In part 2 of this series I provided several options for organisations wanting to update their current Windows XP environment to a free and open source (FOSS) environment rather than a more recent Microsoft platform when Microsoft officially abandons its venerable Windows XP in April 2014.

On to the next challenge: once you've decided your organisation can be productive with a FOSS environment, you have to work out how to set up and maintain it.

Last week in the first instalment of this series, I introduced the idea that free and open source software (FOSS) market leader in most areas of computing and it's also a viable upgrade path for users of the soon-to-be-orphaned Windows XP. I noted some of the implications of migrating from XP to a FOSS computing environment.

As many in the business, education and government sectors wring their hands over the impending demise of Microsoft's venerable Windows XP operating system, the IT media is offering helpful advice on moving to the more recent MS operating system, Windows 7. Some even boldly suggest moving straight to Windows 8.1.

Today in the NZ Parliament, the Patents Bill (the first update to the current patent legislation, unchanged since 1952!) underwent its Committee Stage (initiated with a rather stirring speech by Clare Curran lauding the NZ software industry as the "forgers and creators of our new economy") and its Third Reading. 

As members of the Fair Deal NZ coalition (led by InternetNZ's Susan Chalmers) and the global Our Fair Deal, also led by the NZ-based coalition, the NZOSS is keen to get this message out. Please alert your friends to this press release highlighting a basic threat to New Zealand's sovereignty - and to the quality of life of every New Zealander.

The 2013 NZOSS Annual General Meeting will be on Monday 19 August starting at 17:30.

We will "meet" online via IRC (Internet Relay Chat - there are free IRC clients for every platform) in the #nzoss room on irc.freenode.net - we will be discussing the agenda further on our OpenChat mailing list.

Anyone may take part in the AGM, but only financial members can vote for officers, councillors, or on any other issues.

You are invited to nominate yourself or someone else for one of these elected roles:

The recently released Top500 global supercomputers list shows that the free and open source operating system, Linux, has easily dominated the field and is indisputably the highest performance operating system on the planet.

Commerce Minister Craig Foss' SOP237 - announced today - demonstrates the government's commitment to ending software patents in NZ.

The Patent Bill currently before Parliament will implement the intent of the Commerce Select Committee by excluding software from patentable inventions. Craig Foss is reported to say "These changes ensure the Bill is consistent with the intention of the Commerce Select Committee recommendation that computer programs should not be patentable," in the NZHerald.

In the global GIS, spatial data & web mapping arena ESRI plays a similar role as the dominant global player to Microsoft, but as with all analogies, don't treat this as 100% gospel. There are many players out there, in the FOSS arena and others.

The Open Geospatial Consortium is a standards developing body in the spatial software domain, generally supporting/facilitating interoperability.