NZOSS AGM 2004 - Minutes

Minutes of the NZOSS AGM

2 October 2004


The meeting commenced at 13:20.

Present:

Auckland:

Peter Harrison

Scott Newton

Dean Grimmond

Christchurch:

Zane Gilmore

Andrew Turner

Rik Tyndall

Wellington:

Carl Klitscher

Daniel Reurich

Tim Thomson

Ewen McNeill

William Hamilton

Brent Wood

Jeremy Naylor (Arrived 2pm)


Apologies:

Mark Foster (Auckland)

Vik Olliver (Auckland)

Igor Portugal (Auckland)

Matthew Cruickshank (Wellington)

Rob Giltrap (Wellington)


President's Introduction:

Peter thanked IBM for the use of the venues and equipment. He then gave a run down of the year's events:

  • The tour of the various centres at the beginning of the year went well and Peter felt it helped to solidify support for the NZOSS.

  • The NZOSS website was improved. There is now also an NZOSS Open Source Projects website (similar to Sourceforge) consisting of a CVS repository and project management tools which is available (http://projects.nzoss.org.nz/). The Knoppix and OpenCD are available on the site. However the site itself has not been well advertised so there has not been a great deal of uptake. Jonathan Sim and Mark Foster were thanked for their work in this area.

  • Dick Smith have shown a great deal of support for open source, more in fact than the NZOSS was capable of dealing with. The Terminator boxes they produced all sold but were not overly successful. They have CD's in store containing OpenOffice, Mozilla and the GIMP as well as Knoppix and Mandrake disks. Linux logos have been added to their hardware.

  • The NZOSS has been involved in the Government Authentication Project thanks mostly to Catalyst, Centurion Computers, and Nothing But Net. The Government has called for a Registration's of Interest, which the NZOSS will be putting in a registration to.

  • The New Zealand Linux Hardware site has been created by one of the NZOSS members.

  • The IM server jabber.org.nz has been set up by James Doherty and is run thanks to Zeald Limited.

  • NZOSS is providing open source software to over 80 kindergartens thanks to Carl Klitscher. The OSS CD is included with computers provided by IBM. Work has been done in Wellington and Dunedin so far.

  • NZOSS needs to work with IBM, Novell and Oracle more closely. NZOSS will have a presence at the upcoming Novell and Oracle seminars.


Financials:

Financials have been fairly simple this year. There is a bank account with only 8 transactions having happened this year, partly because there have been no major projects requiring funding this year. Currently there is $1180.95 in the account. Outgoings included Domain name fees and signage and advertising.


It is hoped that this year more of the money will be used with regard to major projects and advocacy of Open Source. The financial report was accepted.

(Proposed: Carl Klitscher, Seconded: Ewen McNeill, accepted unanimously.)


Election of Council:

The President plus up to 11 council members are required by the NZOSS Constitution. The minimum required is President plus Secretary.


Peter Harrison was nominated as President and accepted unanimously.

(Proposed : Carl Klitscher, Seconded: William Hamilton)


Tim Thomson was nominated as Secretary and accepted:

(Proposed: Carl Klitscher, Seconded: Ewen McNeill)

(nominations closed: Carl, Seconded: William Hamilton)


Carl Klitscher, Zane Gilmore and Daniel Reurich were nominated as council members and accepted:

(Proposed: Ewen McNeill, Seconded: William Hamilton)

(nominations closed: Ewen McNeill, Seconded: Zane Gilmore)


Current council who have not resigned and wish to continue will stay on the council.

(Proposed: Ewen McNeill, Seconded: William Hamilton)

(nominations closed: Ewen McNeill, Seconded: Zane Gilmore)


Current Council Member status:

  • Rob Giltrap resigned as Government Officer and council member.

  • Vladimir Kosovac resigned.

  • David McNab Unknown.

  • Eaden McKee resigned.

  • Igor Portugal Wants to continue.

  • Jonathan Sim Wants to continue.

  • Andrew Turner Wants to continue.

  • Drew Whittle Unknown.

  • David Lane resigned.


