Donna Benjamin rounded a small group of us together to write a letter to Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education. The result was widely syndicated, hopefully building some mindshare in the process. The Education Expo proved to me more than anything else that FOSS is quickly becoming acceptable to the general public — the trick is in how you promote it.

So where to from here? How can we capitalise upon the gains we have made?

Perhaps our greatest single weakness is the perceived lack of professional support. I think OSIA should be doing more to address this (note: I’m not implying that OSIA isn’t taking this seriously). Here’s an e-mail I wrote to the osia-discuss mailing list (which is unfortunately subscriber-only):

The best thing OSIA can do is fight the popular notion that there’s no
professional support available for FOSS. We can beat the TCO and Freedom
drums as hard as we want, but few organisations are willing to entrust their
computing to ‘community’ support.

I managed the Linux Australia stand at the Education Expo a few weeks ago, and
my impression is that FOSS is on the cusp of mainstream acceptance:

http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/2008/06/29/education-expo-report/

Schools are crying out for ways to get better value for their dollar, but they
aren’t going to even think about FOSS if they can’t get professional support.

If I run the stand again next year, I’d like to see some involvement from
OSIA. At the very least, we should have available some leaflets showing that
yes indeed there is quality, paid support for FOSS.

Also note that FOSS isn’t Linux. We got the most interest in the
OpenEducationDisc, a compilation of FOSS for Windows.

On the community side, we can continue to make FOSS more acceptable to school administrations, bureaucrats and politicians. Here’s my idea:

My suggestion is for us to build a Web site focused on open education in
Australia. We already have the perfect vehicle: http://openeducation.org.au.
However, at present it’s just a messy wiki more suitable for our own
brainstorming than for being a public-facing resource.

The wiki should of course remain, but I propose that we build a proper,
presentable Web site that is directly accessible via the
http://openeducation.org.au address.

Why do this when we already have http://linux.org.au/education? Open Education
is much bigger than Linux, and certainly should not be anchored to it. Here’s
a short list of what it can include:

• FOSS
• (GNU/)Linux OS - on servers
• (GNU/)Linux OS - on clients/desktops
• open standards
• open languages/libraries/APIs
• free content/culture
• open learning
• open curriculum

To be honest, I fear that we might be only hurting ourselves by tying open
education to a completely Free computing environment. That might be a worthy
aim, but few institutions are going to switch over all in one go. By offering
a migration path (or paths), a school can migrate more comfortably at its own
pace. We ought to be providing real choice, not just a binary ‘with us or
with the terrists’.

FOSS (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Scribus, etc.) can run on operating systems
other than Linux. To use the recent Education Expo as an example, we got a
lot of buy-in through the OpenEducationDisc, a compilation of FOSS for
 Windows.

Also note how I split Linux clients from servers. Linux’s place in the server
realm is very solid, but convincing an institution to accept a Linux client
solution is tougher. And by ‘client’, I mean either traditional desktops or
thin clients. The latter are often cost-effective and represent a real
strength of Linux, but are often overlooked or even have regulations working
against their adoption. On the server side, we have some great educational
tools such as Moodle and LAMS.

Open standards obviously include things like file formats and protocols, which
will become even more relevant as we see more applications (proprietary or
otherwise) pick up standardised methods of information exchange such as ODF
and PDF. This should also ease the integration of FOSS into pre-existing
environments. It also can include languages and all things related. Why are
schools still teaching Visual Basic when they could be teaching Python?

The final three points all link together. Most notably, they are not dependent
upon technology at all. Your average teacher isn’t a technologist, and
shouldn’t have to be. Knowledge can be shared and organised openly just like
code. Wikipedia has proven that great things can be built if ordinary people
are given easy to use tools.

Where to from this point? I suggest that we work towards getting a CMS running
at openeducation.org.au. We’ll have to agree upon a design and the message
that we want to purvey. Content creation should be separate from technical
ability, so the CMS should be simple enough for anybody to contribute.

