It’s been indicated to me that I never put out a report on Software Freedom Day in Sydney. Well, better late than never

Advocates of free software celebrated at the University of New South Wales on 16 September for the fourth annual Software Freedom Day. Members of SLUG, Ubuntu-AU and the general FOSS community collaborated to spread the message of free software to the general public.

Interest and buzz was generated in the days leading-up to the event through a poster campaign across the campus. At the UNSW Computer Fair, we piqued the curiosity of many computer users with our displays, screencasts and spiels. Those who were enthusiastic migrated to our room in the nearby Law Building, where we could explain and demonstrate in greater detail. Not only did we have many expressions of interest from newcomers in free software and the free software community, we also succeeded in bringing those who already use FOSS into participation in the local community.

Regrettably, I was not able to take any decent photographs of the event. If anyone has pictures, I’d be grateful if they could be sent to me.

I would like to give a big word of thanks to everyone who helped on the day:

• Andreas Fischer
• Brendan Puckeridge
• David McQuire
• James Dumay
• Jim Tsao
• John Ferlito
• Ken Wilson
• Lindsay Holmwood
• Matt Moor
• Peter Baker
• Pia Waugh
• Rodger Dean
• Silvia Pfeiffer
• Anyone else who I may have forgotten (if I have, sorry!)

In addition, I would like to thank those who provided resources in support of our efforts:

• Computer Fairs Australia (tables at the computer fair)
• David Vaile, Abi Paramaguru and Alana Maurushat at the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre (room in the Law Building)
• John Schilit (IBM and Robocode materials)
• Solutions First (Unwired modem)
• Ubuntu Screencasts Team (screencasts and subtitles)
• Canonical (Ubuntu CDs)
• The worldwide free software community

LotD: Sign the petition for a Free Society and against Digital Restrictions Management and Treacherous Computing

Whilst codifying the plans for Software Freedom Day in Sydney, I decided to put together a mock press release. A little of the content is lifted from the SFD Web site. Feel free to modify it for your needs (localised to your city, etc.) and redistribute.

SYDNEY CELEBRATES SOFTWARE FREEDOM, THIS SUNDAY

For the second time running, The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has been selected to form the centrepiece of Software Freedom Day in Sydney.

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this annual celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere!

Have you ever had your computer software crash, lose data or get a virus? Imagine if after only a few years that the thesis that you worked on for ages was no longer readable, or that your precious home movies were no longer watchable. If you complain to the software company, they try to talk you into spending yet more money on an ‘upgrade’, which only turns out to be slower and buggier than the previous version. Ever bought a new music player, only to find that it refuses to play the music that worked just fine on your old player?

Unfortunately, most people are living in this world today.

Software Freedom Day exists to show the general public that there is a way out of this vicious cycle. Through the use of free software, you regain control over your computer and your data. Every person has the freedom to participate in and use free software, whether it be on a totally free operating system like Linux or on a non-free platform like Windows or Mac OS.

This Sunday, the Sydney FOSS community will demonstrate how easy it is to install and use free software to achieve a variety of tasks. Our activities shall gravitate around two venues in UNSW:

• At the computer fair in the Roundhouse (10am-3pm), we will be demonstrating FOSS technologies to vendors and visitors.
• In Law Room 203 (8am-5pm), we will be hosting a series of talks and tutorials.

We will also have people roaming around campus spreading the news. We will be happy to answer any questions that you may have pertaining to FOSS. We will have CDs and other items to hand out, to get you started. If you bring (or buy at the fair) a USB drive, we can transfer free software onto it for you.

If you’re buying hardware at the fair, we can help you to get it running with FOSS. If you’re a student, or just plain curious, we can show you how you can maximise the potential of your computer, all at no cost to you.

Unlike with non-free software, FOSS is typified by extensive community networks that are able to provide detailed support should you need help. Examples include the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG), which hosts e-mail lists, monthly meetings, and other events for people of all skill levels.

With the financial support of IT market leaders like IBM, HP, Dell, Intel and Google, as well as countless governmental bodies and companies in other industries, FOSS is growing from strength to strength at a phenomenal rate.

If you have any further questions, please see our list of resources below. Otherwise, come and see us on Sunday, and we’ll show you in person!

If you’d like to get involved as a volunteer, read our plans for the day (linked below).

 

RESOURCES

• To view our plans for the day, see http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/teams/oceania/au/Sydney
• For more information on the meaning of Software Freedom Day, see http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/about
• For more information on FOSS, see http://www.linux.org.au/linux

LotD:  I never got around to writing about the Education Expo, so I’ll point to Pia’s writeup. 

