Is the Federal Budget FOSS Friendly?

Well... the first budget for the new Labor Federal Government and there have been some changes to the way that purchased computer software (or software licenses) are depreciated, with regards to tax right-offs.

Australian IT News Article.

The depreciation period on capital expenditure on business software has been increased from 2.5 to 4 years. This was projected to lead to $1.3 billion dollars of government savings up to 2012.

This money is then going towards a National Secondary School Computer Fund (NSSC) of $1.2 billion which is to pay for computers and communication technology.

So.. where is the incentive to make more use of Free and Open Source Software?

Indirectly, I think that this is an excellent budget for FOSS.

The proposal is for individual schools to be able to receive up to $1 million dollars as a grant. This is targeted spending, and the schools would need to justify the way that the grant gets spent. To work properly, this would require that the schools have freedom on how they spend their grant money. Schools could choose either to buy the 'latest and greatest' (typically this will be Apple), or they could extend their spending power by just buying hardware and installing Free and Open Source Software on top of this (eg. Ubuntu).

The usual benefits would then also apply.. Schools would be able to offer all the software that they use to their students to take home; upgrades and security updates would be available free of charge; students can start to learn about the Free and Open Source Software community and participate and contribute the Free and Open Source.

All good...

So what about businesses?

Businesses will carry an increased tax burden for an additional one and a half years, over the next 4 years. In a tightening economy, this maybe enough of an incentive to switch to Free and Open Source Software. If businesses do take up Free and Open Source Software en-mass, then the education fund could be significantly less than projected. This could, in turn, drive the adoption of FOSS in schools, as funds for computer grants become tighter.

So, watch the space. The budget assumes a status quo which may not continue. If this changes, FOSS is an attractive proposition for those people that would then like to make use of it.

OLPC Laptop - How Awesome it that!

Happier then a pig in mud.

Yesterday, at Linux.Conf.Au 2008, I was given (another) XO laptop. This is a fantastic little gadget which some of you have seen me discuss before, and it great to see just how far this project has progressed.

Let me just say from the outset that during the last year I have been the happy custodian of an early model XO laptop, received after last years Linux.Conf.Au, which has travelled around a bit. He even had his own blog (sparky's blog).

Several other people from Adelaide, South Australia have also received XO's to do 'cool stuff' as well. I plan to keep in contact which these people.. and sparky will be as well. If you live in Adelaide or South Australia and would like to see an XO laptop first hand, play with it or even borrow it to try out some cool idea for the project, send me an email and we'll see what we can do.

From the grapevine, there were 50 of these laptops bought by Linux Australia for distribution at the conference and the OLPC project pitched in with another 50.

Footnote: This blog post was written on the XO. Unfortunately, it looks like blogspot relies on multiple windows for uploading images.. which is something that I haven't been able to figure out how to do yet but I do have some nice ones from the conference, taken with the XO's own built-in camera.

Update: Found an answer to the image problem.. upload into Picassa first, and then copy/paste the link using the regular X server cut-n-paste function between browser windows.

Off to Linux.Conf.Au 2008

It's January! ...and that means that it is again time for the Annual Linux.Conf.Au, this year being held in Melbourne from Monday, 28 January to Saturday, 2 February 2008.

It's returning to the location where it all started in 1999, where the 'Conference for Australian Linux Users' (CALU) was held. I attended that one, missed the next two LCA's but have been to every one since. (There was no LCA in 2000.) If you are interested in this history, more details can be found on the Linux.Org.Au website.

As always, LCA is going to be incredibly interesting. It is going to very tough choosing between speakers (http://linux.conf.au/programme/presentations) as the entire week is packed with lots of people talking about lots of technically interesting linux and Free and Open Software related stuff.. my current short list looks like:

Hardware / Software Hacking: Joining Second Life to the Real World, The Kernel Report, OLPC, Peace, Love, and Rockets!, Kernel hacking: hacking on lguest Clustered Samba - not just a hack any more, Parrot: a VM for Dynamic Languages, The Replicators Are Coming!, Farsight 2: Video conferencing made easy, Create your own Open Source Dance Mat, The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Census 2007.

Amongst all this, there are also the Mini-confs, Birds of a Feather (BoFs) sessions, the hacking in the hallways and the catching up with people not seen since the last LCA.

The only down side (that I can see) is that the conference has limited places and that they have all sold out.

This won't stop you getting to meet some of the fantastic people or technology. If you are in Melbourne on Saturday, 2 February, make you way down to Union House, Melbourne University for the Open Day. More details and the online registration are here.

2007 Federal Election Commentary - Microsoft Laughing all the way to the Bank

In the last days of the Federal Election Campaign of 2007, the Australian Labor Party pledged funding for a computer for every senior secondary student. This makes Microsoft very happy.

When negotiating software licenses for schools in the past, Microsoft proposed a volume license for schools, typically though their collective organisations based on the total number of computers that a school had, regardless of their operating system, or how thy were being used. This was, of course, provided at a lower rate under and Educational Licencing schemes.

Much of this is hearsay from people I know within the education sector, but it includes Universities as well, and it paints a picture of a situation where Microsoft are indeed collecting a tax from the Australia people and our government is allowing them to do it.

Let me ask a couple of questions:
- (Reward for effort) What additional effort does Microsoft have to make to receive this revenue?
- (A fair go) What risk have they taken in the past that justifies then receiving this reward?
- (Taking it to the bank) What is the guarantee on this revenue?

