Category: Uncategorized

So the last three weeks have seen a lot of action:

FTA

I met with some of the Media industry reps last week, to discuss the FTA, and what they had been doing. We luckily were able to contribute some questions to the senate enquiry as part of a collaborative effort, that will be forwarded onto DFAT for review. That was pretty cool. Then Rusty, Brendan and I met with them as well as some PBS people down in Canberra (I have done a lot of driving in the last few days). We found out these groupd of people had been working on the FTA stuff for two years. Boy do we feel like the new kids on the block 🙂 Anyway, we are in a slightly more unfortunate position in that these groups we met with are the respected top people in their fields, and at least have a chance. We have organisations in Australia who have almost all US companies on the boards, making decision about IT in Australia. They approved the FTA, and continue to undermine our efforts to bring the issues to the eyes of the people unknowingly screwing us over. These other groups were at the table, so to speak for the FTA negotiations, and still didn’t get what they were promised. We’ve been told that drug prices _will_ go up, and that those who should be saying it are leant on, while others are paid to simply lie. It bothers me that money is placed way above life, and that most things we all work for is not for the benefit of anyone but a nameless, faceless, unaccountable machine. Anyway, we are all still determined to work on it, at any rate some serious contingency plans are needed.

So short term, to continue the ‘education’, we will be getting Lessig out here, and hopefully on a teleconference before the Senate Enquiry stop taking advice. We will put together some collaborate cross-industry press releases, and try to have a press conference with Lessig, if we can. This should give a lot of attention to the issues, we hope.

Contingency plans? Still working on them. Someone gave me the AWESOME idea, of rallying the community to show prior art for a heap of patents in Australia, and then publicly saying the system needs some work and we’d be happy to assist the patents office with their research or prior art. One of the problems, as many people know, is that the patents are not getting due research, one reason why such trivial patents keep getting granted. We could potentially be a part of taming the process. Ultimately, trying to prove that software methodologies really shouldn’t be patented in the same way that math or art can’t be patented, but in the meantime we need other things to do. We need to beat this by going over it, under it, around it and through it. (A Maureen quote 🙂

Personal

Over the last few weeks, I have been screwed over by work, to the tune of $12k, I have been working night and day on either work, LA, FTA, wedding stuff, university, and getting really angry about Australian politics. The thing that I have realised is that the reason so much bad stuff is happening is simply because Australians are too lax, too complacent and self-centred, too proud to think there is a problem, and to bother doing anything about it. I’ve been trying to plan how to make the world better, possibly through increased communications, independent media and Free Knowledge, and trying to figure out where I fit in and how I can contribute. My parents went overseas, Jeff was overseas, I have driven all over the place, continued with Kung Fu and my eternal search for ‘truth’ and ‘clarity’.

Oh, and I nearly died this morning. All the activity, all the planning, all the crap going on drained me and I was listening to a lot of aggressive music to get the energy for each day. I drove too fast around a corner on a wet corner, lost control and thought I saw myself dead a few minutes into the future. I regained control, and it was fine, however being on a bridge meant that if I hadn’t it would have been a lot worse than a little prang. I was quite shaken up, and didn’t really realise it till this afternoon. I’m not really scared of dying so much as the complete lack of control I had let myself get to. I think we need a holiday, one of those no mobile and no email holidays, even just for a few days 🙂

This is a big one, get a coffee or something 🙂

In the past 6 months there have been two conferences of particular interest. December 2003 was WSIS, the ongoing World Summit of Information Technology, in Geneva, Switzerland. WSIS is United Nations initiative exploring ICT and how it can improve our societies. June 2004 was FISL, the International Free Software Conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil. A lively conference based around Free Software, with a bit of a twist. Both conferences had a strong Free Software (Open Source) presence, and the many attitudes on Free Software at WSIS particularly, were very interesting.

