[ossig] An Introduction

[Peter Butler]

Hi Aizat
>> It's been good to see the increasing coverage of free and open-source 
>> projects in the Malaysian media recently.
>>     
> ?
>   

Sorry, I should have been more specific.  I've seen a few articles 
recently in local newspapers (The Star and NST) about open-source 
projects.  Mostly these have been articles about projects like Ubuntu or 
Firefox, and mostly with a positive viewpoint, which is very encouraging 
to see in the general news media.

> From your perception, how does the New Zealand FOSS scene compare to
> Malaysia?  More active contributors, or developers.  More women using
> it?  More government using it.
>   

That's an interesting question, and difficult for me to answer 
accurately!  There is a very active Linux user base in New Zealand, with 
several regional Linux user groups that meet on a regular basis.  There 
are a large number of businesses and organisations using Linux and other 
open-source software for server-side applications but similar to most 
other countries the number of people using it on the desktop has 
remained pretty low.  Often the businesses that use open-source software 
aren't really aware of it because it's just "that box in the corner that 
the consultant installed to handle our email".

Compared to Malaysia, there doesn't seem to be as much awareness in New 
Zealand that there are alternatives to proprietary software, although 
there are many small consulting businesses in NZ offering services and 
solutions based on open-source software and making decent money doing 
it.  This company has been quite successful in offering exclusively 
open-source solutions: http://www.asterisk.co.nz/

Many New Zealanders like to think of themselves as tinkerers so the 
concept of being able to fiddle about with software appeals to a lot of 
techies in NZ.  I know of a few high-profile NZ contributors to 
open-source (Ben Goodger from the Firefox project and Greg Ewing's Pyrex 
are two who spring to mind) but overall I'm not too sure on the actual 
number of contributors to open-source projects.  New Zealanders are 
fairly widely-dispersed around the world (kiwis like to travel) so it's 
hard to tell who is doing what sometimes.

Usage of open-source software in the New Zealand government is difficult 
for me to determine accurately (having previously worked on a software 
project for the NZ government I now try to stay as far away from them as 
possible), but from what I can tell there is cautious support for it 
within government (notwithstanding our Prime Ministers recent visit to a 
certain software giant in Redmond: 
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0703/S00059.htm).  From what I can tell 
the support for open-source seems to vary from department to department, 
some seem to be enthusiastic and make a point of mentioning their 
acceptance of open-source solutions, where other departments don't seem 
to care one way or the other.

Last year the State Services Commission produced guidelines for the use 
of open-source software for government departments (available here: 
http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-source-legal/).  The 
original version of this paper emphasised the "risks" in open-source 
software but this aspect has been toned down in subsequent revisions. I 
guess the most positive thing I can say is that at least this shows that 
they're thinking about open-source!

Please note that the above are my own opinions and that other New 
Zealanders may have a different perspective than me.

> New Zealand has implemented e Government Web Guidlines
> ( http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/web-guidelines/ ).  Though they are
> 'recommendations' how many people attempt to adhere to it?  Do people
> take it seriously?
>   

This has received a lot of coverage in the tech community in New Zealand 
and government departments seem to be taking it seriously.  In the last 
couple of years I've seen quite a few projects to redevelop the web 
presence for NZ government departments, and all of these have placed 
strong emphasis on compliance with the e-government guidelines.

There has been some discussion on the adoption of open document formats 
but nothing concrete from the government as far as I know, although I 
see here that NZ recently objected to Microsoft's proposed ISO standard 
document format: (http://tinyurl.com/2q4azs), which is a hopeful sign.

> If you'd like to ask any questions about the local scene, just shoot.
>   

Thanks very much!

Cheers

Peter