[wellylug] FW: [opensourcenz] Update

[Klenner, Colin]

Worth a look and possible involvement.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Lane [mailto:dlane at egressive.com]
Sent: Friday, 2 November 2001 12:37
To: opensourcenz at egressive.co.nz
Subject: [opensourcenz] Update


Sorry about the long silence everyone.

Aside from being busy with work, there's been a lot going on behind the 
scenes.  Thanks to a meeting with Carl Klitscher of IBM at last weeks Cant'y

Linux Users' Group meeting, I got a call today from one of the managers at 
IBM NZ to discuss the message.  We'll see what they decide to do...   

I haven't sent the message to the ministers yet because, well, I haven't 
decided how best to present it to them.  I now have a colleague, however, 
who's here in town on an extended visit who has had quite a bit to do with 
communicating to ministers, whose advice I shall seek.  I intend to present 
the ministers with a "snapshot" of the message/list of co-signers - the 
signature requests keep trickling in!  

Josh Campbell (ZYPE) and I have finally decided on branding, etc. for the 
portal site which will eventually replace the openz message as the default 
page of the site.  We (a few of us here in Chch) will be building it on the 
PHPSlash portal framework, but doing it in our spare time means that it'll 
probably take a wee while yet.   We intend to include relevant current
events 
as well as an open source vendor directory, business cases, testimonials, 
organisational info, and links to relevant stuff like standards sites and 
other related efforts elsewhere in the world.

I've had very good feedback from everyone I've talked to about spearheading 
the formation of a NZ organisation of open source focused vendors.  I and 
some of the other vendors here in Chch would like to create some sort of 
professional society and a directory, which is represented on the openz 
portal.  

We'd also like to organise an open source/open standards summit here in Chch

sometime Q1 2002.  Anyone interested in helping/participating?  We need to 
gauge the interest so that we can determine what size facility we'll need!

Now for the intrigue: the biggest problem I see us facing at the moment is 
that the government (and many large NZ businesses, e.g. Air NZ) have "select

agreements" with our friends in Redmond which effectively restrict them from

a) using any other vendor's software, and b) saying anything publically that

might damage their perceived "loyalty" and hence that preferential pricing 
arrangement.  

As a consequence, apparently all local government representatives got an 
email a couple weeks ago from their various CEOs (who apparently got the 
message from on high) that they were not to support our letter on the
grounds 
that government employees must appear to be impartial...  It all strikes me 
as pretty dodgy, but I can't quite work out how to show that.  Anyone have 
any ideas (especially a copy of the email)? 

If nothing else, I think we can make a very strong case that those sorts of 
arrangements effectively kill any domstic IT market because all of the money

being invested by the biggest IT users very quickly heads north across the 
Pacific.  What we need to do is *become a viable option*.  To do that we
need 
to organise and coordinate ourselves.

Oh, and to any Microsoft people who might be lurking on this list  <wave 
wave> Hi.  :o)

Right, that's it from me for now - back to work.
Regards,

Dave

-- 
** David Lane, Director ** Egressive Limited (Chch) **
** dlane at egressive.com ** PO Box 24162, Christchurch, NZ **
** www.egressive.com ** Open Source: software for the discerning palate **
** let's make NZ open source friendly - visit www.openz.org  **

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