At WSIS, there were around eleven thousand participants, representatives from 175 states of the world, 50 international organisations, 481 NGOs, lots of businesses and media. I was there with LPI (Linux Professional Institute), a Linux certification non-profit organisation, and one of very few non-profit Free Software organisations represented at WSIS, another was the Free Software Foundation. Many NGOs there had success stories of Free Software being used for the public good, from sustainable telecentres, education, and technical training to the concept of Free Knowledge. Free Knowledge is the idea that the more information in the public domain, the better it is for closing the Digital Divide, and protecting information from monopolisation. There was an incredible amount of interest in Free Software to the point of it being included in the Civil Society Declaration, which was significant outcomes of the Geneva phase of WSIS. Other Civil Society documents came out with such remarks as “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.” Post the actual conference, was a two day exhibition, with booths and many, many talks. As I walked around the exhibition hall with my Linux Professional Institute badge, I had people from all walks stop me and shake my hand, just for having Linux on my badge, an unexpected gesture of support. The talks ranged from Free Software workshops and case studies, e-Democracy, the Digital Divide, poverty, sustainability plans, security, e-Learning, child helplines, peace and war. There were many companies pushing products, and many non-profits helping shape a plan to improve upon all of these areas.

One of the most interesting panel discussions I attended was one between several representatives from ‘developing’ countries, and a proprietary software representative. Represented from the left, was Malaysia, Cuba, the mediator, CompTIA, an African country and Peru. I believe the major software company originally planned for the panel did not show, and so Robert Kramer from CompTIA took their place. It was interesting because each of these countries have invested a lot of time and commitment to Free Software, and all of them had successful implementations that have had real, tangible benefits. The countries spoke of booming export economies, the Government’s responsibility to ensure all the ‘peoples’ data, the Government is kept on Open Standards, and are not able to be controlled by a company, foreign or otherwise. About ensuring all people can access the data without having to own a proprietary piece of software, education, transparency of systems, especially in Government, sustainability, education, security, viruses and many other factors. CompTIA spent the panel trying to rebutt statements made by the country representatives. It was quite a massacre.

Panel Discussion

WSIS is an ongoing conference, it will continue into Tunis next year, and by the end it is hoped a collaborative global plan for ICT and the part it plays in society, plus supporting Action plans and government support. There are three very informative documents that interested parties should read. Firstly is as mentioned the Civil Society Declaration, secondly is the Draft Action plan which has such suggested actions as “Development and deployment of open-source software, multi-platform and open platforms, should be encouraged to provide freedom of choice and to facilitate access to ICTs by all citizens, at an affordable cost” compared to the Final Action plan and Declaration of Principles, thirdly the Australian response to the draft Action plan will give some insight to any input we had, and our projected viewpoints to the international community.

The Brazilians are a unique people. Open, fun-loving, cheeky and passionate, any Australian would love the place. Politically they are exactly the same including the open component, a fascinating thing to see. There was the President of the IT ministry, Sergio Amadeu, who is one of the most impressive politicians I have seen. He cares about his people, and about the best thing for them. He is an active advocate for Free Software in Brazil, as were many other politicians there. In Brazil there is a support and implementation of Free Software all the way from the bottom to the top. The yearly conference FISL attracts well known Free Software people from all around the globe, and the Free Software plan in Brazil is amazing. They have progressive ideas about Free Knowledge, Free Software, an individuals digital rights, and development. They plan on migrating 300,000 federal government computers to Linux, integrating Linux into the 200,000 public schools, and to export around 2 billion USD worth of software per year. For a country that currently spends 1.2 billion dollars in licensing per year, turning the import economy into an export economy, as well as trying to better distribute the skills and wealth within the country is an excellent goal. Many of the Government ministries are already changing over, and the initial plan is to have 40% of the ministries migrated by 2005, at a saving of 5.8 million over 5 years. (C/O an article on the FISL site. Thanks Pedro!) There were several organisations at FISL speaking about massive telecentre and school deployments of Free Software in Brazil and other countries. 80,000 Linux desktops were deployed in Extremadura, Spain, 1 for every 2 children in the schools.

Both events had a women in ICT track, and it was great to see real progress being made there. Education is so important. In ‘Western’ societies ICT is currently a male dominated industry, when computers are fundamentally not a male oriented device. Over 70% of people in ICT in Malaysia are women, and it was inspiring to find that Malaysia used to be very similar to Australia, with less than 10% women in technical roles. The issue of women in ICT in Australia is not limited to ICT, it is across the board in our community. Women in high profile or technical roles are expected to forget their femininity and be more masculine, often by the men and women they work with. Free Software offers an equal platform for people, with a reasonably low barrier to entry. When you see someone online, they could be any race, culture, religion and either sex, so there is a level of acceptance necessary to be effective. Women, children, the aged all have potentially more opportunities than online, than is offered within their culture.

