Thanks Dave
In July, Dave Lane resigned from the Council of the New Zealand Open Source Society. Dave is a stalwart of free and open source software in New Zealand. Among many other achievements, Dave was the President of the society for 9 years.
We support the National Library's plan to digitise its Overseas Published Collections
NZOSS supports Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa National Library of New Zealand's decision to digitise ~600k books with the help of the Internet Archive.
2020-2021 Council and Executive
Tēnā koutou! Apologies for the delay in reporting back. As our financial members have no doubt realised, the AGM week has passed without the need for a vote, as there were no contested roles - all the current councillors agreed to stand again and have been elected unopposed...
2020 NZOSS Financial report
As the NZOSS is a registered Charity our annual reports are published online as part of the Charities Register. Our general records are noted here and the 2020 financial records can be found under the Annual Returns tab.
2020 report from the Chair
Kia ora koutou.
Looking back at last year's report, I started with remarking that 2019 was a "strange year"... wow, little did I know what was coming.
Among other things, this year, we're going from a President's report to a Chair(person)'s report. And (spoiler alert) it only gets wackier.
This year, amazingly, two of our historical problems stopped being problems:
NZOSS response to MBIE proposal to extend Government Procurement rules.
We have taken the opportunity to respond to MBIEs discussion document on ‘Extending the Government Procurement Rules to government entities in the New Zealand public sector’. At present the Government Procurement rules are mandatory for around 135 entities in the Government and State Services and are recommended for the rest of the State and Public Sector including around 2,400 School boards and all of the district and regional councils plus a lot of other sundry organisations.
Our response is NO, this is not a good idea as the Procurement Rules for IT have not had the desired effect and have limited competition and innovation to a small number of players bound primarily to a single overseas vendor. We have proposed that the Rules remain as recommended guidance and that more attention is paid to ensuring that the desired better outcomes for Māori, Pasifika,regional businesses, and social enterprises mentioned in the document actually occurs.
Notice: 2020 NZOSS AGM and call for Council Nominations
Kia ora koutou,
The 2020 NZOSS AGM will take place during the week of 6-12 December 2020.
We are inviting nominations for Council and Executive (Chairperson and Deputy Chair), who will be elected during the AGM week.
What New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern means by developing an "open source" app for COVID-19 contact tracing with Singapore
In today's press conference, the Prime Minister mentioned that the New Zealand government is expressing interest in collaborating with Singapore while they "open source" their COVID-19 contact tracing app that's Bluetooth-enabled.
What does "open source" mean? And why is it important?
Covid-19 response - help for those learning/working/playing from home
The NZOSS is pleased to make crucial online services available to those who, in response to Covid-19 management measures, are (sensibly) learning or working (or playing) from home! Below are only two useful tools from among our many open source online services.
Draft of new NZOSS Constitution ready for review
At long last, we've got a draft of our new Constitution for your review.
There's a primary goal behind this rewrite of the Constitution: