Category: Uncategorized

This is just a little note about Sergio Amadeu resigning recently. It is such a pity, he was one of Open Sources biggest advocates in Brazilian Government, and in the world. I met him at Software Livre last year, and wish him all the best in whatever he is putting his efforts into from here. Good luck Sergio, it was a pleasure to meet you!

Last week I spent two days at a conference called Going Public, a conference about women in the public sector and politics. It was fantastic! Firstly I got to hear extremely eloquent and strong speakers such as Cheryl Kernot (a wonderful woman completely misrepresented by our ridiculous media, she knows Linux too :), Julia Gillard, Tanya Plibersek, and Lynette Riley-Mundine. I saw Australias youngest Mayor, Janie Dickenson, and met many successful women in Australian politics. One of the most interesting talks was from Christine Milne, a Federal Greens senator, who basically said that womens issue were not on the political agenda anymore, and called for women in the public sector to try and make life better for all women rather than just succeed in their own careers by working around the issues. It was a really interesting few days, and I feel pretty inspired 🙂 I have to say my studies in politics at Uni have always been very useful in my work and in trying to communicate the importance of Open Source in solving real social problems. I think that if politics were taught better in school, as in the reality of current events and the effects of politics on our everyday lives, then perhaps we would have a more participatory community, and potentially a more reflective government. I have to say I only started getting into politics about 4 years ago, before which I was oblivious seeing it as stale and boring. That is so far from the reality, and I like to hope that if we had more average Aussies taking an interest in how Australia is run, then perhaps we wouldn’t be seeing such conservatism, and biased representation of our national community. Why is it that older, heterosexual, Christian, married, white males, who probably only make up ~16% of our totaly population are making the decisions for all of us? So much for representative politics 🙂

This is seriously the cutest mini-geek ever!

Wow, what a day! The Sydney SFD team had an amazing day, with three teams of four handing out close to 600 cds in the Sydney CBD (in three very different locations), and the installfest attracted a few newbies, a few geeks, and a few geeks who were newbies to the community, which was awesome! Welcome aboard dudes! We had over 20 people from SLUG turn up to help out, and the day was really a lot of fun for everyone. The cd’s found an interesting audience, and in some cases got to some really open-minded people really interested not only in “free” stuff but in “freedom” stuff and software that is “socially responsible” as Jeff put it. We had mums and dads, kids, young adults and even older people interested. There was some fun hardware at the installfest, and some talks given. Also Andrea from CSIRO came along to video the entire day, and the people involved, so as soon as she is able to get that out we’ll have an Aussie video for the day! The plan is to take the photos and video from around Australia and make a big post-event press article to celebrate the Aussie SFD effort and success! I’ve already heard from the Melbourne and Townsville teams who also had great days. I’m looking forward to seeing everyones photos!

The really important thing about handing out Free Software is the wonderful and inspiring conversations you can have. The ability to translate to someone outside the community about the values we all hold dear, regardless of our FS of preference. I had amazing discussions today, talking about freedom, and opportunities, about our community and about why it matters. I think Sydney did this really well, and the pamphlets we handed out really gave the people somewhere to get info, and a feeling of participation.

We gave out pamphlets with Janet’s What does Software Mean to You information, which is completely awesome, easy to understand as well as relavant to the average person, rock on Janet! Then we had a list of URLs on the other side with links to SLUG, Distrowatch, LA, and loads more useful information, including the very well written FLOSS Concept Booklet on wikipedia.

Many thanks to the Software Freedom International team, particularly Matt and Henrik who got us enough foo to give out around Australia and support us to rock out! Many thanks to all the SLUGgers for making our local event awesome! Many thanks to all the teams around Australia, I’m looking forward to hearing how everyone went! Lastly, many thanks to Linux Australia for being so supportive in making this a success! LA agreed to a bunch of things (obviously with my pestering 😉 including to cover the public liability insurance for all the teams in Australia, to fund some tshirts and postage of foo to teams, to fund some of the team expensives (on request), and for helping pimp the day! Rock on Australia!

Happy Software Freedom Day everyone!

It is awesome to see that Mikal and Steve are getting the mirroring project underway. If anyone has stuff that would be useful to mirror for ths FOSS community let them know about it 🙂

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?