Here is some inspiration from the UK:

• http://www.openschoolsalliance.org/
• http://schoolforge.org.uk/

The UK education sector appears to be much further ahead of us in terms of
embracing openness, and I think we can take some lessons from their efforts.

To clarify one thing in the above, I wrote the text for http://linux.org.au/education, but I never felt comfortable with it being there. So much of open education has nothing to do with Linux and Linux Australia shouldn’t be diverting its focus to dwell on it directly. With a more independent Web presence (in collaboration with Linux Australia), I feel that we can be much more effective.

LotD:   Open sourcing Australia: OpenAustralia.org goes live

Two weeks ago, we had the Education Expo.

Here’s my report, as co-ordinator of the Linux Australia stand:

Education Expo
Sat 14 to Sun 15 June
Rosehill Racecourse, Sydney

The Education Expo is an annual trades show targeted towards the K-12 educational space. Visitors consist of families and educators. Linux Australia once again had a stand, with volunteers spreading the word about free and open source software.

As always, we were very successful. With each passing year, the level of awareness of FOSS noticeably improves. Whereas at previous shows we would spend much energy expounding the basic concepts of FOSS/Linux, this year most people had either heard of it or were already using FOSS products such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org.

One thing we did differently this year was place more focus on FOSS running on Windows. Our past efforts have been meet with some resistance, as installing a different operating system posed a barrier to entry that many would not surmount. We had plenty of copies of the OpenEducationDisc to distribute, in addition to Fedora, Ubuntu, Edubuntu and Mandriva.

The fact that the NSW Dept of Education is migrating over 40,000 PCs across the state to OpenOffice.org was a useful selling point as well.

Our marketing efforts have been improving with each event. Our message is becoming more refined, and our leaflets are becoming more relevant. On the technical side, FOSS is becoming easier and more accessible, with projects such the aforementioned OpenEducationDisc and Wubi leading the way.

Our Web presence is improving, too. It’s far easier to point a newbie to just one easy-to-remember URL instead of confusing them with a list. In addition, I built an education portal for Linux Australia just in time for the expo.

There were at least two other stands that were FOSS-friendly. In fact, one of the largest stands were demonstrating their Web-based software product on about ten computers, all of which were running Ubuntu. Other stands expressed real interest when approached.

Other highlights of our presence included:

• OLPC XO laptops (from OLPC Australia)
• Intel Classmate PCs (from Mandriva Australia)
• ASUS Eee PCs
• laptops showing Edubuntu

Rodger Dean has some photos of the event.

A big thanks to everyone who helped at the stand:

• Ashley Lynn
• Ashley Maher
• Brendan Puckeridge
• David Andresen
• Gloria Arnold
• Harrison Conlin
• John Arnold
• Megha Kanth
• Pia Waugh
• Rodger Dean
• Vicki Burke

A special thank you goes to Melissa Draper, who was instrumental in ensuring the success of the stand in more ways than one.

LotD:  Insurance company bets health on open source — I’m quite heavily involved in this project, so needless to say I’m proud of what we’ve achieved

The Education Expo is on this weekend. I’ve sent a couple of missives to our helpers. The second one contains some advice that would work well in many situations regarding FOSS (especially where marketing is concerned), so I’ll reproduce it (slightly edited) here:

Subject: Education Expo, this weekend!
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:29
From: Sridhar Dhanapalan <sridhar@dhanapalan.com>
To: SLUG Activities <activities@slug.org.au>

Thanks again to everyone who has volunteered to help with the Linux Australia stand at the Education Expo.

The expo itself runs from 9am to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday. Entry is free. It’s a fun day for families with children in the K-12 space, so feel free to bring along your kids and make a day (or two!) out of it.

This year, the expo will be held in Rosehill Racecourse’s brand new Events Centre, and our stand is in a prime position right in front of the door. If you haven’t already, take a look at the original announcement and the Education Expo Web site.

