S.A. Parliament - Ubuntu Matter of Interest

Fri Dec 1 04:50:22 CST 2006

Sounds very good, until it gets the the Ubuntu bit. Why with such an opportunity, would anyone be promoting one distribution over another? I realise this is from the Ubuntu users group, but OSS air time is limited (especially within Parliament) and it should be for the greater good, not one subsection of it.

Thats my thoughts anyway.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: linuxsa-bounces at linuxsa.org.au on behalf of Janet Hawtin
Sent: Fri 1/12/2006 12:44 PM
To: seldon; Linux SA; paul at mawsonlakes.org; Jonathan Oxer
Subject: Re: S.A. Parliament - Ubuntu Matter of Interest

Hello folks
Ive been asked to forward this draft speech to the list for comment.
Janet

Matter of Interest
Hon Dennis Hood MLC
Draft - 30 Nov 2006

I would like to speak today about Free and Open Source Software -
something once dear to the heart of the Hon Ian Gilfillan.

Last week, it was reported that the French parliament was dumping
Microsoft products in place of Open Source software. The move came
after successful transitions by their Ministry of Agriculture and
Police.

Starting in June of next year, French deputies will use desktops and
servers running Linux instead of Microsoft Windows; Mozilla's Firefox
Web browser in place of Internet Explorer; and OpenOffice - a free
open source alternative to Microsoft's Office software. Documents will
be saved in a non-proprietary Open Document format, which can be read
easily by any word processor.

As an aside, I note that on March 31, 2006 the National Archives of
Australia also settled on the Open Document format to ensure long-term
access to data without legal or technical barriers.

A detailed study concluded that the move will result in "substantial
savings despite the associated migration and training costs".

Free and Open Source software is being produced, as I speak, by
developers all over the world - many of them in South Australia. The
majority of these developers are volunteers, donating their time and
energy to improve and give away free software. And it is free in every
sense of the word - free from any cost, but also free in the sense
that it can be used, copied, studied, modified, improved and
redistributed with little or no restriction.

With developers all over the world freely and constantly improving the
software, it is little wonder that many Open Source solutions are now
outpacing Microsoft solutions.

I want to focus primarily on the Linux Open Source Operating System -
a  free competitor to Microsoft Windows. There are various 'flavours'
of Linux, including Red Hat, Novell Suse, Mandriva - amongst others.
The most popular at the current time is called 'Ubuntu Linux'.

'Ubuntu', in the African Zulu and Xhosa languages loosely means
'humanity towards others'.

First released in 2004, this software collection is backed by
Canonical, a  company founded by Mark Shuttleworth.

Mark Shuttleworth made his fortune as a software developer in the  dot
com era, with a company which was built on Free and Open Source
Software, supplying digital encryption services internationally to
banks.

Mr. Shuttleworth, who is also the second space tourist, decided to
contribute back to the Free and Open Source software community, and
Ubuntu was born. Reading from the back of the CD's that I recently
distributed to all Members, "Ubuntu is an operating system consisting
of free and open source software". "Ubuntu is 'really free' software.
You are encouraged and legally entitle to copy, reinstall, modify, and
redistribute the CD for yourself and anyone else who may need it."

The Ubuntu distribution has topped the ranks of Linux Distributions
downloaded from the Internet since it's release and is developed by a
world wide community, specifically with the ordinary computer user in
mind.

Recently, South Australians have been expressing concern about the
ability to access information and technology safely and the continuing
expense of proprietary software licenses in our schools and
educational institutions.

On behalf of the South Australian Ubuntu Users Group, I promote two
concepts to promote Free and Open Source Software as a 'way forward':

First, that we should open the IT funding criteria. Funding for IT in
schools is often focused on acquiring and maintaining Software
Licenses. The use of free Open Source software allows the spending to
be refocused in education and training.

Second, South Australian schools and libraries need somewhere to try
out Open Source software. A publicly accessible facility is required
where businesses and community groups can test these technologies to
learn about whether they are suitable for their purposes. Western
Australia, with the OpenSource WA Demonstration Centre, and Victoria
have both undertaken projects to boot strap their free software
sector. It would be great to see something like this in South
Australia.

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