Foundations of Open 2020 submissions are up

I was really proud to be involved in Senator Lundy’s Foundations of Open Summit and wanted to follow up with some more resources. There are videos from all talks available, Donna just did a great blog post about it as did Brianna from Wikipedia.

It is important to recognise the initiative and interest of Senator Kate Lundy in openness, and I greatly thank her for her efforts in getting openness on the political agenda.

The submissions from the day (which all participants were open to contribute) are also online which all contribute to the 2020 Summit discussions are awesome. Some tidbits:

The rise of the use of FOSS in the IT industry is without doubt a revolutionary force that will have a huge impact on the way that society interacts with computers into the future. The question that I would like addressed by the Australia 2020 summit is what can be done to ensure that Australia can benefit to the maximum degree possible from this change in the IT world.

Andrew Tridgell – Freedom Fighter 🙂

It is widely acknowledged that open access to Crown copyright material is important not only as an element of open democracy, but is “a key driver of social, cultural and economic development”. With the emergence of digital technologies that enable dissemination of government material at low cost, copyright law is now the last significant barrier to truly open government.

Jessica Coates – Creative Commons

Establish a national mechanism for discoverability of spatial data. Discoverability is necessary to effectively deliver spatial data when and where it is needed, especially in emergencies but increasingly for general use, and would unlock enormous opportunities for innovation and creativity with the use of these data.

David Hocking, CEO ASIBA

Australia’s infrastructure will face even more difficult challenges unless we take advantage of IPv6, particularly for water and energy. For instance, critical energy and resource conservation measures will require large increases in the scope of control systems. There is an urgent need for greater national IP capability to use in reducing our global footprint in this way, but the capacity of our
current IP system is nearly exhausted.

Tony Hill – Internet Society of Australia

Amend the Broadcast Act to clearly define the fair use of broadcast material nationally for all educational institutions. Amend the role of Screen Rights to measure/clear international sources.

Clarify that educational organisations have clearance to use any free- to-air live broadcast services and to share them nationally within the academic realm for purposes of study, archive and analysis. As part of their participation in Australian society, any broadcaster supplying free-to-air (unencrypted) services anywhere within our shores would be bound to allow national open access to their material for educational use.

George Bray

Physical Infra-structure and facilities be made available for the schools sector to improve network speeds and bandwidth traffic loads.

Kevin Karp, StudentNet

Open information and knowledge – allow information produced by the public sector to be easily accessible and freely available to citizens and businesses for reuse, including commercialisation with appropriate exceptions such as law enforcement, security and privacy. Placing government produced IP in the public domain, such as maps and data, can unlock public and private value – U.S. property appraisal data makes www.zillow.com a more innovative service for home buyers than www.suburbview.com

Patrick McCormick, The Nous Group

Open Source is no longer an emerging technology. It is here now. OSIA[2] believes it’s in Australia’s best interest to not only adopt Open Source software, but actively contribute to the Open Source economy of ideas and innovation. Each of the 10 areas of focus for the 2020 Summit depend on the new reality of a global interconnected information economy. Google and Wikipedia were built with Open Source Software because it was the only way it could be done. Open Source Software enables us to compete, connect and communicate.

Donna Benjamin – Director – Open Source Industry Australia

If the potentially major transformative benefits to be derived from “Open” both from the technological and digital knowledge perspectives are to be fully realised then it is essential to establish or identify internationally credible standards and specifications etc. which support the desired outcomes. The real value and potential of PSI is realised only through its extensive re-use. Open will overcome the present major impediments which prevent this full potential from being realised.

Neale Hooper – Principal Lawyer, Whole of Government Licensing Project, Office of Economic and Statistical Research, Queensland Treasury

The availability of high speed broadband across Australia has the potential to reduce many problems of resourcing and access to information faced in Australia due to our dispersed population. Students and researchers in remote areas could be provided with equal access to quality resources and texts that students in metropolitan centres have. If every student has access to a computer and high speed broadband, then all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, can have access to knowledge.

However, the ADA is concerned that overly complex and restrictive provisions in the Copyright Act 1968 continue to impede this potential. […] In short, the ADA sees great potential in the digital education revolution, however, without significant copyright reform the ADA believes that students will have access to high speed broadband, but will not have the access to knowledge that should flow from this.
Laura Simes, Australian Digital Alliance

Laura Simes, Australian Digital Alliance

We have The Internet technology and we have the need. Many more activities need to be open and accessible, so that together we might advance the world instead of letting it slide into catastrophe.

Nick Sharp

Openness as a default position for ICT innovation and development provides many clear opportunities and advantages. Clear leadership and assistance is necessary from the Australian Government so individuals and organisations from all sectors can make informed decisions how openness can benefit them.

Me 🙂

Another news article about the event was in the Canberra Times, which had Jeff and I as the photo. Unexpected and a little odd 🙂

Foundations of Open in Canberra Times

Some favourite photos from lca2007

My goodness, the last week just flew and now here we are saying “wow, it’s all over!”. I’m still putting all my thoughts together but I wanted to reiterate thanks to everyone, including the Seven team, all the helpers, sponsors, speakers and attendees that all made lca2007 such a sterling success!

Some favourite photos:

Andy Tanenbaum
Val Henson
Bubby!
Sara!
City skyline

Thanks nekonoir, Jeff and Chris! Great photos!

Intel boosts Linux virtualization – Linuxworld story

Great story about the virtualisation miniconf, which is the most attended miniconf in all lca2007 and the first to beat Debian! 🙂

Speaking at this year’s Linux.conf.au Linux and open source conference in Sydney, Intel software engineer Jeff Dike spoke about three virtualization methods – User Mode Linux (UML), Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), and hardware virtualization.

See the full story here.

LCA Opening Day – writeup by Builder AU

(In reference to the “distro chairs” at lca2007)

Gentoo gets a box and people then have to build the chair themselves! What more could a Gentoo user want? There is at least one satisfied Gentoo user on his chair. It might take a while to build but that chair is your chair and you know exactly what is in it! – Chris Duckett

I love that our media person from Builder Au is a Gentoo nut. Yay Chris! See the rest of the interview here.

Interview with Matthew Garrett

I’ve been to the previous two LCAs (2005 and 2006), presenting at 2006. LCA is an absolutely wonderful conference to visit, but the reception to my presentation amazed me – the audience is wonderful, with an excellent mixture of experience levels, and everyone made me feel very welcome. As a result, I’m hugely looking forward to being there again this year. – Matthew Garrett

We’re looking forward to seeing you too Mattie! 🙂 Interview available at Computerworld

Interview with Jim Gettys for linux.conf.au

Check out this awesome interview with Jim Gettys about OLPC in Computerworld today. Jim is doing a talk about OLPC at linux.conf.au 2007.

You will see that from the base up, our system is aimed at enabling collaborative applications: browsing the Web together, chat, playing music together, and applications where kids learn by doing. Sugar is providing this infrastructure, to make developing such applications much easier.

This is not “just another desktop” system.

linux.conf.au – tickets running out fast

Make sure you both register _and_ pay for your linux.conf.au 2007 tickets and accommodation soon, as places are running out fast. Every year some people are left without tickets and are turned away at the door. Register right now to avoid missing out 🙂

Two weeks to go!!