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“it still shows that a significant portion of the code we run is written by developers who are donating their time” — a really interesting study that looks at volunteers vs paid contributors on the kernel. Great work Jon!
links for 2007-03-02
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“Nothing tells a developer more than they are working in an open source company than pointing them to a Debian repository and telling them to set up their own desktop,” — nice philosophy Don!
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Crazy stuff! Snow, hail, lightening storms and major damage from storms in _summer_ in Canberra and Yass, Australia. Can we sign the Kyoto agreement now please?
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“Man, you’re right, that never get old. Let’s do Eric S Raymond next”. — Just a funny cartoon the Unlocking IP folks found.
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“…we are conducting a study to understand how defect management is being carried out in various Free/Open Source Software projects” — an interesting survey, it’ll be good to see the final report.
Who’s exhibiting at Open CeBIT 2007
So, as some of you know, Jeff and I are working with Hannover Fairs to make sure Open CeBIT (the Open Source bit at CeBIT) is incredible. I’ve spoken about the conference, but check out all the exhibitors who have already signed up.
We also have Ingres, and a few others who are yet to go on the website, so we have already a pretty good cross section of the industry, but the aim is to have over 20 companies, and possibly 30 there, so if you are interested in exhibiting, contact us as there are loads of options, even for the little guys 🙂
FOSS slogans for an artist
Elizabeth Gordon-Werner — previously the NSW Dept of Commerce Open Source guru — has gone off to fulfill her dream of studying art. Some of you may remember she has already drawn some famous FOSS people, such as Bdale Garbee, and now she has turned her attention to artwork for FOSS.
What I need is some ideas and slogans that I can incorporate into art. I’d aim to publish the artwork with some sort of open license so anyone who wants to use, add to it or disseminate it can do so.
If you have some ideas (which I’m sure many of us do!), just comment on Elizabeth’s blog post.
Seek and you shall find… a Linux job!
This was an ad from an Australian website, and I just found it funny. Linux sysadmins are obviously earning more than Windows sysadmins, but not as much as Cisco techs 🙂
NSW Government ICT discussion
A couple of nights ago Jeff and I attended a discussion where Minister Della Bosca and Shadow Minister Pearce (who are both in charge of ICT for their parties) spoke about ICT generally. It was quite good because they both understand that ICT is a driving factor for the economy, they both understand the need to encourage local innovators and the Aussie ICT industry (although they disagreed on how), and Minister Della Bosca is also knowledgable about Open Source, but only brought this up when asked directly.
The Minister spoke about the Governments role in encouraging local innovation by being a smart procurer of ICT, however didn’t talk about investment in the industry. Near the end a Greens representative (I’ve lost his name!) spoke about their concerns regarding ICT and mentioned Access and equity, Education and Open Source as their three areas of great interest, which was good however his message around Open Source was a little negative (monopolies monopolies monopolies!) rather than focusing on the positive opportunities of Open Source (innovation, local economy, meeting the trade deficit through exporting specialist Aussie services!).
It was certainly an interesting event, and I for one am glad that our current Minister in charge of ICT in NSW is one of three politicians who have stood up in Parliament and spoken about Open Source, so keep up the good work Minister Della Bosca, and also to the Greens and Liberal opposition in keeping a healthy debate on the topic going. ICT is only starting to become a real platform for political debate, and it is really high time considering the weight of the ICT trade deficit (about $19b) which is about 80% of our total trade deficit. We can’t do much about most of that spending (CD players, mobile phones, etc) however we can work hard to create a strong and specialised services industry that we can export and start to meet the ICT deficit.
links for 2007-02-20
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“One of the reasons ICT brought Dr. Zhang into this company was because of his strong ties to the community–they want to leverage free software as the means for cost-effective development and as an avenue to innovate.” — Nice one from Michael Iannini fr
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“10 Linux commands you’ve never used” — I’ve only used 5 🙂
Pancakes and FOSS – wrapup
Jeff and I are in Brisbane and tonight we had a huge turnout to come talk about FOSS and pancakes at the Pancake Manor in Brisbane. We had about 30 people all up including OSIAns, HUMBUGs, the people from the PHP meeting that was supposed to be on at the same time (but got cancelled) and some interesting individuals from Government, industry and Microsoft (gasp!). It was all in all a very fun and interesting night, and many thanks to everyone coming along!
Jeff took some great photos (and some not so great ones) that he’s uploaded to his flickr stream 🙂
links for 2007-02-16
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“Copyright Amendments: Are you at risk?” — Some interesting pdfs that demonstrate both the risks and the ridiculousness of current Australian copyright law for teenagers, families, small businesses and industry. Nice work by the IIA and QUT.
links for 2007-02-15
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“If I had to sum up my experience it would be this: every male dominated group has its own pecking order and an unwritten set of rules defining the group.” — Interesting and thought provoking article by Dru.