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Marita Cheng talks about Robogals at Melbourne Uni tomorrow 11am
by Les Kitchen 07 Mar '12

07 Mar '12

Hi All! Sorry for late notice on this... Marita Cheng, Young Australian of the Year, will be talking tomorrow morning (Thursday) at 11 o'clock about Robogals. It's part of the Uni's International Women's Day celebration. http://www.hr.unimelb.edu.au/news/articles/international-womens-day-2012 You have to RSVP through Anna Frith, 8344-7798 or mailto:fritha@unimelb.edu.au. I don't know whether it's too late to RSVP at this stage, but I'm going to try to go myself, and maybe some of you would be interested too. Maybe the Robogals experience could give us some ideas. -- Smiles, Les.

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Fundraising dinner with Brett Smith following the talk
by Ben Sturmfels 03 Mar '12

03 Mar '12

Hi Folks, We're running a small FSF fundraising dinner following the talk on Monday. To attend, register here: http://apps.freesoftware.asn.au/invite/brett-smith-dinner/ Places are limited to 12 people. Come along and talk to Brett about his activism and work in free software. Regards, Ben

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Reminder: Brett Smith FSF talk on Monday, 6pm
by Ben Sturmfels 01 Mar '12

01 Mar '12

Hi Folks, I'm really excited about Brett Smith's talk this Monday 5 March at 6pm. Don't forget to register: http://apps.freesoftware.asn.au/invite/brett-smith-fsf/ Why not use this talk as a way to introduce people to free software? Let Brett do the hard work of explaining for you! While broadcast messages are great, there's nothing like a personal invitation, be it talking in person, by phone, chat message or direct email. Think about the people you know, even the distant work colleague who was asking about your funny looking desktop. Contact them directly and say "I think you might be interested in this talk". So if you haven't already, please go ahead and invite some people along. Look forward to seeing you on Monday! Ben

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Mystery Free Software Event - Monday 5th March
by Ben Sturmfels 28 Feb '12

28 Feb '12

Hi Folks, At the bottom of the "Free software meeting wrap up" email, I mentioned a tentative special event coming up, but gave you the wrong date. Please pencil in "Mystery Free Software Event" on the evening of Monday 5th March (not 6th March sorry). We have a special international guest in town. We're confirming the details and will give you more info soon. Regards, Ben

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Fwd: Interested in possible FSF events in Melbourne? - mystery event.
by Bianca Gibson 28 Feb '12

28 Feb '12

Here's the mystery event (I'm guessing). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brett Smith <brett(a)fsf.org> Date: 24 February 2012 15:00 Subject: Interested in possible FSF events in Melbourne? To: Bianca Gibson <---------@-----> Hi Bianca, My name's Brett Smith; I'm the license compliance engineer at the Free Software Foundation, which means that all kinds of license-related issues pass over my desk -- whether they're for education, advocacy, or bringing violators into compliance. I might be visiting Melbourne in early March to talk to government negotiators about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement about its potential impact on free software developers. Right now plans are still tentative, but we're gauging how much interest there would be for events targeted at free software supporters and others who'd like to learn more about our work. We'd like to hear from you if you'd be interested in attending either or both of: - a speech, open to the public, introducing free software and discussing recent issues in free software licensing, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement - a small fundraising dinner for the FSF, focused on good conversation (come pick my brain!) We're currently looking at March 5 for both these events, but again, these plans are not finalized. If you would be interested in attending either of these events, even if the answer is "It depends," please write back to let me know and help us make an informed decision. If you do, I'll keep you updated on what we decide. I'm looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks, -- Brett Smith License Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=2992. -- Follow us on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/fsf | Subscribe to our blogs via RSS at http://fsf.org/blogs/RSS Join us as an associate member at http://fsf.org/jf Sent from the Free Software Foundation, 51 Franklin Street Fifth Floor Boston, MA 02110-1335 United States You can unsubscribe to this mailing-list by visiting the link http://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/mailing/unsubscribe?reset=1&jid=125816&qid=15924…. To stop all email from the Free Software Foundation, including Defective by Design, and the Free Software Supporter newsletter, click this link: http://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/mailing/optout?reset=1&jid=125816&qid=1592407&h=… .

