It is easy to think that the software patents issue is this year's news. But it is worth reflecting on the fact that, in New Zealand as elsewhere, practically the entire IT industry has been campaigning against software patents for years. What was highly unusual *this* year was an New Zealand IT vendor organisation, NZICT, coming out in favour of software patents.
Refinery CMS is a Ruby on Rails content management system that started at Resolve Digital in 2004 (https://resolve.digital/). It was closed source for 5 years before becoming open source in 2009. It has quickly become the second most popular Ruby on Rails CMS and is growing rapidly. The project is contributed to nearly daily as it is core to Resolve Digital's business.
The project focuses on making the end user experience simple and understandable and offers developers brilliant tools to get a site developed quickly.
Seven open source experts, chosen for their eminence in or championship of open source technology, will form the judging panel of the 2010 Open Source Awards, which will be announced at a gala ceremony in Wellington on Tuesday 9th November.
This recent article by AJ Park is a gross misrepresentation of the New Zealand Commerce Select Committee's position and the publicly stated Government position.
It states:
"The news that the government intends computer program inventions to be patentable in the same way as in Europe is important to New Zealand industry, not just for multinational companies.
by Peter Harrison
I wish to Congratulate Rachel in becoming President. We are honoured to have a new President that has the proven track record of success in the open source field that you do. In order for the NZOSS to be strong we need capable people with real passion for free and open source software. We are therefore very luck to have Rachel at the helm to take the solemn responsibility of piloting the society into the future.
