'Til All Are One

Yes, this is quite belated. I’ll explain why in a sub­sequent post.

linux​.conf​.au this year was in Wel­ling­ton, New Zea­l­and. It just keeps get­ting bet­ter! It’s always great meet­ing people you oth­er­wise only know online. I was espe­cially impressed by the OLPC NZ team.

Imme­di­ately fol­low­ing linux​.conf​.au, I jumped on a plane to Christ­ch­urch to embark on a week-​​long tour of the South Island. Long story short, it was the time of my life! I made some amaz­ing friends. I also saw and did incred­ible things, including:

• awe-​​inspiring views of gla­ciers, glacially-​​formed land­scapes, turquoise-​​coloured rivers and lakes, beau­ti­ful skies and more
• heli­hike: a heli­copter trip onto a gla­cier, then hik­ing on it
• a night on a boat on Mil­ford Sound, prob­ably the most beau­ti­ful place on Earth
• every extreme activ­ity I could get my hands on, including:
  • three bungy jumps (thril­logy combo): Kawa­rau Bridge (43 metres), Nevis (134m) and Ledge (47m)
  • two swings: two of the scar­i­est jump styles — Back­wards and Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood
  • a 15,000ft sky­dive
  • the Triple Chal­lenge: a Shotover jet boat ride, fol­lowed by a heli­copter trans­fer to raft­ing on the Shotover river
    
  • a wil­der­ness safari along the Dart River, includ­ing walks through forests and a scenic jet boat ride

I have most of my pho­tos online now:

• 2010-​​01-​​24 New Zea­l­and hol­i­day, Day 1, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​24 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 1, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​25 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 2, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​25 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 2, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​26 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 3, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​26 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 3, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​26 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 3, pt 3
• 2010-​​01-​​27 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 4, pt 1
• 2010-​​01-​​27 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 4, pt 2
• 2010-​​01-​​27 New Zea­l­and Hol­i­day, Day 4, pt 3

I think what sur­prised me most was how adven­tur­ous I can be when I’m not in my ‘nat­ural hab­itat’. I’m not nor­mally a thrill­seeker at all, but in NZ I made the decision to take a hol­i­day from myself as well as from work and home. I even made a con­cer­ted effort to not touch com­puters at all. My phone was off­line for most of the trip (I was using it as a cam­era). I never thought that being cut-​​off could feel so liberating.

I don’t get it. In a com­munity where open­ness is prized, some have seen it fit to cri­ti­cise that very tenet. In the world of FOSS, bug track­ers are laid open for all to see (and con­trib­ute to), and mail­ing lists are a hive of dis­cus­sion and innovation.

So why is it such a bad thing when we openly dis­cuss the nature of our com­munity, and the gov­ernance thereof? Kevin Rudd was widely praised for his prom­ises to pro­mote open gov­ern­ment (we’re still wait­ing, Kevin).

To put any uncer­tainty to rest: Linux Aus­tralia is in great shape. We just had yet another suc­cess­ful linux​.conf​.au and have built up a sub­stan­tial pot of sav­ings, all in the face of a global fin­an­cial melt­down. We are indeed in an envi­able pos­i­tion, and we could not have done it had we not stayed true to our beliefs. Linux Aus­tralia is defined by its com­munity sup­port and participation.

Can we do bet­ter? Of course we can. What I’ve tried to artic­u­late is that the best means of doing that is by scal­ing our com­munity. To use a code ana­logy, I effect­ively pos­ted a pub­lic bug report and invited the com­munity to help find solu­tions. You don’t see that level of trans­par­ency from many other organ­isa­tions, and I for one am very proud of that.

The FOSS com­munity in Aus­tralia will con­tinue to grow and thrive — any­body who went to linux​.conf​.au should be con­vinced of that. The bazaar feel is stronger than ever, and Linux Aus­tralia will con­tinue to hold a vital role in stim­u­lat­ing and facil­it­at­ing that devel­op­ment. But to do so in a man­ner that best suits the community’s interests requires some delib­er­a­tion, plan­ning and com­mu­nic­a­tion with the very com­munity that it seeks to assist. What’s wrong with that?

If only my local MP was as in touch with his constituents…

LotD: OpenAus­tralia, open source good­ness applied to gov­ern­ment

It looks like I’ve opened up a can of worms. Last week I bemoaned about the low voter par­ti­cip­a­tion in Linux Aus­tralia (LA) elec­tions. I spent con­sid­er­able energy at linux​.conf​.au (LCA) in Hobart pub­li­cising the issue and can­vassing opin­ion from com­munity mem­bers. This cul­min­ated in a light­ning talk titled ‘YOU PEOPLE SUCK’*, where I angrily chas­tised the com­munity for not par­ti­cip­at­ing in Linux Aus­tralia. The fury was in jest, but the call to arms was not.

