[Announce] Committee News - 200405

[Pia Smith]

Hi all!

What a month, apologies for this being late.

FTA
---
The FTA fight goes on! Rusty has been outstanding in his contributions,
even going to far as to be able to give evidence directly to one of the
enquiry commissions for the FTA. We have been to several meetings and
talks on this held by government and corporate groups. Senator Kate
Lundy has spoken on the topic very well, and her talk can be found at
http://www.katelundy.com.au/FTAimpact.htm and it is quite interesting.
Everyone needs to remember, we haven't lost the fight yet! Write to your
government! If you are stuck for ideas check out
http://linux.org.au/fta/ or email us at fta at linux.org.au

Grants
------
Computerbank has a second grant in, one for a line of credit up to $15k
to kick off their work for the dole project, and move some computers
around. Computerbank recently got around 5000 machine donated, and
needed the line of credit to kick things off. We expect they will be
able to pay it back over a period of time set out in the grants
proposal.

Brazil and FISL
---------------
I went to DebConf and FISL in Brazil for the last two weeks, and have
seen something amazing. A people interested in freedom, and free
knowledge from the government down. Using Linux and Free Software as a
medium to a better world. It was amazing! I have many things to say
about this, and will be putting out a paper (probably from my blog :) in
the next 2 weeks. One amazing thing I found was the work of Maureen
O'Sullivan, who is running a project called the Free Software Act. A
legally binding doco that protects the rights of free software and free
software developers. Pretty interesting stuff. You can find information
about the Free Software Act, Draft 3 at http://www.fsc.cc/node/view/26
and FISL at http://softwarelivre.org

ACS Policy on Open Source
------------
ACS have released their 'official' position on Open Source. I've proud
to say that we, the community had an integral part in the development of
this. Several professionals around the country joined in a loosely
formed group called OSEG (Open Source Experts Group) to create the
initial drafts and data, we bounced it off several orgs, including the
linux-aus mailing list for feedback, and although there are still a few
things that are not quite on the ball (see the section on viruses) it is
a pretty good document, and it strongly urges government to at least
consider Open Source. Find an rtf on the document at
http://pipka.org/Open_Source_Policy_Document_03_June.rtf Journalists,
contact Edward Mandla for comment :)

LinuxTag - Speaker swap
-----
Andrew Cowie has been organising a speaker swap with LinuxTag for LCA.
Unfortunately the speaker swap with OLS is not so useful to everyone
concerned, as OLS has become predominately a kernel conference. Good
work Andrew!

Media training
--------
Linux Australia put 9 people through media training last month,
including our press team, Steven Hanley from LCA2005, and our new
education officer Jason King. The day was excellent, and the entire
group will be reforming soon to wrap up on the lessons learnt, and some
messaging and strategies for Linux Australia. Thanks to everyone who
participated, The Editor Group who trained us (very well I think :). 

Website
-----
Thanks to Janet Reid, Michael Davies and Jeff Waugh who have helped
getting the site moving. We now have a site structure, a design, and we
just need to create a sane css and migrate the webpages. If anyone wants
to help with this, we are now at the point where this would be very
appreciated :)

Rock on! We are certainly all busy little vegemites :) Everyone is
making some real progress, and I personally want to thank all the
individuals that have put such personal efforts in to everything being
done. Our community is one of the closet national open source
communities in the world, and the more I travel, the more I appreciate
it. Lets all continue to rock on, together :)

Pia

PS - for anyone interested in my travels to Brazil, please see my blog
at http://pipka.org/blog/. Cheers :)
-- 
Pia Smith <pia at linux.org.au>
Linux Australia