This revenue can only be called a tax. It's not 'a fee for a service' or 'purchase price'. It is a compulsory payment that is being made by the Government, through the public schools, and Australians through private schools on our behalf to an oversees entitly.

... and the amount money is not insignificant.

In summary: A vote for Rudd is a vote for Microsoft, and a vote for Howard is a vote for the Government that allowed this situation to happen, and also a vote for Microsoft.

Software Freedom Day at Mawson Lakes

For Software Freedom Day last year, an event called "Software Freedom Showcase" was held at Mawson Lakes, organised by MawsonLakes.Org, with the help of many other people in the community.

In the lead up to this years world wide event, Melissa Draper has published an article at Linux.com which discusses some of the fantastic things that came out of last years activities, and the event at Mawson Lakes get a really good mention. Thanks Melissa.

The events planned for this year are really starting to heat up, with over 200 teams registered from around the world.

This year, the event is being held on September 15.
For more information, visit SoftwareFreedomDay.Org

Aussie Coder helping OLPC gets article

There was a recent article about Joel Stanley in LinuxWorld.Com.au. Joel is a mate, and has been mentioned here before.

The article is here

http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;193757623;fp;16;fpid;0

Adventures in Paramatta

This week I am in Paramatta, New South Wales at SAGE-AU (System Administrators Guild of Australia) annual conference.

The conference is being held at The Sebal hotel in Paramatta, which is quite nice as far as hotels go.. not that I travel enough to judge properly.

Today I had a tutorial on "Change Management". There were lots of common sense guidelines. ITIL was mention quite a bit.. this is a system that I haven't heard of before, but it is the sort of thing that could be useful, particularly is it helps me put system change requests into context and get more useful stuff done.

After a day of being lectured at (as interesting as it was)
it was time to go fo a walk and stretch the legs. The park across the road is particularly nice a and green.

Looks like there is a production of "King Lear" currently on. I haven't ever seen this play. It would have been worth catching, but there are no tickets available for this week.

The Case of the Missing Dish

What is missing from this picture?

For those not familiar with Mawson Lakes, this picture is of the SPRI (Signal Processing Research Institute) building at the Mawson Lakes campus of the University of South Australia.

Normally, there is a dish on the roof which is used for tracking the FEDSAT satellite.

It looks like it was removed from the roof for a brief period (possibly for repair?) and is now back on the roof, much to everyones surprise.

An Operation on an XO

It works!

Last week I finally got around to modify my OLPC B2-1 laptop with the mods which I mentioned earlier..

Never trust a software engineer with a soldering iron.
With the help of a good friend, Stefan, and a bottle of Red we set about making the hardware changes.

After following the 'dis-assembly' instructions from the OLPC wiki, we were able to get access to the motherboard and change the resistor and soldered the connecting wire in place.


This image shows the change that was made to allow the keyboard to continue to operate while the processor is suspended.

This as been successfully tested from the Open Firmware prompt, where the processor can be put into suspend mode (by typing 's'), keys can be typed, an then when the processor is brought out of suspend, by pressing the power key, the characters then appear on the screen. This is very cool.

The second modification involved changing the position of another resistor and adding a short wire link. Unfortunately, in the process of removing the small surface mount resistor it was lost in amongst the solder waste. Luckily, Stefan has a spare 1k surface mount resistor from another project which he scavenged as a replacement.

The modification can be seen if the photo to the left, on the top right of the Geode chip. The first mod can be seen coming in from the left below the chip.

After reassembling the XO, I was able to test it (as mentioned above) and everything seems to be working correctly.

Wahoo!

For those that are interested.. also in the above photo is the 'ene' chip (bottom right). This is the system controller chip which controls (above other things) battery charging. This is what Joel Stanley is working on.

So ABC, where are the Open Codecs?

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) has started offering program videos for download from their website. While this is a great start, there are some things that would make it even better.

The BBC is currently under flack from the free and open source advocates in the UK after it proposal to release a video player (iPlayer) which was only provided for the Microsoft Windows operating system using the Internet Explorer. Content which is distributed by the national broadcaster is ment to be unbiased[1], non-discriminatory[2], and freely accessible by all[3]. A deliberate failure to provide any of these would certainly cause a public outcry.

The programs and content available from the ABC website are available in several formats but they all currently use restrictive formats, namely Flash and Windows Media player formats.

There are a couple of arguments used to justify not using open codecs and protocols. None of them address the three areas mentioned above. Regardless of whether the codecs can be downloaded by the end user for free[4], non-free[5] codecs:

• restrict access to only the supported computer platforms
  
• reduce availability for community members
• loss of options of assistance and contributions from the greater community
  
• cause alienation from viewing public and new media opportunities

Why is this issue important? If you are part of the Australian public that uses restrictive licensed software and codecs you may well have avoided these issues by paying for a license. The downside is that these licenses will continue to have to be paid for.

Ubuntu, the popular Linux software distribution, offers built in support for many free and open codecs, straight out of the box, no additional downloads or restrictive licenses required.

Support free and open codecs where you can.. more information soon.

Notes

1. Unbiased - as in field of conduct, pursuit or occupation.
2. Non-discriminatory - against sex, race or religion (etc.).
   
3. Assessable - publicly available to everyone.
4. Free - as in no cost.
5. Non-free - as in restrictive distribution terms.