linux.conf.au 2010 in the press

LWN.net: An LCA 2010 overview

http://lwn.net/Articles/371044/, submitted on 2010-01-27 06:45

The 2010 edition of linux.conf.au was held on January 18 to 22 in Wellington, New Zealand. A number of the talks from this event have been covered elsewhere on LWN, with more to come; this article will talk about several other sessions and your editor's impressions of the conference as a whole. In brief: it was a highly successful event which easily lived up to the high standards set by LCA.

[Haka] One often goes to conferences to see the speakers perform. It's a rare event, however, which gets them up on stage together to do a Maori war dance. The speakers' dinner on Tuesday night featured plenty of good food, "Fiasco" wine, and a group which gave lessons on how to do the Haka (which only coincidentally sounds a lot like "hacker"). Much noise was made, much fun was had, and, much to the participants' chagrin, videos were made.

CIO: Open source under threat from 'grey' IP laws

http://www.cio.com.au/article/333278/open_source_under_threat_from_grey_ip_laws, submitted on 2010-01-25 19:44

Colin Jackson, an independent technology consultant and writer from NZ, says free software remains under threat from the expansion of copyright, misguided software patents and the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

CIO: Smarter Linux file structure aims to ease software management

http://www.cio.com.au/article/333549/smarter_linux_file_structure_aims_ease_software_management, submitted on 2010-01-25 19:43

GoboLinux does away with the old Unix file system hierarchy; "What is fatal to other distributions is stable here," says NZ developer Michael Homer.

Stuff: Open-source alive and thriving

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/3257752/Open-source-alive-and-thriving, submitted on 2010-01-25 19:07

New York University anthropologist Gabriella Coleman says the open-source software movement has emerged relatively unscathed from the economic downturn.

CIO: NZ school ditches Microsoft and goes totally open source

http://www.cio.com.au/article/333686/nz_school_ditches_microsoft_goes_totally_open_source, submitted on 2010-01-25 19:05

A New Zealand high school running entirely on open source software has slashed its server requirements by a factor of almost 50, despite a government deal mandating the use of Microsoft software in all schools.

Angus: LCA 2010 Day 3: Crikey!

http://www.gusworld.com.au/blog/?p=800, submitted on 2010-01-24 19:30

I write for a living and I write a fair amount, but it does tend to be for the same sites. Indeed, up until this week the last time I actually started writing for a publication I’d never appeared in before was when I started at Lifehacker back in May 2008.

LinuxJournal: Linux.conf.au - Day Four

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linuxconfau-day-four, submitted on 2010-01-23 19:27

Day four of the conference opened with a keynote entitiled "Hackers at the End of the World" by Glyn Moody. Glyn explored the history of sharing in science and art as inspired by the open source movement, and contrasted this with the anti-sharing 'my gain is your loss' culture of the global financial community. Glyn postulated that the sharing and indeed sharing of sharing that characterises the FOSS community held a tantalising glimpse of a solution to the global financial and environmental crisis.

iTWire: Brisbane to host LCA 2011

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/30656/1090/, submitted on 2010-01-23 06:21

Nine years after it first played host, Brisbane has been awarded the rights to host the Australian national Linux conference again.

iTWire: LCA 2010: Keeping patent trolls at bay

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/30653/1090/, submitted on 2010-01-22 12:46

Free software is likely to come under increasing attack from patent holders in the years ahead and therefore developers need to understand the basics of patents themselves, free software luminary Andrew Tridgell said today.

LinuxJournal: Linux.conf.au - Day Three

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linuxconfau-day-three, submitted on 2010-01-22 09:41

The glorious weather that had punctuated the first two days of the conference held, heralding in the third day in a blaze of sunshine. The conference proper was introduced by a keynote by Benjamin Mako Hill on Antifeatures: Why your software works against you and why software freedom offers hope of a better future. Mako explored the concept of anti-features as deliberately included functionality or a lack of functionality that users hate so much they will pay to have them removed. Some classic examples included the gator spyware that was included with free version of p2p software on the windows platform - with a spyware-free version available for a fee.

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