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On Thursday the 18th of November, the WLUG was priveleged to have RodneyHide, the leader of NewZealand's ACT political party, address us.

He spoke about his background in environmental sustainability, and economics, and how that had encouraged him to believe in evolutionary processes exemplified by the free market rather than a plan designed by a committee which can not easily evolve.

He likened the committee approach to Microsoft, and the evolutionary "free market" approach to OpenSource. This frightened many, more traditional, capitalists. :-)

Rodney then explained his experiences with OpenSource software, such as the GIMP and MozillaFirefox. He also expressed an interest in eventually running purely on OpenSource solutions, with Linux as his desktop, but is cognisant of the need for compatibility in Parliament. This led nicely into a discussion of how the parliamentary process worked, and how Rodney could assist us in achieving our goal of advocating Linux to government.

We identified some of the key issues we'd like addressed - these being:

  • Software Patents.
  • Government information locked up in MS Word format. Open formats are required.
  • Copyright.
  • DRM. The concept of DRM precludes an Open Source solution.
  • Govt. Funding – encourage OSS development.
  • Indemnification – remove the power of FUD.

From opposition Rodney Can:

  • Ask Oral questions. (1 per day, with 8 supplementary)
  • Write Letters.
  • Parliamentary Questions – unlimited.
  • Select Committees – can institute an enquiry.

The WLUG should focus on raising Parliamentary questions, and Rodney will endeavor to assist us in formulating these in the most effective manner.

Notes on the process:

Questions should be as specific as possible, especially with respect to dates. This makes evading the questions difficult.
The original answer documents can be requested if there is a suspicion that the provided answer may be male bovine fecal matter.

With that in mind:

RodneyHide asked us what questions we'd like various government departments asked. This page is where we can discuss questions and talk about rewording them before their submission. Each question is made into a title so that the discussion about that question can happen underneath.

How much money has this department spent in the last financial year on Microsoft products?

How many machines within this department are running Linux in production as of today?

How many internal applications within this department are currently written in a way that are not immediately portable to other operating systems?

How much money has this department spent in the last financial year on protecting against and recovering from worms and viruses?

How much downtime has this department experienced in person hours that was due to a loss of service caused by worms and viruses?

Why does this department consider it safe to publish .doc files on its public website?

This question needs to be targetted only at the departments that do the above :) References:

Perhaps amusing facts can be found in these doc files revision histories which can be rephrased in form of a question.

Why does this department not have versions of its files available for download in a more open format such as pdf or html?

(Paired with the above question where appropriate)

How much of the last round of funding body (FRST?/TBG?) projects gone towards development of Open Source Software as defined by http://www.opensource.org/?

Why does FRST? not consider the production of Open Source software to be a valid objective for funding especially in the light of high quality software like MozillaFirefox being produced in New Zealand?

Other things we need to phrase into questions:

  • Microsoft in Schools
  • ComCom? & ADSL in New Zealand?