It seems now that the media has grabbed a hold of the mat­ter. Frankly, I’m glad that this issue has been brought to the fore. It has been a cata­lyst for con­tem­pla­tion and debate, which in my opin­ion is the hall­mark of an open com­munity. In my chats with vari­ous people over the mat­ter, a few reas­ons crop up. These aren’t all neces­sar­ily true, but if they are believed by a sub­stan­tial sec­tion of our com­munity, they’d might as well be.

• I don’t want to pay anything

Mem­ber­ship of Linux Aus­tralia is free, as in beard! LA makes a tidy profit from LCA and sponsorships.

• I don’t know any­thing about LA
• I don’t see how LA is rel­ev­ant to me
• I don’t see LA doing anything

These three are prob­ably the most dis­turb­ing. LA must strive to mar­ket itself bet­ter and to prove its worth in the com­munity. We’ve come a long way, but I do see some areas where we could improve. For instance, I’ve found over the years that many LCA attendees don’t under­stand the rela­tion­ship between LA and LCA. LCA is an LA event, and we shouldn’t let any­one for­get it. Other areas where we could improve include sup­port for local groups, par­tic­u­larly LUGs. Vari­ous pro­jects have been in the works for a while now, but unfor­tu­nately we’ve all been con­strained by Real Life. We should be bet­ter util­ising that fam­ous open source scalab­il­ity to fix these problems.

• LA is too opaque
• I’m not good enough to participate

The sen­ti­ments above are com­plete ana­thema to a work­ing demo­cracy, and they should be dis­patched with accord­ingly. Yes it’s (gen­er­ally) true that the open source world is a mer­ito­cracy, but that should not dis­suade any cas­ual per­son from hav­ing their input.

• I don’t know any of the candidates
• I don’t have any spe­cific objec­tions or pref­er­ences regard­ing the candidates

The former is a reflec­tion of our diverse and geo­graph­ic­ally dis­trib­uted com­munity. The lat­ter might have some cros­sover with apathy, but gen­er­ally it’s an expres­sion that none of the can­did­ates are offens­ive enough to vote against (the black­list approach to vot­ing) or pref­er­en­tial enough to vote for. Enthu­si­asms can go both ways — an unpop­u­lar group of can­did­ates might be enough to mobil­ise an increased num­ber of votes against them.

• I can’t make it to the AGM, and so can­not vote
• I thought I was already a mem­ber after sub­scrib­ing to the mail­ing lists
• I thought I was already a mem­ber after regis­ter­ing for linux​.conf​.au
• The vot­ing form is dif­fi­cult to find
• The vot­ing sys­tem is confusing

These come down to the design and com­mu­nic­a­tion sur­round­ing our Web prop­er­ties. We use Mem­berDB as our online mem­ber­ships and vot­ing sys­tem, and hence there is no need to phys­ic­ally present your­self to vote (do it in your undies for all I care; just make sure the web­cam is off). Each mail­ing list has a Mail­man login, the Web site has another, and Mem­berDB has yet one more. LCA each year tends to have its own soft­ware infra­struc­ture entirely. The vot­ing form does indeed require much dig­ging to reach. There’s plenty of scope here for streamlining.

• I didn’t know the elec­tion was on
• The vot­ing period is too short
• My regis­tra­tion wasn’t approved (in time)
• I signed up dur­ing the vot­ing period

The points above are mostly to do with pro­cess and pro­ced­ure. Elec­tions need to be pub­li­cised bet­ter. One per­son said to me that they were expect­ing a big ‘VOTE’ but­ton on the front page of linux​.org​.au, link­ing dir­ectly to the bal­lot form. Maybe another Coun­cil mem­ber can cor­rect me on this, but I gather it’s unof­fi­cial policy not to accept new mem­ber­ships dur­ing the vot­ing pro­cess. Given that Mem­berDB is designed to approx­im­ate the Aus­tralian elect­oral pro­cess, this should come as no sur­prise. How­ever, this is not stated any­where in pub­lic. Also, since new mem­ber­ships must be manu­ally con­firmed (a pre­cau­tion to stop spam and mul­tiple sign-​​ups) there will be an appre­ciable lag in the approvals pro­cess. Don’t expect the Coun­cil to have any time to accept new sign-​​ups dur­ing or close to LCA.

