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Wow, I think Australias premier copyright body, Copyright Agency Limited has finally gone one step too far:

“SCHOOLS have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move by the nation’s copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website.”

I’ve said it before, and I continue to say, we are putting a price tag on our education, and our ability to evolve. Hopefully this will push people yet another step to realising that protecting IP can go too far, and we end up protecting business rights at the expense of individual and society rights.

I highly recommend anyone who cares about the quality of education in Australian schools to write to the Hon Julie Bishop, the Minister for Education, Science and Training. Perhaps we can get this issue on the political agenda. Perhaps we can get people thinking about this bigger issue of only making information available under the rules corporates set.

Leon Brooks who is a well known and loved member of the Australian FOSS community was in an accident on Saturday. We all send our support, love and strength to Leon, and also to his wife Lucy, and children.

Every member of our community is like a big family, and what hurts one, hurts everyone. We are thinking of you Leon.

I found this article today which is very disappointing. I was very much looking forward to meeting and hearing Bill Hilf as he has been talked up to me as a good person with the right ideas about Open Source, regardless of his employer. Hilf used to lead IBMs Linux strategy and has great commercial experience in Open Source, hence my disappointment. Ah well, after this bad press hopefully Microsoft will let him come to Linuxworld Australia next year 🙂

This wonderful little guide to why Linux is better by Manu Cornet is fantastic! Complete with cute pictures 🙂

“I guess people won’t switch to Linux because it’s free (as in free speech, they probably don’t care) or because it’s free (as in free beer, they probably think they didn’t pay for Windows), but because they see new, great features that Windows doesn’t have. So here are a few reasons why Linux rocks!”

So in Spain I had the honour of sitting on a panel with some of the worlds movers and shakers in getting OSS into Governments all around the world. I met Peter Quinn who was driving the Massachusetts effort, as well as representatives from Argentina, the Eurpoean Commission and the lovely Marcelo Branco from Brazil. It was great hearing different approaches to Open Source and it was awesome to see these countries and regions taking on Open Source to solve their technical, business, economic and social challenges.

Also the Go Girl event in Perth in a couple of weeks was covered in Computerworld recently 🙂

So I’ve been on the road pretty much for two weeks. A week in Brisbane and now a week in Spain at the Open Source World Conference and since I’ve been in Spain this is the first time I’ve got online. Anyway, I’ll be getting to emails I’ve been trying to get to for a few days so anyone trying to contact me, SORRY! 🙂 I’ll be in London for a few days catching up with the crew from OSS-Watch, some of the Software Freedom Day folk and a few friends including my second family, the Mays 🙂 Should be great!

I always enjoy the Spanish and Brazilian Software Livre conferences as they are so passionate and realistic about FOSS. I’m hoping to get some of the great people I know here to Australia for conferences soon. If Government day at Linuxworld this year goes well, perhaps next year I’ll focus on what is happening in Europe. This year we are profiling some of what is happening in Asia-Pacific which should be really interesting. Anyway, I’ve also been able to meet up with Maureen O’Sullivan who is the awesome Irish chick who is trying to solve how to protect the FOSS movement through international legal treaties which is proactive protection rather than just relying on licences which is defensive protection. Some interesting stuff, plus she’s mad as a hatter so we get on famously 😉

So I’m spending the week in Brisbane doing both some contract work and also some meeting with various businesses and Government people, all talking about FOSS 🙂 It has worked out really well because I had lunch with some of the people from the QLD Government and will probably be back to Brisbane chatting to more Govvies about FOSS. The way I see it, we should be taking any opportunity to chat to people about how FOSS can be relevant to them. Not why it is important to us 🙂 but rather thinking through how FOSS can help that individual in their work and play, and put it in their context. This is an invaluable approach in getting the message out there.

So of course seeing I don’t get to Brisbane often I based my trip around when HUMBUG is running, so here I am chatting away to some HUMBUGers 🙂 I love visiting the different LUGs and seeing what they are up to and how they are going. Anyway, off to Spain on Monday for the Open Source World Conference which will rock!

I’ve really realised the importance of not only educating the public but also educating the Open Source industry about how to better market themselves and their capability. I’ve also after many discussions, particularly with Government people realised the need for good vendor-neutral advice, because although the vendors are a great source of information about their products, they are not getting the even-handed Open Source message out particularly well. I’m hoping the ASK-OSS reference centre for information about Open Source that I’m working on will help with this a challenge.

This is one of my favourite photos, and I just got it digitised 🙂 In the photo my Mum is as old as I am now. She had spent hours fixing the computer, then she left me with it for 10 minutes whereas I managed to bork it again. The picture is of her fixing my breakage 🙂 Hooray for me!

Software Freedom Day this year and every year from now on will be on the 3rd Saturday of September. That means it’ll be on the 16th September this year and even more excitingly, it means it’ll be on International Talk Like a Pirate Day in 2009. Hooray! Start planning today 🙂 What will your team do this year? How can you take FOSS to the big wide world? Who do you most want to influence and what would make FOSS attractive to them? Bounce the ideas around your LUGs and SIGs, as it is a great event to rally around on a yearly basis and be at the very least reinvigorating and growing our community while also hopefully taking FOSS to the masses.

So here I am after a few WONDERFUL days with Jeff and Glynn going from Christchurch, to the glaciers on the west coast, Wanak, Puzzling World! (sooo much fun! :), Archery, and then “Sledging” which is basically White Water boogie boarding for 10kms. Awesome fun. We got into Dunedin at 9.20pm last night.

So now it is Monday morning and I’m in the education mini-conf which is pretty interesting. I’ve heard from one of The INGOTS guys which was very interesting, it is proving to be a great certificaton for schools and office computer users. I’m also heard a bunch about Plone from Julie Kosakowski which was interesting, and now about Moodle. I unfortunately missed Damian Conways “Presentation Skills” talk, but I’ll have to catch it later. I give a talk about the research project I’m working on, the Australian Special Knowledge for Open Source Software (ASK-OSS), which is a great project, and something anyone can get involved in. That’ll be tomorrow afternoon, last thing. I’m looking forward to Donna and Kathryns talks today and tomorrow. I’m also going to drop into the Digital Arts mini-conf as that looks awesome. I highly recommend coming along to the Digital Arts jam performance tonight.

The main conference looks great, and Mike and the lca2006 organising team are doing a great job. We’ve also had an interview with the local rag, the Otago Daily Times and there will be photos and everything, so again, grab the paper over the coming few days. Well done all! There will be a few surprises this year which will be fun, so keep an eye out 😉