The New Zealand Open Source Society is a charitable, non-profit organisation set up to educate, advocate and advance the use of Free and Open Source Software in Government, Business and Society in New Zealand. Read More
New to Free and Open Source Software? Learn how to educate, advocate and advance the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in New Zealand. Read More
We exist to share the freedom of open source software, open standards, and open information for the benefit of New Zealand. Do you want to help? Read More
Free and Open Source Software exists for the benefit of all. The NZOSS provides some basic community services as alternatives to large commercial organisations. Read More
By joining the NZOSS you are promoting Free and Open Source Software in New Zealand, advocating against Software Patents, and supporting open, sustainable, collaborative, and effective computing. Read More
The UK Government has released a strategy for reducing the costs of ICT, with Open Source playing a important role, saying "When used in conjunction with compulsory open standards, open source presents significant opportunities for the design and delivery of interoperable solutions. "
The NZOSS today announced its qualified support for the draft IPONZ guideline on the patentability of inventions containing embedded computer programs.
“There is a fog of misinformation around software patents and the IPONZ guideline,” says Don Christie, NZOSS Government Liaison Officer.
In July 2010, Commerce Minister Simon Power asked IPONZ to “develop guidelines for inventions containing embedded software.”
Due to a change in hosting arrangements, the server that hosts lists.nzoss.org.nz will be taken down at 5pm Thursday 20 January 2011 and physically transferred to a new hosting ISP. This involves an IP address change, and will also disrupt one of the three DNS servers that serves nzoss.org.nz. The others will keep remaining nzoss.org.nz infrastructure running and there should be little or no visible impact outside of the loss of the mailing lists for a brief period.
It's expected to have the server up and running and all consequential DNS changes, etc, completed by no later than 9pm.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this short-notice outage.
ComputerWorld NZ is reporting that Catalyst IT has begun a new Academy program to teach ICT and programming skills to selected school children. "The Academy will enable students to get some experience working alongside seasoned practitioners and not have to depend on their own resources and those of the school" says Don Christie of Catalyst IT.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered that the Russian Government use GNU/Linux. This will occur in a transition that is planned for 2012. Russia has also approved the Open Document Format as a national standard. The new standard will come into effect in a half a year.
SilverStripe, the web based Open Source CMS has been given Microsoft Certification. Sigurd Magnusson of SilverStripe says "Microsoft's Certified for Windows programme is well known for indicating software and hardware products that have been thoroughly tested and which work well on Microsoft Windows. Of course, much of the innovation in the software world is now happening on the web, and with awareness and adoption of open source software growing fantastically, it makes sense for Microsoft to begin certifying open source web-based software."
On Tuesday the annual New Zealand Open Source Awards were held. IRD won the award for Open Source in Government for their work with Moodle. Moodle has momentum and is in early deployment stages at several other agencies. Ponoko Ltd was the winner of the Open Source in Business category, which has used Open Source technology to enable their custom production business. The Winner of the Open Source Project was SilverStripe for it's content management system that is being used world wide. For more see http://www.nzosa.org.nz
Down to the Wire is the story of New Zealand's Internet and how it changed our Nation. Featuring video interviews with over 50 Internet personalities and players downtothewire.co.nz brings alive a journey that has revolutionised our lives and shaped our future. Enjoy exploring the website, get connected and please don't hesitate to contribute.
The community of volunteers who develop and promote OpenOffice.org, the leading free office software, announce a major change in the project’s structure. After ten years’ successful growth with Sun Microsystems as founding and principle sponsor, the project launches an independent foundation called "The Document Foundation", to fulfil the promise of independence written in the original charter.
On the day before the Software Patent Debate Igor and I got some bad news. The lawyer who had said he would be able to present for the Pro Patent position would be unable to attend the debate. We needed to find someone credible, someone knowledgeable, someone who could put on a show. And we needed someone at almost the last minute. Despite impossible odds Igor thought of the perfect person; Brett Roberts, former Platform Manager, strategist and my long time and good natured protagonist. Thanks to the magic of modern communications in short order we had secured Brett as our debating opponent.
