Hi all, The Linux Australia comittee has been busy busy busy this month. Last year we did a 6 month status report from Linux Australia and we will be doing the same thing very soon, but we didn't want to delay the monthly news any longer than usual :) For anyone not already on the linux-aus mailing list, it is where most of these type of discussions are taking place, so join up if you want to participate :) http://lists.linux.org.au If anyone else wants me to start forwarding this directly to their LUGs mailing list, please let me know.
Half-year Report ---------------- Due out very soon! In the same thread as the last report it is meant to give an overall status of LA and what is happening. Watch this space :) We'll put it up on the new website when it goes live, which is within the week. FTA --- We have really come a long way. At least in part due to our efforts on the FTA, Open Source has become an election issue. If someone had told me 6 months ago that this might be the case I would have disagreed but quite frankly this is the case. I attended one of the AUUG conference days down in Melbourne, and between AGIMO and a representative of the Minister of ICT (Helen Coonan) there was a very supportive stance on open source. AGIMO will be coming out with a Open Source sourcing guide in the next 3-4 months (hopefully) which should be very interesting to a lot of people. Back to the FTA, although there have been some interesting exceptions made (such as for DVD software), the deal is all but done, and we now have some work to do :) We as a community need to ensure that as this is translated into legislation we are not compromising on any of the freedoms we currently enjoy. The moment we compromise, we are in trouble. Assisting the government in understanding the issues has been an excellent exercise as now we have a lot better educated legislators in this area, and some good cred. In the area of patents the idea of a "patent watch" type project has come up a few times, and it sounds like a great idea. We need to ensure this is covered from several aspects, not least of all from a real quantative analysis. We can argue how patents are bad for innovation, are anti-competitive, and how patents lodged has no real relation to innovation in the industry all we like (and these arguments need to be made), but at the end of 2 years or so, it would be a huge impact to be able to say here are X 100's or 1000's of trivial patents we proved prior art on, and here is the estimated damage they would have caused. More information on this will be in the half year report. A big thanks and slap on the back to Rusty who has put oodles of time and effort into this! Grants ------ * Computerbank line of credit grant ($15,000) - The computerbank grant is still being processed, as there have been some significant communication issues. We are working through these and many of the terms of agreement may have to be renegotiated. We will keep linux-aus informed as soon as all the information is clear. LA is very supportive of Computerbank, and always has been. We are looking forward to helping out and seeing the Sydney work for the dole project get going again :) * Sara Kaan (Syd) put in a grant to run a stall at a large education expo for Linux. The details of this will be posted after the committee has discussed it on Monday, but it looks like an excellent project. Rock on Sara! * Andrew Chalmers (Melb) put in a grant to press some CD's for Free Software Day, and the committee in theory agreed, apart from the desire from Andrew to hand out these CD's in front on the Microsoft office, which we thought was inappropriate. After working through this, we agreed to put the offer to linux-aus but unfortunately had some communication issues and so this didn't go ahead. Good work anyway from Andrew and others in Melbourne. Let us know if there is any other projects we can help with :) Ghosts ------ We had the normal Ghosts meeting, which is where we get some previous LCA (http://linux.conf.au) organisers to meet up with the currently LCA organisers (Canberra) to brainstorm, transfer knowledge, rile up the organisers and of course drink beer. It was a great weekend, and everyone put a lot of hours in. Many thanks to Steve Hanley and all the LCA2005 gang, to the previous organisers who attended and to the entire LA committee for all your efforts :) Incidently, Canberra looks like it is going to ROCK! But you knew I was going to say that ;) Photos can be found at http://www.michaeldavies.org/gallery/CanberraTrip along with a second writeup on the trip by Michael Davies at http://www.michaeldavies.org/weblog/linux-australia/lca2005 LA face to face meeting ----------- The LA ctte took advantage of the ghosts meeting being relatively close to everyone geographically and the fact that 4 of the LA members had to be there anyway to have a face to face meeting. It ended being relatively rushed, but we got through a lot including some new plans to increase LUG communication and participation, to continue the FTA research and planning, to try increase communication within the OS sector in Australia amd some other interesting things. Thanks to everyone for your time, especially after all the time already put into the Ghosts meeting. Website ------- The website is almost ready to go live, as in, in the next few days. For a sneak preview see http://linux.org.au/~pia/website/. Many thanks to Janet Reid for her icons, Stewart for his excellent work (and for making sure all my html is compliant ;), Michael Davies and Jeff Waugh for their design help, and everyone else who has lent a hand. Open Source Forum ----------------- We am very interested in running an Open Source Forum, in order to increase internal commnication if you like between businesses and organisations to do with open source in Australia. The idea is to create the first ever mechanism in Australia where people can actually have the discussions about issues and opportunities in the open source space for Australian businesses. The FTA saga highlighted a few things for me personally, specifically that the ICT sector in Australia is different from the Australian ICT sector. Many businesses rely on large bodies they are part of to look after their interests, not necessarily having the resources to put into research of issues and opportunities themselves. Unfortunately sometimes there is conflict of interests and the small businesses are not always looked after. I hope this forum can be a regular occurance (perhaps bimonthly) where we have a topic, and invite 2-4 speakers from opposite points of view. Participants get to see the issue from various angles, and from where their peers see it. After the short talks, the microphone goes to the floor for opinions, questions. An open forum. They get to participate equally in the discussions and learn from each other rather than being told continually what is good for them. This is not the formal announcement of such an event, but rather a call out to the community to give some feedback on the idea. Please contact me on [EMAIL PROTECTED] with any suggestions. The first one will probably be scheduled for Sydney but there is no reason why it can't roam. Patents watch ------------- The idea has come up to try interfacing the community with the Australian patents system. We have 3 months on each patent lodged where we can prove prior art before that patents is locked in. By finding an easy way to find and filter what may be relevant to us, we are hoping to over a period of time come up with some unmistakeable and quantifiable arguments against the patents system we have now locked ourselves into. The initial arguments and such, along with education is an important first step, but we also need cold hard figures to win this. More to come on linux-aus. LCA2004 DVD/CD -------------- These have been pressed and are being sent out. Many thanks to Ryan Verner and Jason King particularly, along with the many other volunteers in Adelaide who donated their time and efforts into getting these out the door. The DVD data can be found at http://www.linux.org.au/conf/2004/videos/ and the CD can be found at http://www.linux.org.au/conf/2004/eventrecord/LCA2004-cd/programme.html Rock on everyone! Also thankyou to Andrew Braund, Peter Gossner, Ben Wannan, Ian Loxton and Jan Schmidt for their video footage. LUG Communication strategy -------------------------- The LA ctte has committed to better communication with the LUGs, this was one of the main topics in our recent face to face meeting. More information will be coming on this in the half year report, as we really want to improve in this area. Information is also up on the devel website if you are interested :) Cheers all, and many thanks to everyone participating, Pia -- Pia Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Linux Australia -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
