pipka.org

I have spent the last few days at WSIS working at the LPI booth, chatting to corporate and government types about open source. I assisted in the LPI presentation by presenting a business case for adopting the open source methodology. It has been great in terms of getting the right message across, speaking to HEAPS of other countries about their schemes to get computers to socio-econimcally disadantaged areas, and how it has improved the quality of life, speaking to the Malaysian groups about them having 70% WOMEN IN IT! and many other rocking things.

6th Dec – Linux Australia Meeting

Meeting with Linux Australia ctte (except Leon and Anand). Went extremely well!

While we have not done everything we wanted to do, we have managed to nearly completely sort out the problems we unknowingly inherited. New constitution draft is up, membership registration page is nearly done (and constitutionally happy), plans for the new web site, to be done with a kewl app called drupal (drupal.org for those interested) early next year, a new charter! My favourite thing at this point was finding a way to incorporate transparency into a document that matters to the organisation and how it is run. It was suggested to me to release a document about Linux Australias’ dedication to transparency, but putting it in the actual charter creates a precedent and expectation that is more enforcible by the community.

We spoke about the AGM/SGM at LCA, and decided we want to add a small discussion point after the AGM (if we have time) to approach the subject of Linux Australia as an advocacy organisation. Thus far this year has been about damage control, fixing the issues, increasing the trust and buy-in, finding out what the community wants and needs and how Linux Australia can best facilitate these issues. We are still a long way from the desired communication with the entire community, mainly due to the inherited issue. With these addresses and out of the way, next year Linux Australia will be in a position to rock on.

Pumped for NZ

Boarded flight to Auckland in Sydney, felt odd to actually be getting on a plane again. Nice short flight, only 3.5 hours, nice dude to chat to about real estate and politics 🙂 Read most of the Australian papers on the plane.

Auckland – Saw the trailer for Lord of the Rings (III) on the plane, am completely pumped to come back to NZ for a real holiday (and I will be in a few months!!! Hey Mike I expect the grand tour!), however the closest I got was to see the airport and gaze into the distant mountains…am preparing for WSIS (http://wsis.org), is going to rock.

Auckland -> LA – Going to go straight through to Geneva, I can’t really afford US$200 a night at New York 🙂 Great movies on the plane, mind racing 1000 miles an hour, but the rest is doing me good!

There is an excellent conference, read up on geneva03.net for details, but I am now in a discussion about applying open source methodologies to other aspects in society, such as the media. Very interesting, I believe these talks will be available online, so look out for them. I will post them as soon as I am able.

This rocks, so much is happening, so much forward thinking and coordinated efforts.

I will be writing more about the last few days when I have time, lots of amazingy stuff! In the meantime there is some live streaming for you to see! Check out geneva03 and what is happening. Thanks for the tip Mako 🙂

ACT set to adopt open source bill

Hadn’t even seen this coming, rock on Canberra!

So I ended up travelling about 42 hours straight to get to the WSIS conference. All of the people around me complaining about 17, or 11, or 6! hours, pfft! Watched the trailer for Lord of the Rings III on the way to New Zealand, and got all psyched to see the country forgetting I would be there all of 2 hours. Ah, well, I will be returning there in a few months (Mike! I am expecting a tour and a drink 🙂

New York was snowing, 18 inches 😀 Like many Australians, real, thick, overcoming snow is fascinating. We have to supplement our ski fields with snow machines, I loved the place, and although I spent only a few hours there, am very keen to return.

So my flight path was Sydney -> Auckland -> LA -> New York -> Frankfurt -> and then Geneva. Phwoar!

So today was great! Schmoozing with people from all over the world, discussing human rights, standards, how ICT can benefit people directly, development standards, many interesting and zany topics with many interesting and zany points of view. Being here with LPI has meant a foot in to door as to how world politics happen, what is happening with FOSS around the world, and how we as an international community come together for support with increased communication. The only disappointment thus far has been Stallman. Good old RMS has done it again, he managed to get into some sort of advisory role for the WSIS Civil Society who are putting together the Visionary Document for the WSIS. The full Visionary Document covers many topics from poverty, to womens rights, through media, cultural and ICT issues.

Anyway RMS has insisted upon an ammendment to the Visionary Document to effectively remove all references to FOSS or Open Source and replace it with Free Software:

“In this document, we use the term “Free Software” to refer to the specific
concept defined by the Free Software Foundation. Free Software is software
that is licensed in such a way that people have the freedom to run, copy,
distribute, study, change and improve it. Free Software implies access to
source code as does “open source software”; however, open source software as
the term is popularly used is not necessarily Free Software in our
definition. Some organisations release open source software without
permitting all of these actions. See http://www.fsf.org and
http://www.fsfeurope.org for in-depth discussions of this concept.”

I’m a bit sick of constant derailment of our efforts over semantics, but I digress. Maybe he truly doesn’t understand how destructive his actions are to our entire cause, because if he realised how hard he is making it, perhaps he would direct his passion and energy more constructively. People know the term Open source, they have associated it with Linux (RMS would hate that too 🙂 and thus the word is getting out. If we change the ball halfway through the game, people lose interest and walk away. What we call the ball at this point is irrelevant, we should be encouraging people to play.

Sounded like a wanky kind of workshop, and it did end up being run like a kindergarten (“I want to see you all drawing on the butcher paper and putting it up on the wall for everyone to see”). It did however prove to be really interesting, youth from all over the world trying to make a difference, trying to figure out the issues of their respective countries. It is all well and good to talk about donating computers to the socio-economically disadvantaged, but what if they don’t have electricity, how can technology help them?

I participated in two discussions, one on developers and how we can change government policies to demand Open Standards, and facilitate community groups for support and discussion. the second discussion was about Youth Empowerment, how and why we as the youth for the world can make a difference on a large scale.

Rock on! Many great and motivated people.