April 2014

We (the NZOSS) encourage our members to read and contribute to this. Regardless of your political stripe, fleshing out this open document and discussing its implications will further our society's aims. All credit to the Greens for embracing free and open source methods and values in developing this policy platform.

Wednesday 22 April 2014

A Champion for Internet Rights and Freedoms

Championing Internet rights and freedoms, the Green Party has today launched New Zealand's first ever crowdsourced Internet Rights and Freedoms Bill.

Auckland Transport, AUT and software development house Propellorhead are running HACKAKL, a event that will bring developers together bring Innovation, Community, Open Source, Networking and Technology together to promote Open Data and Open Government.

Leaks of the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement show that the United States would like to reverse the work done by the NZOSS to exclude software from patentability in New Zealand. The TPPA may also introduce copyright enforcement regimes that would give large companies the right to censor the Internet as currently occurs in the United States under the DMCA.

Many studies of the quality of source code shows that Open Source is better quality than closed source. It is however no gaurantee of quality. While Open Source has allowed companies to leverage a community and common resources it has also meant that many projects have been taken for granted. An example is OpenSSL, which recently was found to have a vulnerability which has been dubbed HeartBleed.