Opening the doors to co-operative software

Peter Harrison sees a busy year ahead for open source advocates. Picture / Dean Purcell

When a State Services Commission document used the word "infectious" this year to describe open source software licences, Peter Harrison was among those to catch the contagious grumpy bug that followed.

But rather than get mad, the president of the NZ Open Source Society decided to get diplomatic.

Instead of firing off an angry press release, the society sent a report to the commission outlining suggested changes to the offending briefing paper, which had been written as a guide for Government departments.

"They took that on board. We had a meeting with them and we had an opportunity to review their second version of that document before they finally published it," Harrison says.

"That to us was a big move from the point of view that we were actually working co-operatively with Government. We're not out there just making a lot of noise. We actually had a positive involvement in making sure that [the commission's] recommendations were fair and balanced."

The provocative use of "infectious" - while deemed inappropriate by Harrison and removed from the revised document - wasn't the main reason the society lobbied for changes to the guidelines, he says.

"The big issue that we came up with was that it basically barred open source in [Government department] development contracts - if the guidelines were implemented, there would be contractual language in standard contracts barring open source.

"What concerned us was that these recommendations would be taken to heart in Government departments and contracts changed to reflect those recommendations - and that would have been really bad for the open source community."

Open sourcers have battled for years - with increasing success - to win public and business respect alongside the dominant proprietary software suppliers. But Harrison says there is plenty of work still to be done.

He says the Linux open source operating system, for example, has a major battle turning around Micro-soft's dominant personal computer operating system position because the software giant has become so entrenched.

"There are definite areas where open source has taken off, however I'm not going to predict the overthrow of Microsoft on the desktop any time soon. I think there are some pretty fundamental barriers in the way of that kind of adoption.

"In some areas open source needs to raise its game, and in other places it's more of a political or a social problem than a technological one."

Those political and social issues relate to proprietary software's traditional market dominance.

The good news for open source, however, is that "it's a different story in business and government. Businesses can gain massively from putting Linux throughout their business. It provides some definitive support structures."

In true IT society fashion, NZOSS held its AGM online late last month, using Internet Relay Chat to involve members from all over the country.

Harrison predicts a busy year ahead, with the group taking a keen interest in legislative issues such as planned amendments to patent and copyright laws.

"We've had a bit of a revival in the past year. We languished a bit for a while with very few people able to commit time and effort, but in the last year we've really taken off and there's quite a bit more interest and energy in the society so it looks like this year is going to be a good one for us."

Harrison closed his IT consultancy this year and says taking a break from the demands of running a business has giving him more time to focus on driving the society. His day job now is working as a Java developer on web applications and he says he is enjoying the move from management back to cutting code. Ultimately he would like to combine programming with a research role in his interest area of artificial intelligence, "but there aren't too many positions like that floating around".

PETER HARRISON

Who: President, NZ Open Source Society.

Favourite gadget: Laptop. "Not very exciting but your entire life's on the laptop and I pretty much take it everywhere. I'm not one of these people who gets the latest device just because it's out."

Next big thing: Artificial intelligence. "Eventually that's going to be one of the fundamental changes in how we use computers and how we interact with them."

Alternative career: Researching artificial life and doing more pure computing rather than business applications.

Spare time: Photography, merged with computer skills.

Favourite sci-fi movie: The original Star Wars (released in 1977). "It was a first-of-its-type movie and really defined a decade for me."