The motto of Google is "Don't Be Evil". Its pretty easy to say something like this, but much harder to live up to. In the corporate world any action is moral if it benefits the share holders. So it is with not some inconsiderable astonishment that I find Google putting it's money where it's mouth is and actually acting morally by pulling out of China rather than continue to censor their search results.

NZOSS and Victoria University Announce Public Sector Remix IT Vendor Capability Survey Results

The New Zealand Open Source Society and Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Information Management today announced the results of an IT vendor capability survey, carried out as part of the Public Sector Remix project.

The Remix project involves a number of central, regional and local government agencies working together to trial free software for common desktop tasks such as document management, mail, calendar and browser-based information services.

On Tuesday next week Mark Osborne of Albany Senior High School will be presenting on the Open Source Information Technology systems he has employed at the school. The presentation will be held at the school at 7:30pm. Albany Senior is a leader in deployment of open source technology, and has even enabled it's students to create their own audio visual system. It is a excellent example for other schools to follow.

Apologies to anyone who noticed a loss of service @ lists.nzoss.org.nz this morning between 0100 and 0900 NZDT. A power glitch in the central Wellington area caused the server concerned to drop briefly - but also caused the network it connects to to experience an outage for several hours. Any email waiting should now have dequeued, and all is back up and running.

Albany Senior High School has implemented Open Source from the ground up, running on Linux and using Open Source applications to support their mission to equip the next generation for a technological world. This story in CIO Magazine covers how Albany High School implemented open source in their school. The Blog of the Deputy Principle can be found here.

Today is the start of linux.conf.au in Wellington. Computerworld is covering the conference here.

NZOSS members attending the LCA2010 event are invited to attend a 'BoF' (Birds of a Feather) currently scheduled for Thursday afternoon, 4.45pm until 5.30pm.

The venue will be 'Civic Suite 3' and those interested should keep an eye on the official LCA2010 BoF's register for details.

See you then!

The release of a cabinet paper today by Minister of Justice Simon Power was a relief to the Creative Freedom Foundation which had been opposing Internet disconnection on accusation. Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, Director of the Creative Freedom Foundation was relieved on reading the details of the Cabinet paper, saying ”this new proposal steers well clear of that [disconnection] approach, respecting due process and the principle of being innocent until proven guilty by experts.”

The Ministry of Economic Development have continued to refuse opening of the text of the ACTA agreement currently under negotiation. In a meeting with the Ministry today Don Christie, President of the NZOSS, asked if the Ministry could publish a section of the text. After leaks of the text earlier in the year there is concern that the agreement will force legislative changes that were strongly opposed by a large portion of the New Zealand IT industry, including the NZOSS and InternetNZ.

Don Christie is more than the President of the NZOSS. He has been operating his Wellington based IT company, Catalyst IT for 12 years. In this NZ Herald article he describes the principles he founded his business on, and how the relationship between the open source community and commercial organisations such as his work. Catalyst are involved heavily with the public sector, but are also addressing the needs of educational institutions.