is really obvious in a non-technical fashion why the DMCA style laws being enacted in the Australian/US FTA are so bad for us as a community.

Rock on Janet! Janet also did the Software Freedom Day posters and stuff last year which are all on her website so check them out too 🙂

Linux chicks coffee ‘n’ cake before SLUG

I realised I hadn’t blogged about this yet, and it is one of the highlights of my month! At CeBIT I finally met up with Sara Falamaki who I’d spoke to before but not met, and Myrto Zehnder who works with Gernot at NICTA. The three of us joined about 20 other people who went for beers after CeBIT and we commented that it was lovely to meet other technical women and we should do it regularly. Unfortunately many of the “women IT” groups in Australia are run by PR, HR and small business owner women, and thus being a technical female there you feel quite left out and thus don’t return. Anyway, so last month we got the word out to some people we knew and had about a dozen women come along for “coffee n cake” 🙂 Just a fun, informal and social event to catch up with some other cool technical women and it was fun to find other technical women in Sydney doing cool things. I can only liken it to being the only kid into Metallica at school and then attending a Metallica concert. It was great! All of those ladies then came along to SLUG and enjoyed it, and so I think it was a big success!

So we are doing it again this month, and have a website with all the details. It is of course mentioned on the SLUG events and mailing list, and if anyone knows technical chicks who are into FOSS, let them know about it! 🙂

Political arguments for FOSS

Below are some political arguments for FOSS I came up with a while ago. Comments most welcome 🙂

Economic platforms:
– Reducing the Trade Deficit – something like 3/4 of the Australian trade deficit is ICT related and about 10% of that is proprietary software costs. We can cut this 10% significantly by using Open Source technologies as they are very services based rather than licence based, which means money spent on FOSS technologies is investment into the local ICT industry. It is also useful for local business growth (below) and thus means a better local services delivery capability and more money invested into local industry growth. Brazil is a great case study of a country turning around a $1.4b ICT software import economy to a $2.4b export economy.

– Local business growth – Open Source provides a low cost and highly scalable set of solutions to small new businesses, meaning they can hit the market quicker and harder than they would but delivering on top of proprietary software. Also for local software houses, building on top of Open Source and leveraging Open Source methodologies can cut the cost to go to market and build on top of in many cases an already existing developer and test base.

– Growing the local economy – Open Source is booming in Australia, and we have more Open Source developers per capita in this country than anywhere else in the world, a strong user and business community, and a comprehensive Government document on Open Source. Open Source is a ticket to growing the local ICT economy and leading Australia to be thought leaders in ICT globally. We can be the link between the East and the West in ICT, and drive new innovations resulting in a lowered trade deficit, and stronger local ecomony.

Social platforms:
– Reducing the Digital Divide – In Australia, the gap between the connected and disconnected doesn’t just mean no access to google. It means no access to Government services, education, online business opportunities, skills creation and no access to the growing online knowledge economy. Open Source not only provides a cheap, reliable, hardware efficient and secure platform for addressing this, but as it is completely free, people can share software with their communities and the net result of rolling out Open Source community centres is compounded. India is a great case study where telecentres are being rolled out in order to address the growing Digital Divide gap, and to ensure a higher skilled, and higher employed population.

– Empowering the education system and access to online opportunities – Open Source in schools not only provides the benefits already mentioned, but it empowers teachers and students to learn together with free learning and teaching tools, and many high quality online teaching applications are available for improving education delivery, particularly in remote and rural Australia. Also low cost computers can be used as thin clients using Open Source to ensure long life of purchased or second hand computers and easy administration. We can learn from examples like in Extremadura, Spain, where 80,000 Linux computers were rolled out bringing the ratio of computers to kids in the public school system up to 1:2. In Australia we are no where near this figure.

– Reducing the technology waste, and impact on the environment – Repurposing computers from the public and private sector into disadvantaged areas and schools is an excellent way to cut down on unnecessary waste, and Linux runs effectively and efficiently on old hardware. Thin client software
is built into Linux which means that even very old hardware can be used to deliver fast and useful systems to the education sector for very low cost. Already we have such schemes in Australia such as IT Share, Bettong, ComputerAngels, Computerbank, and many more who already do this work.