One of the highlights of FISL was a play. It was a simple script, and one we can all initially relate to. Some admins faced with the Blue Screen of Death, panicking, trying to fix the problem with little support and less available documentation. The admins find Linux, and after research, then a migration period are very happy admins. Needless to say both were Matrix style gurus by the end of the play 😉 While trying to find the flaws in Free Software, often people forget to weigh up the issues they currently deal with, and the Brazilians had a good, lighthearted way of looking at it. The world is watching Brazil and can certainly learn from its example. It was a priviledge and a pleasure to be involved in such an event and I hope to return in coming years.

Maddog wrapped FISL up with a wonderful talk, he finished with 3000 of us yelling “software livre, software livre” into his video recorder. Make sure you bug him for it, and look out for me in the second row to Maddogs left 🙂

Some extra cool stuff:

Videos: http://portal.softwarelivre.org/news/2637
http://portal.softwarelivre.org/news/2510

Talks: http://people.debian.org/~enrico/talks

Photos: http://lento.uncasino.it/enrico/galleries/2004-05-Brasile

“They understand the real issue – it’s about sovereignty. They no longer want to funnel Brazil’s wealth abroad when they have a growing and excellent software community of their own. They want local people to provide service and write software for the government and industry. They want local skills to enrich the F/OSS world and build exportable skills. They have a vision for how to both enrich the culture and skills of their country while creating a power-house for the export of services in the future.” The reaction to the Microsoft Rep there when he was trying to say that “I don’t know if this is the best way to attract investment into the country. I know this is not the best way to create a base of development from which to export because there’s no revenue from something free.”

Rock on Brazil 🙂

I am on a roll! After Brazil I have been inspired, I’ve written some stuff up about WSIS and FISL (to be blogged over the weekend), and I’ve got my head together with some stuff for LA over the next 6 months. I learnt a lot in Brazil, most of all the importance of actually contributing something. I want to start a Free Knowledge repository _and_ a telecentre deployment in Australia. I have started to look around in Australia and realise we have real problems here as well as the capacity and resources to fix them (at least in part). Giving everyone equal opportunity can seem an idealistic dream, but we can come close. By giving people access to something better than they may otherwise get, you are increasing the opportunities for that person, that individual. By improving our communications, idependent media and the free knowledge available, we can begin to break down the systems that pigeon-holed us years ago. We have 4000 machines sitting with ComputerBank NSW atm, affiliations with many groups, many wonderful volunteers, many skills and ideas and a whole lot of energy (when we get riled up 🙂 so what are we waiting for?

I think people are starting to wake up, and it is amazing how much people want to contribute once they are given the opportunity. I believe it is human nature to give, but that nature is suppressed by our upbringing which says “NO! You must be secretive, and protect yourself, and did we mention dog eat dog!”. Anyway, more and more people are seeing beyond that, and it is refreshing 🙂

The free knowledge project I want to help with, would hopefully fill that niche, giving a very low-tech solutions that anyone can contribute to easily. It would hopefully include two components, one for collaborative development, and one for simply finding data. Google is great, except it is hard to judge Quality (see Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), relevance, and up to date-ness quickly, making the tool very hard. I imagine a system where we have easy to read summaries, dates, headings, relevant links, and a rating system that the initial rater and then the users can add to, giving the searcher some idea. Something that has ‘tracks’ so that a single entry may be relevant to several areas, and will show up under several areas. Something easy to traverse to a track of interest. There has been discussions started on this, email me if you are interested in such a thing 🙂 It is still very fuzzy, although there seems to be enough interest and momentum to make it work 🙂 pia at linux.org.au

Now, I had better clarify for everyone that doesn’t know, we have moved the wedding from the tentative November to next April, the weekend before LCA2005 (man, we are SUCH geeks ). More details as they come up, but we are trying to figure out a way to include as many people as want to come, without having to morgage the parents’ houses 🙂

Now this is the funniest thing I’ve heard for AGES!!! Microsoft are suing the Minister of IT in Brazil, Sergio Amadeu for saying Microsoft are drug dealers 🙂 He has compared Microsoft to drug dealers when they are offering 1 year free licences, because it is like offering the first hit for free.

