Pat Pilcher of the NZ Herald writes on software patents

The NZOSS was very pleased to be a part, as a community supporter, of the NZ Open Source Awards which took place this past Wednesday night in Wellington. The event was superbly organised and run by the good folks at Catalyst IT and it was an inspiring display of creative energy and commitment to free and open source software by the NZ FOSS community. The full results of the awards are on available on the NZOSA website.

Last week's announcement that Commerce Minister Craig Foss had submitted a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to alter the wording of the Patents Bill prior to its second reading in Parliament rightly raised the ire of the New Zealand software industry.

With the removal of the explicit software patent exclusion, and the addition of two tiny words, "as such", the Commerce Minister, Craig Foss, has more or less thrown kiwi software developers under a bus.

The NZOSS has held its 2012 Annual General Meeting starting at 17:30 this evening, 6 August 2012.

The agenda for today's AGM is as follows:

1. President's report
2. Treasurer's report
3. Membership summary
4. Councillors and Officers stepping down
6. Officer Elections

We would like to make sure the people of NZ are aware of the work being done behind the scenes to ensure that NZ gets a Fair Deal: that we don't suffer substantial restrictions on our personal liberty and sovereignty as a result of the top secret Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) currently being negotiated on our behalf.

The new Lotto website is now online, and it is open source. It is built on the Silverstripe CMS and web application platform. The site involves a fair amount of money changing hands, and is an example of a transactional website performing a government run and managed activity: i.e. it is a crown entity operating under an Act.

The NZOSS will be holding its Annual General Meeting on Monday, 6 August at 17:30. It will take place online (using IRC, the #nzoss room on Freenode.org), with physical locations in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch as well for members to gather.

We will be nominating and electing council members and the executive. If you have any interest in taking part in the council or in running for executive office (president, vice president, secretary, or treasurer), please either nominate yourself, or let others know you're keen!

For your reference, the current executive is: