What's in a name? And no, its not an acronym... Anyway, the article is a blog post about one Ken Holman who is stepping down from the ISO subcommittee responsible for SGML. The first part of the post is about the ISO name bit but the second part has to do with how some of the ISO committees operate and some possible changes in the wind especially in regards to our good friends at SC34 (you know, the document format handlers).

Apparently there is talk of setting up another working group to deal specifically with office document formats... it seems "the volume of work required of ODF and OOXML is threatening to overwhelm the members of those [existing] groups".

The MoJ have been working on an OSS strategy for some time. Barry Polley at the MOJ has released it today and given us permission to distribute its contents widely.

It is groundbreaking and I guarantee you will be pleased. Here are some pertinent quotes:

"The Ministry needs an explicit strategy to embrace the adoption and use of OSS."
"Knee-jerk prohibition of OSS is no longer feasible or cost-effective"
"government agencies have a much easier case justifying the use of OSS."

The New Zealand Open Source Society is participating in the next round of Standard New Zealand's review of the Microsoft/ECMA responses to ISO's NB comments for OOXML. You may recall Standards NZ voted "No - with comments" with regards to the proposed standard earlier in the year.

Standards NZ will be participating in ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting to be held in February next year.

Nice to see our Australian cousins getting up to speed on this one. The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre is hosting a symposium to which Standards Australia and a number of other luminaries are invited to. I believe one of the invitees represented NZOSS in the New Zealand equivalent event a few months ago. Should be an interesting discussion even though the registration for the ISO BRM will have closed by then...

Pia Waugh is also asking for help to find some documents on her blog. Hopefully someone will be able to provide the information she needs.

According to the preliminary findings of the Linux Foundation. The Register reports here with DesktopLinux coverage here.

The survey hasn't finished yet so you can still bias the results for your favourite distro here.

A positive bit of press from Computerworld here on the Open Source job market and how Red Hat try to operate in respect of that.

A bit of a writeup about the Asus Eee PC on stuff.co.nz here. Nice little machine. 512Mb ram, 4Gb flashdrive, Wireless, Ethernet, USB, smaller than a bread box, runs Linux and all for a smidge under $600.

Currently available at a DSE store near you... or maybe not as apparently they are selling like hotcakes here and overseas... I have even heard of people asking their NZ friends to purchase and ship as they have sold out in other parts of the world.

Check out the DSE listing here.

This one has been knocking around for a week or so now but is starting to take on a distinctly fishy smell. It seems that Mandriva won a bid to provide a customised linux installation on 17,000 Intel Classmate PC's to be supplied to Nigerian schools. Mandriva were then told that this deal had been unhooked and that 'Windows' would be installed instead, but Mandriva would still be paid...

Two weeks ago we held the first New Zealand Open Source Awards. It was a huge success, drawing among others Minister David Cunliffe and National MP Maurice Williamson. Winning the Open Source Use in Government Award was the State Services Commission - ITC Branch for both their promotion and use of open source, specifically their use of Plone. YouTube has coverage of the presentation.

Via Groklaw we have this welcome news. A nice little story about guidelines based on open standards. The preamble to the document itself is an interesting read on the reasons behind the move. It's something that many governments around the world say and thankfully are now also doing.

And here in New Zealand? At least ODF is in for 'Future Consideration' in the e-GIF.