I asked in my previous message if people could tell me when they would be available to help out. If you haven’t already, please let me know. If you’re unsure, that’s fine too: just show up and grab me at the stand.

I’ll be there at 8am on Saturday (an hour before it starts) to set up the stand, and probably at 8:30 on Sunday. I might need some assistance to set up, and also to pack up afterwards.

Some tips:

• Wear comfortable casual clothing. It might get hot in the exhibition hall.
• If you’ve got any Linux or FOSS themed clothing, wear that
• Wear comfortable shoes. You’ll be standing most of the time.
• Keep some water handy.
• Talking to stand visitors can strain your throat. Some mints can help.

Make it clear to visitors that there is a vibrant FOSS community in Australia, and especially in Sydney. Invite them to SLUG, which meets in the city on the last Friday of every month (next meeting on 27 June). SLUG has a segment known as ‘SLUGlets’, which is intended for newbies.

Familiarise yourself with the leaflets that we will distribute:

• http://linkpot.net/ravines/
• http://linkpot.net/dethrone/
• http://linkpot.net/tremolos/

Have a read of Linux Australia’s guides to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and FOSS in education. Remember to promote these to stand visitors as the best place to start with Linux and FOSS:

• http://linux.org.au/linux
• http://linux.org.au/education

One important point to remember is that Linux is not FOSS. We will be handing out copies of the OpenEducationDisc, which is a CD full of education-oriented FOSS for Windows. Not everyone is able to switch over to Linux cold-turkey, but we can get them started with FOSS on Windows first.

Similarly, open standards are not FOSS, but they are a good start. Inform people about the dangers of proprietary file formats, as seen with Microsoft Office, and promote in their stead open alternatives such as OpenDocument and PDF.

Show people that Linux isn’t strange and new. Many don’t realise it, but they are already using FOSS. For example:

• Firefox and OpenOffice are becoming increasingly popular. The NSW Department of Education is in the process of switching over >40,000 school computers to OpenOffice.
• Wikipedia is built around the idea of open knowledge, inspired directly from the FOSS movement (and it’s built on FOSS too!).
• Even Mac OS X has many important components based on FOSS, such as the kernel, file sharing, printing and the Web browser.
• About two-thirds of Web sites are served by the FOSS Web server, Apache.
• Most of the large Web companies (like Google, Facebook and Yahoo) are built with FOSS.
• It is normal for Hollywood films to be created using Linux.
• Linux is prevalent in a range of consumer devices.
• The popular ASUS Eee PC, and many of its competitors, come with Linux pre-installed.

Show people that Linux is easy to install and use. Ubuntu has an installer called Wubi, which is a Windows application that installs Ubuntu as a file without partitioning the hard drive. It behaves like a normal dual-boot system, but it can be uninstalled from ‘Add/Remove Programs’ just like any Windows application. We’ll also have copies of Edubuntu. Remember that this is an add-on companion, not a stand-alone liveCD as in the past. Give a copy of Ubuntu with every Edubuntu disc you distribute.

Linux is more secure. While nothing can claim to be 100% secure and virus proof, Linux has an excellent track record. It doesn’t need ‘band-aid’ solutions like anti-virus and anti-spyware software because the software was built sanely to begin with. The Internet was built for UNIX, not for Windows.

Linux and FOSS is great for families. It’s affordable and reliable. It won’t get infected and show unsolicited porn adverts to your children. There are heaps of great educational software installable with just a few mouse clicks.

Some caveats:

• As a community stand, we are not selling anything.
• Avoid unnecessary Microsoft-bashing. We’re running the stand because we love FOSS, not because we hate Microsoft.

The second Open CeBIT in Sydney ended last week. Forming a section of the much larger CeBIT expo, Open CeBIT focused on open source technologies and solutions. I was involved in three stands: BizCubed (my employer), Linux Australia and Open Source Industry Australia.