I have to say, I completely agree. There was an organisation in Australia who were refurbishing old computers with old versions of windows, and then giving the computers to the poor. Microsoft sued them for licence violation, saying they should have bought more licences (ie – no one can use a perfectly good second hand licence?) and then Mircosoft offered free for one year licences to the people being donated machines. Sound stupid? IT IS! How on earth were people who can’t afford machines in the first place going to come up with the ridiculous fees for a licence after a year, and then every few years after that?

At least Brazil has the gumption to say what everyone else is thinking. At WSIS Brazil was speaking about how important it is to have electronic election voting on an open source system, so that it can be checked for any rigging. He mentioned that if the last US elections had been run on open source software, then maybe we wouldn’t be having so many wars right now. The response was hilarious, even the uptight pollies who usually are so somber were chuckling to themselves.

For all the mans later disasters, he certainly had some interesting ideas to start.

“The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man’s will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.”

“We can assuredly build a socialist state with modern industry, modern agriculture, and modern science and culture.”

“The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; only mobilizing the masses and relying on them can wage it.”

Woo hoo! 🙂 Over the last 6 months we have seen a complete turn around of ACS (Australian Computer Society), in large because of the President Edward Mandla who has a rabid interest in Open Source. Edward seemed to feel that Open Source has a great future, without knowing exactly what it is. Enter the community! I was approached to help ACS get some policy on Open Source, and I pulled together some of the Open Source community to advise ACS including people from several LUGs, AUUG, ACS, and some legal support. We published our drafts to the linux-aus mailing list, spoke to several organisations on it, and came up with some suggestions for ACS, as a team. We were happy to work with ACS, and I wish more organisations would turn to the community for their information on Open Source. It is where the expertise is, after all 🙂

The ACS Policy was presented to the public about 2 weeks ago. Enjoy 🙂

The Free Software Act is a relatively new project pioneered by Maureen O’Sullivan in conjunction with the Free Software Consortium. It is certainly an interesting approach to the legal protection of Free Software and Free Software developers. I believe Maureen is very much on the right track, and between Maureen and Lessig, we have a good chance. But… I believe that both only provide part of the solution and both projects should be looked at for what they can do, and how they can be supported. Version 3 of the FSA is currently up, and hopefully version four should include protections for issues such as our patents and anti-circumvention fears.

Rock on Maureen! Good luck!

Just when you think it is all quite wierd, we tumble further down the rabbit hole. So post Howard going on his little “kiss some Bush ass and help strongarm the US-AUS FTA in American political circles” trip, where he has completely! ignored any potential negative impact from the FTA on Australia (the results from the enquiry weren’t even published yet), he does it again. Howard and Bill Gates will be meeting a a secret location to do some sort of negotiation. Now if Gates was coming here to meet with someone in the ICT field, I could kind of understand, but WTF is our Prime Minister meeting with him for? How much do we need to see that corporate interests are driving politics in our ‘western’ cultures. Is Gates making some deal while Howard has some chance in implementing it? I mean Howard is after all completely in their pockets, and he may not be in power much longer (if we have anything to do with it right?). Standing back and looking at the last few years, we’ve seen a steady push away from socialism to corporatism, and in the last couple of years we have seen our democratically elected Prime Minister go completely against the wishes of the australian people several times. How much more will we put up with this blatant abuse of our system…

We all like to believe that at least we are a free politically, but are we, and how would we know.

Note – these are entirely my personal thoughts and don’t reflect on any organisation I am with :)>

I think that it is time we started looking at this more seriously. Why is it that knowledge has become a money maker, why is it that people wanting to teach 4th grade math, or university biology have to pay for the knowledge. I completely agree with paying for the courses, and degree, as teachers have to be paid, but the actual knowledge should be freely available. In Brazil, Free Knowledge has become a really big political issue, and I think it makes sense that we reconsider it. Why should children in richer countries have an educational advantage, I’m considering helping out on some of the projects already doing this, as it would also be a good platform to have a single repository for case studies, slides, how to public speak ad all the advocacy tools we need to make a difference. Each package (such as the case study package) could have a maintainer and then everyone has someone central to commit their information tob.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, but right now I’m going to travel from Christchurch to Dunedin in NZ with Glynn for some sightseeing, before catching up with the NZ crew (Mike Beattie and that) before I go home to Aus.