March 2010

When the original draft of the Patent Bill was released there were no exceptions for computer software. Naturally the NZOSS weighed in and submitted it's point of view. Today our position has been vindicated by the release by the Commerce Commission report supporting an exception for computer programs in the Patent Bill. The New Zealand Open Source Society applauds the Commerce Commission on it's decision to exclude computer programs from being patentable in New Zealand.

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.