I am yet to hear the old ‘one vote doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence’ excuse, but just in case, you can read here on why this atti­tude is not helpful.

I’d be inter­ested to hear if you have any other reas­ons (and pro­posed solu­tions) for not regis­ter­ing with Linux Aus­tralia and vot­ing in the elec­tions. I’d recom­mend that you take part in the dis­cus­sion on the linux-​​aus mail­ing list, oth­er­wise you can post a com­ment here or con­tact me dir­ectly if you’d prefer some privacy.

I won’t pre­tend to have all the answers, or pos­sess some magic map of where we should be going. I’m just another com­munity mem­ber like any­one else, who is inter­ested in see­ing us move for­wards. Please con­sider assist­ing LA to address these problems.

LotD: blue​hack​ers​.org

* yes, caps are mandatory

This is a follow-​​on from my last post, where I announced my can­did­acy for Linux Aus­tralia Coun­cil. I’ve pos­ted this to the linux-​​aus mail­ing list, but thought it wouldn’t hurt going here as it raises issues that I feel are fun­da­mental to Linux Australia’s existence.

I’m a can­did­ate for Ordin­ary Com­mit­tee Mem­ber (shouldn’t that be Ordin­ary Coun­cil Mem­ber now?). Before I repeat the spiel I made on the Elec­tions page, I’d like to talk about what I feel LA rep­res­ents in out com­munity. There’s the obvi­ous linux​.conf​.au, which proves year-​​after-​​year to be a world-​​class con­fer­ence. Linux Aus­tralia rep­res­ents the FOSS com­munity through­out Aus­tralia (and going by LCA2006, per­haps also New Zea­l­and in a way). It brings together the dis­par­ate groups through­out the country/​region and gives them one voice. The com­munity is thus able to be more influ­en­tial as whole.

This leads into my ori­ginal spiel, where I extoled the val­ues of scalab­il­ity in our com­munity. Through enhanced sup­port of grass-​​roots groups, Linux Aus­tralia will be able to grow the com­munity in a more sus­tain­able manner..

One pat­tern I dis­covered when examin­ing pre­vi­ous LA elec­tions is the low voter turnout. On most years the total num­ber (not per­cent­age) of votes was around 65–70. Why is this the case? Do we need to be doing more to engage the com­munity? Are we not well-​​known enough? Are we not trans­par­ent enough? These are issues that we should be addressing.

The Linux Aus­tralia Coun­cil elec­tions are in full swing, and I thought it only fair to abuse my blog to pimp my can­did­acy for an Ordin­ary Com­mit­tee Mem­ber pos­i­tion. You’re an LA mem­ber (it’s free!), drop in and exer­cise your demo­cratic right (i.e. vote for me :p ).

My offi­cial plat­form is as follows:

I have been par­ti­cip­at­ing in the FOSS com­munity for over ten years. I have man­aged Linux Australia’s pres­ences at CeBIT and the Edu­ca­tion Expo. I have also rep­res­en­ted LA at other events such as the Moodle Con­fer­ence in 2006, and was the lead video encoder at the A/​V Team at linux​.conf​.au 2007.

For the past two years I have been serving on the SLUG Com­mit­tee (includ­ing one term as Pres­id­ent), organ­ising most of its meet­ings in that time and run­ning events like Soft­ware Free­dom Day.

A key focus of my efforts in the com­munity over the past few years has been to foster co-​​operation between groups and con­trib­ut­ors. As an Linux Aus­tralia Coun­cil mem­ber, I feel that I would be even more effect­ive in this endeavour.

The won­der­ful thing about free soft­ware code devel­op­ment is that it can scale so well. I would like to see a sim­ilar level of scalab­il­ity with the wider com­munity out­side of the cod­ing realm. LA is uniquely posi­tioned to provide the resources and sup­port to enable com­munity mem­bers and groups to achieve great things. The bene­fits of this are many-​​fold:

• it makes it easier to engage, hence break­ing down sep­ar­a­tions between con­trib­ut­ors and users;
• it grows the com­munity of contributors;
• it allows us to do more and bet­ter things on the whole; and
• it aids to reduce depend­ence on a small group of act­ors, thereby address­ing the ever-​​present danger of burn-​​out amongst contributors.