Matthew Cruickshank was nominated as Government Officer, and accepted unanimously:

(Proposed: Peter Harrison, Seconded: William Hamilton)


Zane Gilmore volunteered to be Christchurch Regional Coordinator and was accepted unanimously.

(Proposed: Carl Klitscher, Seconded: Peter Harrison)


Cheryl Fawkes has taken over Education Officer role.


Current Officer Status:


President Peter Harrison

Secretary Tim Thomson

Education Officer Cheryl Fawkes

Government Officer Matthew Cruickshank

Business Officer

Technical Officer Jonathan Sim

Auckland Regional Officer

Wellington Regional Officer

Christchurch Regional Officer Zane Gilmore

Media Officer

Other Business:

Subscriptions:

Ewen NcNeill raised the issue of subscriptions. Peter Harrison has thought that maybe the $40 should be lowered but the bigger issue is probably not the money but the fact that the NZOSS is not seen to be very active, which Ewen agreed was the biggest complaint he had heard against NZOSS. If the money was used to advance advocacy for open source through seminars to businesses and government this would help to raise the NZOSS profile. It was also suggested that NZOSS should have a presence at the NZNOG Conference to be held at Waikato University next year.


It was decided to keep the $40 subscription fee ($20 for students).

(Proposed: Peter Harrison, Seconded: Scott Newton, accepted unanimously)


Patents:

The issue of patents was also raised. The general NZOSS stand was to be against obvious software patents rather than patents in general. The State Service Commission's review of patents also backed up the NZOSS position that obvious software patents stifled innovation rather than encouraging it. The biggest danger is the Free Trade agreement that is being negotiated with the United States of America as one of the key aspects of that agreement is that New Zealand would be required to have the same patent and copyright legislation as the USA.

The New Zealand political parties have no real stance with regard to patents – they would tend to see the Free Trade Agreement with the USA as important though. The Green party being anti-GE would tend to be anti-patent as well.

Currently Microsoft has 30 patents in the patent office in New Zealand. To object to a patent requires $300 and the grounds of objection have to be fairly strong in order to get a patent rejected which requires a good deal of research, a time consuming task and time is something which most of the people on the NZOSS do not have due to their own commitments. It was suggested and agreed that we should challenge just one patent (which would have to be chosen carefully). The Microsoft XML schema patent was suggested. The issue with it is that legally only a low degree of inventiveness needs to be shown in order for the patent to be granted. Showing prior art is the best objection to a patent which is not possible in this case. The other three reasons for having a patent overthrown (concept not patentable, non-inventiveness, obvious) are much more difficult to show.

A motion was put forward by Ewen that the NZOSS find a patent that we could have overturned due to prior art or other grounds and pay to object to it. (Seconded: William Hamilton, accepted unanimously).


Accounting System and Subscriptions:

The NZOSS now has an accounting system – one that has been written internally and will be released as Open Source soon. The invoices will be generated from the package and sent out to members together with a newsletter explaining what the society has done over the past year. It is planned that this will be done within the next two weeks. Peter Harrison would also like to replace the current wiki with Mambo CMS.


Review of PR and Lobbying Work:

The big issue is resource. To use the limited resource we do have the following was suggested:

  • Give more seminars/talks.

  • Partner with businesses including providing resources to them. This could include briefing packages/press pack with/without CD's.

  • Both Carl Klitscher and Peter Harrison can produce professional looking CD's. The real question is who to send them to and how to follow up. The follow up is particularly important.

  • The need for support groups. The Linux User Group's were not seen to be particularly useful in this regard as many users migrating would probably be starting with Open Source applications running under Microsoft Windows. A user group for OpenOffice was seen as particularly required. Ironically there is one at http://www.openoffice.org.nz which needs to be advertised/made known a lot more.

  • The other issue was for businesses starting with Open Source – where do they find support? Need to change the companies list on the website to map which businesses support which applications in which regions. We should contact each vendor for a list of applications they support.

  • Also need to encourage hardware vendors/computer resellers to support Open Source more.



Business closed at 14:30.