Tighten your belts and buckle your shoes, for Software Freedom Day is just around the corner! This year, the Sydney team is hosting their event one day late (on Sunday instead of Saturday), to take advantage of the computer fair at The University of New South Wales. We’ll have a couple of tables, which we shall be using to show off the wonders of FOSS to consumers, students and other vendors.

I have chronicled our plan at the Software Freedom Day wiki. If you’d like to get involved, please get in touch with me.

LotD:  Getting in Bed With the Customer (an oldie but a goodie)

There appears to be much confusion amongst the press and the general populace regarding the One Laptop Per Child Project, which I blogged about earlier. This article in the Murdoch press, for example, has stimulated some of these misconceptions. They stem from the false assumption that the OLPC is a computing project. "Don’t these kids deserve food, water, clothing and shelter first?", some people ask.

The fact is that the OLPC is far more than a simple computing project. It is an education project, or more broadly, a development project. The computer is merely the tool to enable education and creativity. How can one learn when a textbook costs more than an average weekly wage? Imagine if you could interact with your textbook, in the form of games and exercises. Imagine if you could learn to write your own software for this device, and distribute it to help others in your community. You can create your own artworks, write your own novel or make your own music. Wireless mesh networking allows the distribution of data between computers, and even the sharing of one Internet connection across a villiage. For many households, the keyboard lights will be the only form of artificial lighting. The possibilities are effectively limitless.

The point that I am trying to make is that it is not the computer that is important, it is what you can do with it that truly matters. The computer is an enabler, a tool that allows people to ultimately create their own livelihoods and futures. There’s no point in keeping people dependent on handouts. Let’s encourage them to stand on their own feet.

Back in the developed world, I was able to attend a panel discussion for NSW ICT for the forthcoming state election. Pia made some good analysis of the event. In summary, the representative for the Liberal Party was completely and utterly useless when the question turned to open standards and FLOSS. Moreover, both sides (Labour and Liberal) would seemingly deliberately confuse open standards and open source when questioned about them. The key when questioning such people is to not mention open standards and open source together. Force them to address the issues separately, or they will conflate the two. The City of Munich was disparagingly referred to several times as an extreme case. What disturbs me is that there was specifically strong emphasis on NSW as a procurer and consumer of ICT, rather than as a producer. So while projects like the OLPC can promote local education and industry, the NSW government wants to keep us dependent upon foreign providers.

Is it already February? January must have been the busiest month of all time for me. My birthday was on the 6th, and I still haven’t been able to do anything about it. My family and friends have been bugging me about it since December. If any of them are reading this, I’m sorry.

The chaos of January has carried into February, I’m afraid. This write-up of my January escapades would be best split into several parts, so view this post as one of a few.

linux.conf.au (LCA) was extraordinarily enjoyable. I had volunteered to help with a few activities, and most of my time was spent as part of the Audio/Visual Team. My job consisted of sitting in lecture theatres and encoding video (passed to me in the form of DVDs) to Ogg Theora on my laptop. The exercise was a tremendous stress test of some of the hardware, and I’m glad that it passed with flying colours. ffmpeg2theora doesn’t take advantage of SMP, so I engaged my Core 2 Duo CPU with two video streams in parallel.

Unfortunately, I was so focused on transcoding that I was not able to appreciate the presentations occurring directly in front of me. I’ll have to go back and watch the videos of those talks, which were likely transcoded by myself. On a positive note, our transcoding efforts meant that we were able to make video available online even before the conference was over. There was plenty more to transcode after the event, so my duties didn’t suddenly end on the 19th of January. It’s amazing to see that only two weeks after the closing of LCA we are on the cusp of finalisation. All that’s left are a few ‘problem’ videos and some documentation writing.

Silvia expertly managed our rag-tag team of volunteers to deliver some first-class results. I honestly feel that we set a benchmark for future free software events, not just in Australia but also around the world, and I am very proud to have been a part of it. Through Linux Australia, we have purchased equipment and formulated methods that will be carried on into the future. We have proven that quality video productions can be achieved on a modest budget, using entirely free software.

Aside from other miscellaneous volunteer duties at LCA, I took part in the Open Day, spending most of my time at the Ubuntu-Au stand. I also briefly covered for Chris Smart at the Make the Move stand. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Pia and company, Open Day was a resounding success. I believe that it has firmly established itself as a permanent fixture at future LCAs. It was truly encouraging to see luminaries like Keith Packard and Jim Gettys as exhibitors, interacting with the general populace.

Events like LCA are always special because of the people you meet. I had the privilege of interacting with many people for whom I hold a great deal of respect. Placing faces to IRC nicks is always fun, as is catching up with friends whom I don’t see often.