We must remem­ber, how­ever, that the ‘com­munity’ is much lar­ger than the mem­ber­ship of LA and LUGs. I have come across many people who are inter­ested in some aspect of ‘Linux’ or ‘open source’ but know very little about LA or their local LUG. In many cases, their interests are more dir­ectly served by other groups, such as:

• industry asso­ci­ations (e.g. OSIA)
• lan­guage groups (Java, Python, etc.)
• other oper­at­ing sys­tems groups (OpenSol­aris, Mac OS, etc.)
• stand­ards bod­ies (IEEE, W3C, etc.)
• com­puter clubs
• groups devoted to a field (edu­ca­tion, embed­ded, etc.)

LA has a fant­astic com­munity, but in the grand scheme of things it is but one of many. I hope — in an offi­cial Linux Aus­tralia capa­city — to improve net­work­ing with these other organ­isa­tions to grow the over­all com­munity and extend the reach of free and open source soft­ware to more sec­tors of society.

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​.dhanap​a​lan​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​6​/​2​9​/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​e​x​p​o​-​r​e​p​o​rt/

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://​opene​duca​tion​.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://​opene​duca​tion​.org​.au address.

Why do this when we already have http://​linux​.org​.au/​e​d​u​c​a​t​ion? 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, Open​Of​fice​.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 opene​duca​tion​.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​.openschoolsal​li​ance​.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/​e​d​u​c​a​t​ion, 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: OpenAus​tralia​.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 Open​Of​fice​.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 Open​Of​fice​.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://​link​pot​.net/​r​a​v​i​n​es/
• http://​link​pot​.net/​d​e​t​h​r​o​ne/
• http://​link​pot​.net/​t​r​e​m​o​l​os/

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/​l​i​nux
• http://​linux​.org​.au/​e​d​u​c​a​t​ion

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

Lately, I’ve been think­ing more than ever about ways to pro­mote free and open source soft­ware to a non-​​technical crowd. This has largely been promp­ted by the Edu­ca­tion Expo in Sydney, for which I am co-​​ordinating the Linux Aus­tralia stand (Stand F9). Cur­rently on my mind is Open CeBIT, which is right around the corner. I’ve been doing some (for­tu­nately not all) plan­ning for two stands, my employer’s and Linux Australia’s.

Here are some thoughts I have had regard­ing FOSS mar­ket­ing. It’s a bit of a jumble, but hope­fully it comes of some help.

