President's Report 2013-14

Shortly after our 2012-13 AGM, the culmination of several years of hard work by a dedicated group within the NZOSS and some of our sector collaborators, the NZ government altered our Patents legislation to block the patenting of software. In the warm glow of that major victory for all New Zealand software developers, the year has been one of quiet growth for the Society, but very busy for the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) world at large.

The Green Party's Internet Rights and Freedoms Bill

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.

Open Media running campaign opposing the TPPA

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.

Internet Companies Fund OpenSSL

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.