No write-up of LCA would be complete without an expression of gratitude and congratulations to the Seven Team for a job well done. So thank you Jeff, Pia, Sara, Jamie, Ben, Lindsay and John!

My one regret is that I opted to not reside on campus for the duration of the conference. You cannot fully enjoy yourself on a night out while worrying about how you will get home. It meant that I had to wake up earlier to catch the bus-train-bus combination to get to UNSW, and even then I missed some of the morning A/V Team meetings. The buses to Central from Anzac Parade end at around 22:45, and woe betide you if you miss them. On one night, it took me close to two hours to get home. Reliance upon public transport is a major hindrance upon after-hours activities, and curtails the time that would be better spent catching up on some sorely-needed sleep.

LotD:  Get a First Life

I wrote this back in October, and for some silly reason I forgot to post it. Better late than never, I say.

It seems that every couple of weeks I’m at some kind of FLOSS-related event. You just can’t keep me away from them! They may require a lot of work, but it certainly feels rewarding to get the word out. This is especially so in regards to the educational sector. Children are our future, and they are generally more willing than your average adult to learn new and different things. It is an educator’s job to impart knowledge, and it is the duty of any respectable educational institution to facilitate a free and open flow of knowledge. What better way to achieve this than with free software?

This concept was not lost on the eduactors, parents and students at the Sydney Education Expo in June, and I’m proud to say that we managed to replicate that success at the Sydney Moodle Conference on October 14-15 (Saturday and Sunday). Once again, I manned the Linux Australia/SLUG stand, joining Pia Waugh, Lindsay Holmwood and Andreas Fischer. The SLUG Committee stopped by for a while, too.

Whereas most people at the Education Expo were unfamiliar with FLOSS, many of the attendees of the Moodle Conference had some idea about it. Moodle itself is available under the terms of the GPL, and many companies and schools have become part of its user/development/support community. All we had to do was to remind them that we represent the underlying FLOSS concepts that have made Moodle so great, and that Moodle functions in concert with other FLOSS projects such as Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

The response was overwhelming. We were prepared to hand out a truckload of Ubuntu CDs, only to discover that most attendees had already been supplied with one as part of their official conference kit. That didn’t stop us from distributing many more, though. We had one fellow so excited about FLOSS on Saturday that he brought along his laptop the next day for an impromptu Ubuntu installfest. We demonstrated a range of technologies, including Compiz and Inkscape. Visitors were impressed with the ease of the Ubuntu LiveCD installer, and with how Moodle can be installed (complete with dependencies) in only a few clicks via Synaptic.

Most interesting for me was the Live Online Event, which was a panel discussion on-stage in front of about 150 people. Pia was slated to represent the LA/OSIA point of view, but was forced to bow out due to other commitments. Much to my surprise, she asked me to fill in for her. So there I was, on-stage, in front of well over 100 people, fielding questions while being recorded and streamed live over the Internet. I had never done anything like that before, but I think I went reasonably well. Public speaking and general spoken communication are certainly skills that I would like to further exercise in the future. Thanks for your support, Pia!

The topic which dominated the panel discussion, and one which I had been previously unaware of, concerned how far software patents had intruded into the realm of educational software. Moodle-competitor Blackboard has been issued an appalling patent "for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods." I was somewhat relieved to see that Martin Dougiamas, Moodle’s founder and project leader, was not concerned at all by this event, at least as far as Moodle was concerned. Nevertheless, the spectre of software patents has been looming over FLOSS for some time now, and it is still very unclear if/how the situation will ever be resolved.

Another year, another Software Freedom Day…

Scrub that. That sounds far too mundane.

Software Freedom Day rocked!!!

*ahem*

I could not attend last year (since it coincided with my mum’s birthday), but this year I dived in head-first as an official helper on the A/V Team. I was assigned to do video editing and encoding, which basically entailed cropping the beginning and end off the recorded presentations and then encoding to Ogg (Vorbis and Theora) format. I had a wicked rig set up in the UNSW Law theatre that we were using for the talks, consisting of two laptops and a DV camera. The DV camera was originally intended to serve as a backup to a DVD camera we had set up elsewhere, but due to some technical glitches it rose in importance. I ended up being solely a cameraman, since we weren’t able to read our recorded DVDs on the day (it later turned out to be a simple matter of finalising the disc).

Although it was tiring keeping an eye on the camera for the entire day (through all of the talks), I must say that I enjoyed myself immensely. Pia did a fantastic job of organising and co-ordinating the event, not just in Sydney but also globally (as President of Software Freedom International). Silvia had the A/V Team well organised, and despite some minor setbacks I think we are well-prepared for LCA 2007.