In the market, FOSS is clearly maturing and becoming more mainstream. At a CeBIT a couple of years ago, I’d be answering basic questions like, “what is open source?”, “what is Linux?” and “how do you make money?” This year, I didn’t get any questions like that at all. Most people knew something about Linux and FOSS, and just needed some direction to get started.

We had much interest in community and general usage at the Linux Australia stand. Our Fedora, Ubuntu and Edubuntu discs were popular. Of immense popularity were our OLPC XOs, thanks to OLPC Australia. Visitors were genuinely interested in the units, and I didn’t hear any negative feedback at all. I do believe that a lot of people did understand that this is an education project for children in the developing world and not just a laptop project.

At the Open Source Industry Australia stand, I spoke to many people who were interested in deploying FOSS solutions to solve specific problems. Many of these people would not have considered FOSS in the past, so clearly our message is resonating.

Coming up in a couple of weeks (June 14-15) is the Education Expo. We’ve always been successful there, and all signs point to us repeating that.

LotD:   MacGyver is favourite disaster hero

The last two weeks have been quite eventful. Each of these probably deserves its own blog post, but since I don’t have the time to write them all I’ll just give a summary.

Document Freedom Day, 26 March

The first annual Document Freedom Day (inspired by Software Freedom Day) was celebrated globally. In Sydney, the celebrations were hosted by Google at their offices, supported by the Internet Society of Australia and the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG). As the SLUG representative, I was asked to say a few words about our organisation and its relevance to document freedom. Not having time to prepare, I managed to ad-lib a speech, drawing on memories of what I had written before on the Domesday Book and Domesday Project. I’m not an experienced speaker, so I’m very glad that it came out well.

Senator Kate Lundy and David Vaile delivered great talks that made us think about openness of information and their importance to society. For the most part, we didn’t mention the war (which unfortunately has been lost), but there was no escaping acknowledgement of the Waughs. Anyone disillusioned at the state of politics in Australia ought to speak with Kate. Even after 12 years in parliament, she is still inspiring.

All in all, it was a fantastic night. Thanks to Alan Noble, Andrew McRae and the other folks at Google for making it happen. Andrew and Sarah Maddox have written good summaries of the evening.

I would have loved to have taken Kate up on her invitation to join her ‘Foundations of Open: Technology and Digital Knowledge’ local 2020 Summit, but alas a trip to Canberra for one day was a bit much. I’m glad to see it all went well, though.

Sydney Linux Users Group Annual General Meeting, 28 March

What can I say? Thanks to everyone in SLUG who supported my candidacy for the role of President. The new Committee looks like a great mix of talents, and we already have some good ideas in the pipeline. The next twelve months is looking to be exciting indeed.

We had the first gathering of the new Committee on Sunday. It was a handover meeting, with the old Committee members present to pass on their wisdom and experience to the new. My sincere gratitude goes to the departing Committee members. I feel truly honoured to have worked with them over this past year.

Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report 2008 launch event, 1 April

Free software and free beer! It appears that with FOSS, you can have your cake and eat it too

Note: there was no cake — but there were Iced Vo Vos! Sweet!

It’s great to finally have some & Community Report">authoritative statistics to back our cause. Common myths were dispelled, and we had confirmation of things that seemed so obvious to us but might have been less so for others.

BarCamp Sydney, 5-6 April

BarCamp 3 was notable for expansion to two days of revelry. The venue migrated from UTS for the first two BarCamps to the UNSW Roundhouse for the third, which despite the longer commute I feel was a good move. Attendance did seem thinner than in previous years. This was probably due to visitors spread over a larger venue and across two days. One thing I like about BarCamp is that I get contact with people and ideas that I otherwise wouldn’t notice from FOSS gatherings like SLUG. BarCamp has considerably more proprietary software developers and entrepreneurs. Less Google, more Microsoft. As much as I love FOSS, I do like to see what’s happening in the rest of the ICT universe.

