New Zealand

The New Zealand Government loves Drupal:

• The Beehive's (Parliament building) website runs Drupal
• Three of the seven represented parties run their websites on Drupal; Labour, Greens and ACT
• Those three parties represent 57 of the 122 parliamentary seats – almost half!

Today I had a long and very positive meeting about software patents and the NZ Patents Bill with Commerce Committee chairperson, Labour party's Lianne Dalziel, as well as Drupal-peers Dave Lane and Jonathan Hunt.  Dalziel, Christchurch East MP, was well-informed about the Patents Bill, the Ministry of Economic Development's Patent Review and the insufficient attention paid to software patents (thanks to our emails and exchange of documents beforehand).  She was not so well-informed about software patents and the harm that they cause – as would be expected given the complexity and obscurity of these issues for those who do not work in the software development.

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Kathryn Ryan of Radio NZ interviewed Don Christie, president of the NZ Open Source Society and Kevin Ackhurst, managing director of Microsoft NZ on Microsoft's failure to renew their multi-million dollar contract with the NZ government.  The interviews and Kathryn's questions are intense and very interesting as Don Christie defends the government's choice to break out of a reliance on Microsoft's products, and Kevin Ackhurst tries to defend Microsoft's position, touting it as a success.

Highlights for me were Kevin Ackhursts rehearsed tape-recorder responses that avoid answering Kathryn's questions, and Kathryn's obvious frustration with his failure to state things as they are.  It's clear that Microsoft wants to paint this as a success story, but is failing pretty badly.

I love Don Christie's "Microsoft software is like a virus..." which reminds me of Microsoft's "linux is a cancer" statements.

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NZ government is about to pass a new Patents Act.  In the 8-year review, they seemingly forgot to consider the impacts of patents on computer software!  Submissions on the bill are being accepted till 2 July, so we need to move fast.  Make a submission now! 

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The NZ SSC has rejected Microsoft's offers for a new licensing contract. This is a big loss for Microsoft (Though I'm sure MS would have you believe otherwise and try to paint the picture back to front) and big win for NZ Government and NZ's IT industry.

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The online protest against changes to copyright law in New Zealand – aka Internet Blackout NZ – was successful in that it has resulted in a 4-week delay. It is expected that this will give the new New Zealand government enough time to reconsider the consequences of such a ridiculous law change, and most probably repeal the changes entirely. The NZ Herald has more details. This is an enormous shout out to everyone who drove the protest and participated in some way. In particularly;

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CivicActions is a proud sponsor of DrupalSouth; the New Zealand Drupal Event for 2008. DrupalSouth will bring NZ's Drupal community together for the first NZ-wide Drupal event and the first ever DrupalCamp in NZ. A collection of individual Drupal professionals in Christchurch, New Zealand are organizing the event, including our very own Bevan Rudge. Bevan will be presenting on Google Maps in Drupal; The Hub Map, in which he will showcase the Hub Map, and talk about implementing Google maps mashups in Drupal.

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