Hi all, Our meeting on Thursday was small, but productive. These are the minutes: - Anti-piracy report Cited by government, and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Pirate Party. It claims that the increase in internet traffic is exactly correlated with job loss (which sectors?) - Copyright reform The issue for us is that this will likely be driven by ACTA and the TPP, and the above piracy report. This affects us because it may result in stronger DRM and anti-circumvention laws, and other restrictions on the use of hardware. - TPP Among other things, the TPP demands a copyright term of 95 years after the date of publication. Some confusion here: currently, does the copyright term start at the death of the author? - Patent abolition ambassadors We welcome Bill Appelbe, CEO of VPAC as a public voice against patents. We discussed who else we could approach. - Customer agreements We discussed what sorts of things should go in an agreement with a client to allow the developer to contribute code upstream in FOSS projects. Alex couldn't find any of these online. MFSIG could collaborate to create such an agreement, and pool our resources to have it looked at by a lawyer. Then we could post it on the Web for anyone to use. Action items: - Alex to write to Kim Weatherall to offer the help of MFSIG in campagning against certain aspects of the TPP: - Copyright term. - Anti-circumvention of copy protection / "rights management". - Patent "ever greening". - Chris to contact Con Zymaris about Open Source Victoria (are they still active?)

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 12:54 PM, danyj028@gmail wrote:

On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:27:05 +1100 Alex Fraser wrote:

...

Hi all,

b for anyone to use.

...

Action items:  - Alex to write to Kim Weatherall to offer the help of MFSIG in campagning    against certain aspects of the TPP:     - Copyright term.     - Anti-circumvention of copy protection / "rights management".     - Patent "ever greening".  - Chris to contact Con Zymaris about Open Source Victoria (are they

No Open Source Victoria has been for all purposes absorbed by OSIA.  It really does not exist except for listing on a few obscure records maintained by MMV and perhaps some other organisation, that never updated their records.

Right ... and I wonder how active OSIA are these days too ?? Alex and I attended a meeting at OSDC 2010 in Nov last year where it seemed to be under discussion whether OSIA even keep going or formally shut down. I emailed their official address afterwards to ask if any resolution was made on that and if they were accepting new members, and never got a response. Of course would be happy to be proved wrong that they _are_ still active! cheers, Pat.

Cheers Daniel.

...

still active?)

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 - Customer agreements   We discussed what sorts of things should go in an agreement with a client to   allow the developer to contribute code upstream in FOSS projects. Alex couldn't   find any of these online. MFSIG could collaborate to create such an   agreement, and pool our resources to have it looked at by a lawyer. Then we   could post it on the Web for anyone to use.

Not 'spruiking' anyone here, but through browsing OSIA listings a while back I came across an Australian law practice with a special interest in Open Source: http://www.opensourcelaw.biz/ It is run by Brendan Scott I think. cheers, Pat.