I made an effort this time to attend talks that were less technical and more business or personal development oriented. Stand-out speakers included Nick Hodge, Matt Moore and Richard Hayes.

Perhaps the highlight was the Saturday evening. Mike from Atlassian led us through a few rounds of Werewolf, a variation (and an improvement, IMHO) of the classic Mafia game. I still can’t believe that we didn’t deplete the bar tab that Mike set up for us. We’ll have to have SLUG’s DebSIG present at BarCamp 4

LotD: OpenOffice.org en masse in NSW schools!

My last post made me revisit an internal debate that I’ve been having for a number of years: what licence should I publish my works under? There has been plenty of work done on this with regards to software, but what about documentation and other works? What licence can I use for my guide to Linux and FLOSS, or just for my blog?

If I was a coder and not a writer, the answer in my mind would be much simpler. The GNU GPL allows me to give back to the community from which I have gained so much, and it also allows me to leverage a vast horde of pre-existing code.

The culture in other creative areas appears to be somewhat different. I often see licences such as the Creative Commons, using combinations of the Share Alike, Attribution, Non-Commercial, and No Derivative Works clauses. I see several problems with these. Share Alike is most in line with my principles, being in the same quid pro quo spirit of copyleft. Attribution is reminiscent of the ‘obnoxious’ advertising clause in the original BSD licence, and as far as I can see carries the same potential problems. Non-Commercial restricts works to the amateur field. As long as changes are shared back in their entirety to help everyone, why shouldn’t anyone be allowed to commercially benefit? There is hardly a scarcity of projects in the Free Software realm that are improving in leaps and bounds thanks to commercial input. Because those improvements need to be shared back, everyone benefits. No Derivative Works is a restriction that puts the work behind glass for people to look at but not touch. It’s no different from freeware. What’s the point?

Should works such as prose, documentation, graphics, audio and video be treated any differently from code? All of the Creative Commons licences have an Attribution provision. Many of us in the Free Software community would baulk at that, just as we did with XFree86. I understand that people like to be credited for their work, but is it worth it if it comes at the expense of the community as a whole? If I’m going to be basing my work upon that of others, must I spend time and effort ensuring that I’m legally abiding by all the attribution provisions? Do I need to bookend it with a long list of credits? If I was writing software, do I need an About menu item that includes everyone in the White Pages, along with their genealogy stretching back to Creation?

It looks like a Creative Commons licence with only a Share Alike provision would suit my needs, but such a beast doesn’t exist. Is there a reason why creators of non-code works don’t feel the same sense of community as coders? Why the strong need for recognition?

Let’s look at one example. All Wikipedia content is published under the GNU Free Documentation License (sic). Nobody seems to mind posting without attribution within the articles. This encourages easy and unrestricted editing, ranging from simple spelling/grammar corrections to establishing a new article or rewriting an existing one. The attributions are automatically kept separately, in the wiki history. Similarly, established code projects almost always have some sort of revision control system to manage and track contributions.

Can this be done with other, non-code projects? Wikis often work well for text. Document management systems like Alfresco and Plone exist for more complicated document arrangements, but the emphasis is still on text. I have seen efforts for other kinds of media, but I have no idea how mature or appropriate those are. Nevertheless, it is often too complex and burdensome for the average person to implement such systems.

That brings us back to my legal navigations through the sea of licensing. At first look, the GNU Free Documentation License looks like the way to go. With the Free Software Foundation and Wikipedia seal of approval, how could one go wrong? Not so fast there, mate. Examination by the debian-legal team found it to not be in compliance with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. This is in disagreement with the Free Software Foundation (who don’t believe there’s a problem), but regardless it means that if I choose this licence my work will never be compatible with Debian. That is not something I can be comfortable with. Unfortunately, debian-legal don’t explicitly seem to offer any alternative licence to use. Most of their documentation I have examined, like the Debian New Maintainers’ Guide, go with the GPL. Their own Web site has chosen the Open Publication License (sic). This is more likely than not to be an artefact of the past: Wikipedia calls the licence “largely defunct”.