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"Open source – ditching patents and copyright for the greater good"
by Chris Samuel 27 Feb '12

27 Feb '12

The Conversation website has been publishing a series of blogs by different authors about "Ideas and Ownership", number 6 in the series is called "Open source – ditching patents and copyright for the greater good" and is written by Anton Hughes,a PhD candidate from the Uni of Tasmania. https://theconversation.edu.au/open-source-ditching-patents-and-copyright-f… He previously wrote an article for them entitled "Do patents create software innovation? Computer says no". https://theconversation.edu.au/do-patents-create-software-innovation-comput… Nice to see all sides being covered by The Conversation. cheers, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP

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Free software meeting wrap up
by Ben Sturmfels 26 Feb '12

26 Feb '12

Hi Folks, I just wanted to say a great big THANKS! to everyone who came along to the Free Software Melbourne discussion group last Thursday on encouraging women in free software. We had 16 people, our highest yet and over a third women. We heard some really interesting stories and ideas, which continued on over tasty Korean food for dinner. Alex and I were a little nervous about whether we could hold a discussion where people would be comfortable to speak freely. We needn't have worried though, everyone was overwhelmingly thoughtful and considerate. One recommendation discussed was to speak up if you notice bad behavior. This is especially important for the blokes who can have significant influence in these situations. Notes from the discussion: http://wiki.freesoftware.asn.au/encouragingWomen Thanks again to Alex for organising the venue and for taking notes. Thanks also to Ben F. for bringing snacks. Finally, pencil in "Mystery Free Software Event" on the evening of Monday 6th March. We have a special international guest in town. Details soon! Ben

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getting involved with unis (wiki)
by Bianca Gibson 24 Feb '12

24 Feb '12

Hi, I was looking at the easy advocacy page on the wiki, and saw the getting involved in Unis part. I figured as a student I'd be able to shed some more light through my experiences. Getting involved in Unis - doing your course with free software - Andy K At the moment, you can't do it with fully free software (at least at Monash). Sometimes even required to use proprietary windows only software. - free software tools Sometimes actively encouraged, sometimes not permitted. Never seen it encouraged due to being free software, always another reason. Sometimes it gets mentioned that it's free software, though generally referred to as open source. - lab computer At Monash the IT lab computers dual boot windows and some distro I can't remember, but they keep that distro really out of date and don't even install dev tools on it in IT labs. One of my tutors last semester thinks it's so no one will use it so they won't have to support it. Given that, I'd expect active resistance to trying to get the tools we need on them. - are we focusing on unis or students? I think they tie together. You can target students through unis, for example a lug is starting at Monash Clayton soon, and hopefully we can do something about these issues around the uni, thus using students to target the uni. - requirements on submitting assignments - getting course requirements changed - Ben F: does MS office naively support ODF? I don't know, but you receive a list of formats you are allowed to submit in - for anything you would want to submit as odt it ranges from .doc only, pdf only or both. - course coordinators? Some could be sympathetic, but I see it being very difficult to get them to allow using fully free software. Allowing complete use of a free software operating system is more realistic for now.

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Video/audio from patents talk and committee hearing
by Ben Sturmfels 21 Feb '12

21 Feb '12

Hi Folks, The video from my recent talk "Ending Software Patents in Australia" is available. First enable patent-unencumbered WebM video for YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/html5 Then the video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzz-w55D9vM Alternatively: http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/linux.conf.au/2012/Ending_Software_Paten… To give context to some of remarks, the talk was in Ballarat, Victoria, at linux.conf.au, a moderately technical free software conference. Also, I've just received approval to publish audio from the December House of Representatives Petition Committee hearing. The audio is available here: http://www.sturm.com.au/2011/interviews/house-of-reps-petitions-committee-h… Regards, Ben

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EFF: If the Eolas software patent ruling had gone the other way
by Ben Finney 16 Feb '12

16 Feb '12

Howdy all, Relevant for our ongoing fight against software idea patents: The Electronic Frontier Foundation rightly uses the recent ruling in the ongoing Eolas patent debacle to point out that, despite a not-insane decision in this particular instance, this is not a good situation to have occurred: That's the good news. The bad news: it came after the patents already caused plenty of damage. Companies large and small have taken licenses from Eolas rather than pay millions to fight in court. Many, such as Tim Berners-Lee (who testified during trial), warned about the dangers of the Eolas patents […] We couldn't agree more, but let's go a step further. What the Eolas patents make clear is that the system isn’t working. We’ve been saying it for years, yet both Congress and the courts have failed to fix the problem. In the now infamous Bilski case, the Supreme Court gave the green light to business method patents, and, consequently, to software patents. But the patent system, which is largely a one-size-fits-all program, simply stops making sense when we start to talk about software. <URL:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/why-patent-system-doesnt-play> -- \ “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I | `\ prayed with my legs.” —Frederick Douglass, escaped slave | _o__) | Ben Finney

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