• Mar­ket­ing is just struc­tured, meth­od­ical, non-​​rabid evan­gel­ism. It isn’t inher­ently dirty, and it is not syn­onym­ous with advert­ising (advert­ising can be a part of mar­ket­ing, but the two aren’t con­joined). We in the FOSS com­munity need to get over the stigma that is some­times attached to ‘mar­ket­ing’, so that we may har­ness it for good and not evil.
• Identify your tar­get audi­ence, then determ­ine what kinds of ques­tions they will be asking/​thinking. This is Mar­ket­ing 101, but it can be easy to lose sight of. While can be good to cast a wide net, being tac­tic­ally focused can often yield bet­ter res­ults. For the Edu­ca­tion Expo we have a leaf­let spe­cific­ally for stu­dents, and for CeBIT we have one for busi­nesses.
• As a follow-​​on from the pre­vi­ous point, know whom to keep on-​​side. While your school/​university might be using Microsoft products, that doesn’t neces­sar­ily mean that they are in bed with Bill Gates. Don’t assume malice when the more likely reason is simple ignor­ance or mis­un­der­stand­ing. Writ­ing an accus­at­ive art­icle in your stu­dent paper might give you a tem­por­ary sense of sat­is­fac­tion, but such a hos­tile approach is more than likely to back­fire on you and cement the Establishment’s neg­at­ive (or lack of) opin­ion on FOSS. Try to gently edu­cate, not censure.
• Rel­ev­ant case stud­ies are pure gold. If you’re deal­ing with the edu­ca­tion sec­tor, talk about suc­cess­ful school deploy­ments, inter­est­ing pro­jects like One Laptop Per Child and appro­pri­ate devices like the Asus Eee PC.
• Ref­er­en­cing hon­est, inde­pend­ent stud­ies can be much more per­suas­ive than refer­ring to press releases or vendor-​​sponsored reports.
• There are some angles that might not dir­ectly apply to the tar­get professions/​market, but might peri­pher­ally be of interest to people. This includes things like the bene­fits to the local eco­nomy and industry, the envir­on­ment, gov­ern­ment and so on.
• Most people either have chil­dren, are chil­dren or have a soft spot for chil­dren. FOSS is great for kids and edu­ca­tion, so be able to talk about that! Par­ents are always look­ing for ways to get their kids engaged in fun and con­struct­ive activ­it­ies, if only so that they can have five minutes of peace and quiet in the house
• Focus on value, not cost. It might not cost any­thing to acquire and use FOSS, but people are nat­ur­ally scep­tical of things that are pro­moted as hav­ing no cost (and really, who can blame them?). Lead­ing your argu­ment with “it’s free” leaves people to won­der if there is a catch or if the product is of a lesser qual­ity. To take Open​Of​fice​.org as an example, it com­pares very favour­ably to Microsoft Office in terms of func­tion­al­ity and of course free­dom. To stress the ‘free­ware’ angle is to sell it short, and could leave your listener to believe that it’s just an ‘el cheapo’ knock-​​off. The fact that many com­pan­ies (e.g. Sun, Nov­ell, IBM) con­trib­ute to and bene­fit from OpenOffice.org’s devel­op­ment is evid­ence that it is of a high stand­ard and is of eco­nomic value. Fire­fox is a great example to use, as almost every­one has some famili­ar­ity with it. Fire­fox has benefited greatly from Google and AOL, to name but two major con­trib­ut­ors. In turn, these com­pan­ies have built busi­ness mod­els around it (not so much AOL these days, but they are still prob­ably the largest con­trib­utor overall).
• FOSS is very pro-​​free-​​market, and is in fact sim­ilar to the ideal held by many eco­nom­ists known as per­fect com­pet­i­tion. As already men­tioned, Linux has and con­tin­ues to be bene­fi­cial to a very wide range of com­pan­ies and industries.
• Free­dom is vital, but I find that people nor­mally don’t under­stand if you begin your explan­a­tion by talk­ing about dis­trib­uted devel­op­ment or Soft­ware Libre. Start by talk­ing about more obvi­ous bene­fits, like soft­ware qual­ity, rapid devel­op­ment, long-​​term afford­ab­il­ity, reli­ab­il­ity and so on. This will inev­it­ably lead people to won­der how this can be achieved, and of course the answer is that it is all Free Soft­ware. Then you have your open­ing to talk about soft­ware free­dom and the FOSS com­munity, and it will seem much more rel­ev­ant to your audi­ence. This isn’t a mat­ter of de-​​emphasising Free­dom, but rather a way to pre­pare your audi­ence so that they can be more recept­ive to it.
• Of course, there are the age-​​old argu­ments versus Win­dows sur­round­ing speed, vir­uses, and so on. But it is bet­ter to keep the Microsoft-​​bashing to a min­imum. Going off on an anti-​​Microsoft rant only fuels those who like to falsely label FOSS sup­port­ers as communists/​anarchists/​anti-​​capitalists.
• Nev­er­the­less, pro­pri­et­ary soft­ware is poten­tially cap­able of match­ing FOSS for qual­ity, speed, secur­ity, etc.. The one thing they can­not match is Free­dom. Free­dom is our fun­da­mental advantage.
• Ana­lo­gies to parts of every­day life can help to make people con­nect with the ideas behind FOSS. Simple things like shar­ing and modi­fy­ing recipes, lend­ing a book, open­ing the bon­net of your car and remix­ing music are already accep­ted (indeed, expec­ted) by the gen­eral popu­lace, and have dir­ect par­al­lels to the prin­ciples of FOSS.