Obviously, Debian isn’t the only game in town. Let’s see what some of the other major FLOSS projects are up to. Both GNOME and KDE have standardised their documentation around the GNU FDL. Ubuntu and Gentoo use the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence, with the notable exception of the Ubuntu Packaging Guide, which is GPL to maintain compatibility with Debian development documentation. Fedora make the effort to list and explain ‘good’ and ‘bad’ licences, for software, documentation, typefaces and other forms of content. They don’t mention the GPL for documentation or other non-code content.

That doesn’t mean that the GPL is not usable for non-code works. The Free Software Foundation don’t explicitly recommend the GPL for documentation, but they do have it listed as a licence “for works besides software and documentation”. They go on to explain: “The GNU GPL can be used for general data which is not software, as long as one can determine what the definition of “source code” refers to in the particular case.” I am not a lawyer — what exactly does this mean? I think it’s clear enough for documentation/prose, but for other content types this can get considerably more hairy. Is there a guide out there for using the GPL for non-code works? Something along the lines of the Software Freedom Law Center’s (sic) recently-released Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects would be brilliant.

With these things considered, I’m currently leaning towards using the GPL for my work, perhaps with a little message requesting (but not requiring) attribution. As much as I can determine, this would not break compatibility with an unmodified GPL. Alternatively, I could just go with the GNU FDL, despite its shortcomings. I’d be interested to hear people’s wisdom, knowledge and experiences with this.

LotD: Best. Talk. Ever!

Last night, SLUG’s monthly meeting played host to four representatives from Microsoft:

• Sarah Bond, Platform Strategy Manager. Sarah was present to talk about Microsoft’s current position with OOXML, especially with regards to the interoperability with Linux.

• Amit Pawer, National Technology Specialist. He specialises in Windows Server technologies.

• Alistair Speirs, Technology Specialist - Office. His background is in Java and .NET development.

• Rosemary Stark, Product Manager, Windows Server and Infrastructure Products.

This unsurprisingly caused much consternation and controversy within the Australian FOSS community in the weeks leading up to the event, and I (being its organiser, and hence the target of much vitriol) ended up spending much time gauging and responding to the opinions and ideas raised.

We wanted this to be an open community-led Q&A session, and to their credit Microsoft were obliging. Admittedly, I would have saved much sanity and hours of work if people had posted to the wiki as asked, but having to transcribe from the mailing lists to the wiki allowed me to think more about the questions and how they should be worded and ordered. I need no reminder of Microsoft’s transgressions, but I made sure to keep IBM in mind (as a company that was once considered an anathema to software freedom but has now largely reformed) and take an optimistic approach.

Pia was of great help here (as always!). With so many questions and only an hour and a half in which to ask them, we decided to cull the non-constructive, accusative and just plain trolling questions. By the end, Pia had compiled a list that was fairly encompassing of the major issues concerning supporters of competition, technology and freedom.

As I arrived at the venue, I found that our guests had beaten me and were actively helping to get the furniture into place. This allowed us to get better acquainted before the meeting. It was clear (and they openly admitted) that they had been following our open discussion process on mailing lists and the SLUG wiki. Really, they would have been daft not to do so

I handled the introduction, then turning the microphone over to our guests to introduce themselves. Sarah Bond launched into a presentation on OOXML, in the process answering several of the questions we had on the wiki. I left Pia to officiate most of the meeting, but I chimed in on occasion with both pointed and irreverent questions and comments that were not on the list.

