The New Zealand Open Source Society is a charitable, non-profit organisation set up to educate, advocate and advance the use of Free and Open Source Software in Government, Business and Society in New Zealand. Read More
New to Free and Open Source Software? Learn how to educate, advocate and advance the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in New Zealand. Read More
We exist to share the freedom of open source software, open standards, and open information for the benefit of New Zealand. Do you want to help? Read More
Free and Open Source Software exists for the benefit of all. The NZOSS provides some basic community services as alternatives to large commercial organisations. Read More
By joining the NZOSS you are promoting Free and Open Source Software in New Zealand, advocating against Software Patents, and supporting open, sustainable, collaborative, and effective computing. Read More
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:
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
After a slow nomination period, the NZOSS' Special General Meeting has been rescheduled for 28-30 November. We have now got five nominees for NZOSS Council's five seats, plus the two incumbents for the Executive are standing again, uncontested.
The nominees are 3 incumbent Councillors:
The NZOSS interim council is calling a Special General Meeting for the
period of Sun 18 - Sat 24 August 2019. The purpose of that meeting will
be to
And it's the last day of LCA2019. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It has been a fantastic three (or five) days with lots of great presentations and other conversations. I've been to lots of conferences over the years but none of them have the positive vibe that LCA has.
Currently running at about half yesterdays temperature here in Christchurch... The quality of the weather might be fluctuating but the quality of the presentations is as high as ever!
