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:

A jury has found that Google did not infringe Oracle patents in the development of Android. Earlier the jury found that Google had infringed Oracle's copyright in it's use of the Java API, but the judge is yet to rule on whether this is fair use. The decision on fair use will be decided by the judge next week.

On 2 May, I presented the NZOSS' viewpoint on cloud computing privacy issues at the Privacy Forum 2012 (PDF programme) in Wellington - the official name for the day was "Think Big? Privacy in the age of big data". The questions we were asked, and my answers (or at least the notes on which my answers were based) are below.

The NZ Open Source Society is taking part in a global protest (Wikipedia is blacking out its entire site today) against proposed US legislation, called SOPA ("Stop Online Piracy Act") and PIPA ("Protect IP Act") ostensibly intended

The advice given to media companies wanting to protect their intellectual property is that you must control the content all the way to the output. Open general purpose computers are the enemy. Microsoft failed with it's first cut called "Trusted Computing", but since that time we have seen our computing devices such as iPhones increasingly controlled centrally. Cory Doctorow talks about the approaching war on general purpose computation.

"To see one of NZ's two main parties finally recognise the immense value free and open source software contributes to our economy - and make it a core part of their election platform - is a very encouraging step".

So says Dave Lane, President of the NZ Open Source Society (NZOSS), in response to Labour's released ICT policy. In that policy Labour makes it clear that open source software will be at the heart of Government ICT.