We will be releasing the video of the meeting as soon as we are able, so I shan’t explain its contents too much. Some interesting points though:

• In the list of rules for the meeting, I put ‘Asking “Why do you eat babies?” doesn’t help anyone.’ I initially felt bad when I met Sarah and realised that she is pregnant! She was a good sport about it though, and we all had a good laugh
• In her presentation, Sarah mentioned that Microsoft will be releasing the specs to their binary Office file formats in mid-February (UPDATE: it’s confirmed!). I’m still not sure if I heard this one right (it’s a lot to swallow!), so if someone can confirm this I’d appreciate it. They made no bones about this being part of their drive to promote OOXML acceptance.
• Not new, but news to us, is the fact that Windows 2003 has a DRM infrastructure which they call RMS, short for Rights Management Services. I did cheekily ask them if the name was deliberate, and their attempts to seriously and politely address the question was priceless

Like with any other SLUG meeting, we went out for Chinese food afterwards. Three of our guests joined us (it’s a shame that Sarah couldn’t come, but being pregnant isn’t easy). Did we have dinner with the Devil? It certainly didn’t feel that way. Once we put our differences aside, we realised that we have an awful lot in common. We are all geeks at heart, and some of the MS people have and continue to dabble in Unix and FOSS technologies such as Python.

Were we successful? It depends on how you look at it. From my perspective of trying to build trust and understanding, without dwelling too much on (but certainly not ignoring) the past, I think so. Asking loaded questions and making our guests feel uncomfortable might have brought some short-term satisfaction to some of us, but would it have achieved anything? There were some inappropriate comments from the audience going in both directions (one of the loudest people actually seemed to be pro-Microsoft), but those people were easily outnumbered by the more sensible majority. My original fears of the crowd devolving into a senseless rabble dissipated rapidly, and I am very pleased and proud of our community for that.

I was initially disappointed by our turn out, but that feeling changed as the meeting progressed. Due to it being January, linux.conf.au being just around the corner (which siphoned a lot of our best and brightest) and the sensitive nature of the subject matter, we had a crowd that was smaller than expected, but felt more conversational and manageable.

If you were at the meeting, please let me know what you thought of it by posting a comment.

Sarah will be speaking again at LUV on February 5. If you’re in Melbourne for linux.conf.au, it might be worth extending your trip by a few days to see it. I would also suggest that you take inspiration from the list of questions that we have compiled. If our video is out by then, watch it to avoid repeating the questions that we’ve already asked (or pose follow-up questions).

My warmest thanks go to:

• the rest of the SLUG Committee (Lindsay Holmwood, Silvia Pfeiffer, Matt Moor, Ken Wilson, John Ferlito and James Dumay), for their support throughout
• Pia Waugh
• Anna, Matt and everyone who helped with setting up, packing up, recording and so on
• our guests from Microsoft, for being such good sports
• and of course, our community

P.S. Happy Invasion Day to Australians, and happy Anti-Invasion Day to Indians

It’s been indicated to me that I never put out a report on Software Freedom Day in Sydney. Well, better late than never

Advocates of free software celebrated at the University of New South Wales on 16 September for the fourth annual Software Freedom Day. Members of SLUG, Ubuntu-AU and the general FOSS community collaborated to spread the message of free software to the general public.

Interest and buzz was generated in the days leading-up to the event through a poster campaign across the campus. At the UNSW Computer Fair, we piqued the curiosity of many computer users with our displays, screencasts and spiels. Those who were enthusiastic migrated to our room in the nearby Law Building, where we could explain and demonstrate in greater detail. Not only did we have many expressions of interest from newcomers in free software and the free software community, we also succeeded in bringing those who already use FOSS into participation in the local community.

Regrettably, I was not able to take any decent photographs of the event. If anyone has pictures, I’d be grateful if they could be sent to me.

I would like to give a big word of thanks to everyone who helped on the day:

• Andreas Fischer
• Brendan Puckeridge
• David McQuire
• James Dumay
• Jim Tsao
• John Ferlito
• Ken Wilson
• Lindsay Holmwood
• Matt Moor
• Peter Baker
• Pia Waugh
• Rodger Dean
• Silvia Pfeiffer
• Anyone else who I may have forgotten (if I have, sorry!)