A stronger Government push to these schemes will rapidly address the opportunity gap existing today in our education system, in poorer and remote areas, as well as addressing the environmental impact of technology waste. It will also help to grow a strong local ICT industry that is self-sustaining and contributing to the net wealth of this country, rather than to its deficit.

Linux in Education – a “model stand” :)

On the weekend Linux Australia had a stand at one of Australias largest education expos and we were a big hit! I have already posted a report on the Linux Australia list, but the short version is we rocked! We had some computers set up for a “Linux Challenge” that kids did and then won a series of gifts including a certificate. This means kids all over NSW are probably today telling about it in news and showing off their certificates 🙂 We spoke to parents, teachers, NGOs, Government reps, and we had a packed booth the entire time. The booths around us complained that we got too much attention and the event organiser called our booth a “model booth”. We had the Board of Studies and DET talking to us and loads of people walking away with information about FOSS and a set of FOSS software that meeting the learning objectives in K-12. Rock on and many thanks to the volunteers and sponsors who paritipated! See a full list in my report linked above 🙂

I guess that if everyone really thought about their spheres of influence, could craft the FOSS message just so and then take it out into their non-FOSS world, then we can continue to have a broad reaching impact. Linux Australia being involved in Software Freedom Day, this Education Expo, the Government education initiative and linux.conf.au means that we as a community are touching some mainstream, education, Government and the FOSS tech community, but what communities are you involved in? Who is your local member and have you spoken to them about FOSS? Have you spoken to your schools, your NGOs, your kindergarten? How would FOSS help them? How can you introduce them to the technologies and technology freedoms that may help them in their every day lives 🙂 Commenting welcome about what you could do today!

Cycling 12km – not a bad start!

All my friends that ride a bike willl be very proud of me. Jeff and I decided to get bike in a plan to get fit, and while he is away this trip I’ve borrowed a bike for a couple of weeks. All last week I was busy, or it was raining and I kept putting it off, but I had a bonfire to go to last night that was about 12kms from my house. I thought “how hard could it be” and with a little research launched into Sydney traffic on a bike (I haven’t been on a bike since I was little!). Apart from a few mistakes, it went great! I really loved it! The drivers around me were nice and my only regret is a very sore bum 🙂 I think it is time to buy a bike so any comments or suggestions are welcome! Plus bike urls that are useful 🙂

I ended up catching the train home, but I’m pretty happy with my first attempt, and will be starting to ride to work which is about 16 kms away 🙂

Joomla guide – download today :)

I had to give a Joomla course recently, so I put together a basic guide to explain Content Management Systems (CMSs) and used Joomla as our example. I refer to loads of great Joomla guides in the guide, and try to assist people in a full Joomla implementation right through from the planning to adminstration and management. Check it out on my new publications page for Waugh Partners 🙂 Loads more will be put there in the short term future.

Linux Australia educating schools

Last year Linux Australia had a stand at a massive event called the Education Expo in Sydney. Our stand was extremely popular so we are doing it again this year! This event has over 10,000 attendees including parents, teachers and students and we’ll be giving out information, software, giveaways and hosting a “Linux Challenge” for kids where they complete some tasks and then get a “Linux pack” with certificate, badge, toy and CD 🙂 Will post thanks and photos after the weekend.

FOSS in Universities – vital to research!

So while working for the ASK-OSS research project, which is looking at the use of FOSS in Australian research and education, I keep coming across some absolute pearlers. The most recent was the FOSS policy put forward at Buffalo University in the US:

direct unmediated unfettered access to information is fundamental and essential to scholarly inquiry, academic dialog, research, the advancement of research methods, academic freedom, and freedom of speech

the free flow of information has for many years been hampered by incompatibilities between Microsoft software and non-Microsoft systems caused by Microsoft-specific modifications to open protocols (such as Kerberos[1]), document formats (such as HTML[2]), and programming languages (such as Java[3])

open-source software provides an alternative through whose use the core missions of the University at Buffalo can be preserved, nurtured, and enhanced

And so on and so forth. It makes for very interesting reading. I’ve also compiled in last months ASK-OSS newsletter the rationale of some well known Australian research projects about why they choose OSS. Check it out at the May Newsletter and join the newsletter for free (low traffic, very interesting!) if this sort of stuff is interesting to you 🙂