• Speak­ing of ana­lo­gies and examples, appro­pri­ate ones are closer than you may think. Just about every­one uses FOSS in some form or other. Fire­fox, Open​Of​fice​.org, the GIMP, Google, You­tube, Face­book, Wiki­pe­dia and Apache are all great examples. There is noth­ing to be afraid of.
• Mac OS X users are already pro­lific users of FOSS, as their oper­at­ing sys­tem con­tains some BSD, Samba, CUPS and more. They are famil­iar with FOSS without even know­ing it.
• EULAs and DRM mean that the soft­ware or media file that you just bought isn’t really owned by you. Your rights are restric­ted and can be revoked at any time. This should be cause for con­cern for any consumer.
• It might help to cap­it­al­ise Free Soft­ware in doc­u­ment­a­tion, as a means of emphasis and to dif­fer­en­ti­ate from freeware.
• Be hon­est! Free soft­ware is inher­ently hon­est and account­able by vir­tue of being open. We should be using his hon­esty and open­ness as our advant­age. Remem­ber that there’s a dif­fer­ence between explain­ing some­thing in an attract­ive way and out­right lying. Don’t make FOSS sound bet­ter than it really is. Noth­ing is per­fect, and if you make FOSS sound per­fect you’ll likely be met with sus­pi­cion. Linux isn’t Win­dows — it does look an feel dif­fer­ent. But it’s not neces­sar­ily any bet­ter or worse (depend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar soft­ware in ques­tion), it’s just a bit dif­fer­ent. If you lead people to think that Open​Of​fice​.org is the same as Microsoft Office, they might rail against it at the slight­est dif­fer­ence they find. It’s dif­fer­ent, but cer­tainly no more dif­fer­ent than Office 2003 is from Office 2007. At the end of the day, it’s about man­aging expect­a­tions — por­tray­ing FOSS in a pos­it­ive light but not cre­at­ing unreal­istic hopes. The last thing we want are a bat­talion of users dis­gruntled because they expec­ted FOSS to be able to vacuum their house. Those people will be far less likely to try FOSS again, even years later.
• As a corol­lary of the pre­vi­ous point, advocacy is about man­aging expect­a­tions. Set real­istic expect­a­tions and people will be less likely to be dis­ap­poin­ted in the longer term.
• Avoid sound­ing like you’re selling snake oil. Copi­ous use of all-​​caps, bold text and exclam­a­tion marks runs the risk of mak­ing your well-​​intentioned writ­ing look like just another scam.
• Be pos­it­ive! People don’t want to read bad news, and there’s plenty of good stuff to say about FOSS. Hon­esty takes pri­or­ity, but phrase it well.
• Be pre­pared to fight FUD, but remain positive.
• Free soft­ware is more trust­worthy. Would you trust your pri­vacy and sens­it­ive data (Web brows­ing his­tory, e-​​mail, fin­an­cial records, etc.) to non-​​auditable soft­ware? Iden­tity theft and other forms of cyber­crime are a major and under­ap­pre­ci­ated prob­lem. The old asser­tion that nobody would bother to “hack” into your home com­puter is mis­lead­ing, as most intru­sions are made by bots and worms.
• A pic­ture can tell a thou­sand words. A video can tell a mil­lion. A good screen­cast works won­ders. If you’re run­ning a stand at an expo, have a mon­itor play­ing a pile of screen­casts in a con­tinu­ous loop, with sub­titles (because people are unlikely to be able to hear any­thing on a crowded show floor).
• Inter­na­tion­al­isa­tion and Access­ib­il­ity can be power­ful draw­cards for some, espe­cially those of non-​​English speak­ing backgrounds.
• Not every­body loves FOSS (yet), but few can argue against the mer­its of open stand­ards. Most FOSS is built around open standards.
• Open stand­ards are at least as import­ant as Free Soft­ware. Don’t con­flate the two — pro­pri­et­ary soft­ware can employ open stand­ards. Even if someone rejects Open​Of​fice​.org, I’d feel some solace know­ing that they’re con­vert­ing their MS Office doc­u­ments to PDF (an open stand­ard) for shar­ing with others.
• Make it as easy as pos­sible for people to get involved. Hand out CDs or DVDs with soft­ware use­ful to your audi­ence, like Ubuntu/​Edubuntu and the OpenDisc/​OpenE­duca­tionDisc. Don’t expect people to jump ship straight to Linux. Let them get their feet wet first with FOSS apps on Win­dows, LiveCDs, dual boots and so on. Baby steps are much easier to make than massive strides.
• Wel­come people to get involved in your com­munity. Ask them to join your mail­ing lists. Invite them to your next LUG meet­ing. Make sure they are fully aware that there’s a vibrant com­munity out there to help them. They can even make friends and employment/​business contacts.
• There’s only so much that you can include in a short article/​spiel, so be sure to refer to other resources that have more inform­a­tion. Quote or link to sources if you feel they do a good job — there’s no sense in try­ing to rein­vent the wheel. Nobody wants a link farm, though. Be select­ive in your ref­er­ences so that people don’t feel overwhelmed.
• And finally, keep it short and sweet. I’ve lis­ted a lot of points here, but if you tried to cover them all in one go you will end up with a speech/​document that is unac­cept­ably long or lack­ing in depth (like this one! ). Split them up, or struc­ture them so that the basic mes­sage is passed early on, with the rest being elaboration/​explanation.

We’ve got lots of good stuff to say about FOSS, but what mat­ters is not so much what we say but how we say it.