In addition, I would like to thank those who provided resources in support of our efforts:

• Computer Fairs Australia (tables at the computer fair)
• David Vaile, Abi Paramaguru and Alana Maurushat at the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre (room in the Law Building)
• John Schilit (IBM and Robocode materials)
• Solutions First (Unwired modem)
• Ubuntu Screencasts Team (screencasts and subtitles)
• Canonical (Ubuntu CDs)
• The worldwide free software community

LotD: Sign the petition for a Free Society and against Digital Restrictions Management and Treacherous Computing

Whilst codifying the plans for Software Freedom Day in Sydney, I decided to put together a mock press release. A little of the content is lifted from the SFD Web site. Feel free to modify it for your needs (localised to your city, etc.) and redistribute.

SYDNEY CELEBRATES SOFTWARE FREEDOM, THIS SUNDAY

For the second time running, The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has been selected to form the centrepiece of Software Freedom Day in Sydney.

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this annual celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere!

Have you ever had your computer software crash, lose data or get a virus? Imagine if after only a few years that the thesis that you worked on for ages was no longer readable, or that your precious home movies were no longer watchable. If you complain to the software company, they try to talk you into spending yet more money on an ‘upgrade’, which only turns out to be slower and buggier than the previous version. Ever bought a new music player, only to find that it refuses to play the music that worked just fine on your old player?

Unfortunately, most people are living in this world today.

Software Freedom Day exists to show the general public that there is a way out of this vicious cycle. Through the use of free software, you regain control over your computer and your data. Every person has the freedom to participate in and use free software, whether it be on a totally free operating system like Linux or on a non-free platform like Windows or Mac OS.

This Sunday, the Sydney FOSS community will demonstrate how easy it is to install and use free software to achieve a variety of tasks. Our activities shall gravitate around two venues in UNSW:

• At the computer fair in the Roundhouse (10am-3pm), we will be demonstrating FOSS technologies to vendors and visitors.
• In Law Room 203 (8am-5pm), we will be hosting a series of talks and tutorials.

We will also have people roaming around campus spreading the news. We will be happy to answer any questions that you may have pertaining to FOSS. We will have CDs and other items to hand out, to get you started. If you bring (or buy at the fair) a USB drive, we can transfer free software onto it for you.

If you’re buying hardware at the fair, we can help you to get it running with FOSS. If you’re a student, or just plain curious, we can show you how you can maximise the potential of your computer, all at no cost to you.

Unlike with non-free software, FOSS is typified by extensive community networks that are able to provide detailed support should you need help. Examples include the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG), which hosts e-mail lists, monthly meetings, and other events for people of all skill levels.

With the financial support of IT market leaders like IBM, HP, Dell, Intel and Google, as well as countless governmental bodies and companies in other industries, FOSS is growing from strength to strength at a phenomenal rate.

If you have any further questions, please see our list of resources below. Otherwise, come and see us on Sunday, and we’ll show you in person!

If you’d like to get involved as a volunteer, read our plans for the day (linked below).

 

RESOURCES

• To view our plans for the day, see http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/teams/oceania/au/Sydney
• For more information on the meaning of Software Freedom Day, see http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/about
• For more information on FOSS, see http://www.linux.org.au/linux

LotD:  I never got around to writing about the Education Expo, so I’ll point to Pia’s writeup. 

Tighten your belts and buckle your shoes, for Software Freedom Day is just around the corner! This year, the Sydney team is hosting their event one day late (on Sunday instead of Saturday), to take advantage of the computer fair at The University of New South Wales. We’ll have a couple of tables, which we shall be using to show off the wonders of FOSS to consumers, students and other vendors.

I have chronicled our plan at the Software Freedom Day wiki. If you’d like to get involved, please get in touch with me.

LotD:  Getting in Bed With the Customer (an oldie but a goodie)