What impressed me most was the speech by Senator Kate Lundy. She proved that it wasn’t orchestrated in an interview with James Purser a few days later. She truly understands what free software is about, and she does not fall into the common traps of seeing free as gratis, or open source as only having a cost benefit. She’s set up her own Joomla-based web site, and she uses Audacity to record her audio.

It’s striking to see how Senator Lundy differs from her former nemesis (while she oversaw the Communications and IT shadow ministry), Richard Alston. That is a man who was labelled ‘The World’s Biggest Luddite‘ by several international news outlets during his tenure. It is shameful to see how underappreciated she is in her party. Would it not best serve the interests of the country to have a (shadow) minister who actually knew something about their portfolio? Maybe so, but that would interfere with the politicking

Linux Australia was very well represented at the Sydney Education Expo (24-25 June) this year. Pia wrote excellent summaries of the event, and I won’t duplicate what was already said.

This was only my second trade show, after CeBIT, and I must say that I enjoyed this one better. CeBIT was full of business-oriented people, and on the whole the event felt quite dry and corporate. Visitors to the Education Expo were mostly parents, teachers and children. I felt like I was making more of a difference with this group, helping to improve the education and development of children. To me, this is what free software is all about: helping communities and ordinary people.

Pia and Sara Kaan did a fantastic job or preparing and co-ordinating the stand. Craige drew in the kids (and kept them there) with the Linux Challenge. This proved to be a wonderful way to show how appropriate Linux is for education. Steve drove all the way from Canberra and brought some vital supplies. We were clearly the busiest stand there. On the Sunday I was talking to people non-stop for the whole six hours without so much as a toilet break, and I loved it.

There was one major letdown, however. We had made the assumption that the Edubuntu CDs we were handing out were based on the Ubuntu Dapper installable liveCD. I went to great lengths to explain to people how easy it is to install Edubuntu since it is a liveCD. Unfortunately and unbeknownst to us, Edubuntu is based on the Dapper Alt CD, which includes the Debian installer and is not a liveCD at all. We only discovered this the week after, and we have no means of knowing what the fallout of that was

This was, I felt, the only blemish we had. We are assured of success next year if we base our strategy on this winning formula.

Last night (Friday) I went to the monthly Sydney Linux Users’ Group (SLUG) meeting, after being prompted by Pia Waugh at CeBIT. Being my first LUG meeting, I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be great. The people there are interesting and friendly, and it felt good to be with people who share similar ideas about computing and software as I do.

The best thing about free software is the community. As Sean Neakums said, "I came for the quality. I stayed for the freedom." I have been an active member of the community for five or six years, but all interaction was made via the Internet. Meeting people face-to-face felt positively wondrous.

Nobody is excluded from LUG meetings. After the initial introduction and presentation, the LUG splits into a group for newbies ("SLUGlets") and another for more experienced users. Not being particularly interested in a presentation on statistical computing, I went with the SLUGlets. Aside from the presentations, the meeting was extremely informal. You were free to talk about just about anything.

Following the meeting, a bunch of us went to an Indian restaurant near Central Station. The food was ordinary (as far as Indian food goes), but it was fun getting to know people and having face-to-face geek-talk. When I talk to most people, I have to dumb-down what I’m saying so that they can follow. At SLUG, if anything it was the opposite. It felt good to be around people who truly knew what they were talking about and I know I can learn a lot from them.

So what is the moral of this story? If you like Linux and/or free software, join a LUG!

The CeBIT show was in the Darling Harbour Convention Centre this week. Computer Power were good enough to give us a leave of absence to attend. It only made sense: attending an IT show gives us a feel of the IT industry as a whole. The exhibitors covered just about everything under the sun (at least under the IT sun, which might more accurately be described as a dwarf star).

It wasn’t a particularly spectacular show. I still have fond memories of the excesses of the dot-com days: loads of givaways, free capuccinos, etc.. This time the giveaways were mostly restricted to pens. There was coffee, but to be eligible you had to be ‘customer’ of the group running the booth. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian each had booths, and you could pick up free copies of their respective papers. Besides that, there were the obligatory ‘booth babes’ and plenty of staff who couldn’t speak English. w00t.

At the end I decided to return to a booth I had spied earlier: Open Source Victoria. There, I got to talking to a nice girl there. It turned out that she was Pia Waugh, wife of well-known GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh. Not that she should be known just for that, though. She is doing some truly interesting work in trying to further the use of open source software in government and education. We spoke for about half an hour, during which time she invited me to go to the monthly Sydney Linux Users’ Group (SLUG) meeting, which conveniently was on that Friday (i.e. yesterday). I had been meaning to go to one for years, and this was the kick up the backside that I needed.