Hi all, After Rodney Hide spoke to us last year, he suggested that our most effective tool for advocacy would be to formulate a list of parliamentary questions. A good explanation of the usefulness of these can be found here: http://www.act.org.nz/question.jsp Mr. Hide has offered to put our questions forward, but at the moment they are a tad incoherent. Could we have some keen volunteers to edit http://www.wlug.org.nz/ParliamentaryQuestions? Be brutal. Don't worry about retaining comments - they are retained in the wiki's revision history. I'd really like to submit these in "ready to ask" form to Mr. Hide by the end of this month. Please note: The WLUG has no political affiliation with ACT or any other political party, but we know a useful tool when we see one. :) Please don't submit these questions yourself, as we would like them to all be submitted together from a single point of contact to maximise their efficiency. Thanks, Greig McGill El Presidente.
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) I'm guess this has something to do with a draconian employer? James.
Greig McGill wrote:
Hi all,
After Rodney Hide spoke to us last year, he suggested that our most effective tool for advocacy would be to formulate a list of parliamentary questions. A good explanation of the usefulness of these can be found here:
See also the linked rules for questions, from that page: http://www.act.org.nz/action/questions/ Greig.
On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 08:34 +1200, Greig McGill wrote:
Mr. Hide has offered to put our questions forward, but at the moment they are a tad incoherent. Could we have some keen volunteers to edit http://www.wlug.org.nz/ParliamentaryQuestions?
/me volunteers to look at it tonight -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 275 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 09:11 +1200, Greig McGill wrote:
Heh, cheers Matt. You are really becoming the WLUG packhorse, aren't you? :)
Actually I didn't think I was doing that much atm, think of it as me making up for all the meetings I miss.
I'd like to be able to delegate things without feeling that you'll just end up doing them! ;)
Well I certainly don't mind doing this as it interests me personally as well :) -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 275 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
I've added one question: Are there any plans for the New Zealand Government to have a policy which prefers Open Source Software as many other governments are doing? On Apr 4, 2005 8:34 AM, Greig McGill <greig(a)hamiltron.net> wrote:
Hi all,
After Rodney Hide spoke to us last year, he suggested that our most effective tool for advocacy would be to formulate a list of parliamentary questions. A good explanation of the usefulness of these can be found here:
http://www.act.org.nz/question.jsp
Mr. Hide has offered to put our questions forward, but at the moment they are a tad incoherent. Could we have some keen volunteers to edit http://www.wlug.org.nz/ParliamentaryQuestions?
Be brutal. Don't worry about retaining comments - they are retained in the wiki's revision history. I'd really like to submit these in "ready to ask" form to Mr. Hide by the end of this month.
Please note: The WLUG has no political affiliation with ACT or any other political party, but we know a useful tool when we see one. :) Please don't submit these questions yourself, as we would like them to all be submitted together from a single point of contact to maximise their efficiency.
Thanks,
Greig McGill El Presidente.
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On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 08:34, Greig McGill wrote:
Hi all,
After Rodney Hide spoke to us last year, he suggested that our most effective tool for advocacy would be to formulate a list of parliamentary questions. A good explanation of the usefulness of these can be found here:
It will be the most effective tool for Rodney Hide. Has the WLUG approached a local MP who is a member of the Government yet (whoever that is)? Sid.
s swami wrote:
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 08:34, Greig McGill wrote:
Hi all,
After Rodney Hide spoke to us last year, he suggested that our most effective tool for advocacy would be to formulate a list of parliamentary questions. A good explanation of the usefulness of these can be found here:
It will be the most effective tool for Rodney Hide. Has the WLUG approached a local MP who is a member of the Government yet (whoever that is)?
Better to use an existing connection than forge a new one? You should be all about code-reuse, Sid. Same principle. :P G.
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 14:15, Greig McGill wrote:
It will be the most effective tool for Rodney Hide. Has the WLUG approached a local MP who is a member of the Government yet (whoever that is)?
Better to use an existing connection than forge a new one? You should be all about code-reuse, Sid. Same principle. :P
I would also have bought the "loose coupling" defence ;-) Sid.
s swami wrote:
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 14:15, Greig McGill wrote:
It will be the most effective tool for Rodney Hide. Has the WLUG approached a local MP who is a member of the Government yet (whoever that is)?
Better to use an existing connection than forge a new one? You should be all about code-reuse, Sid. Same principle. :P
I would also have bought the "loose coupling" defence ;-)
Sid.
Hrm. While the remarks are in jest (yours and mine), it bugs me that people seem to consider Rodney Hide to be an incompatible fit in terms of putting our views to parliament? Why is that? Perhaps we should start a politics thread, but it could get messy... Anyway, in summary - he's a liberal, so he cares about personal freedom, and he is passionate about Open Source. How can that require loose coupling? :) G.
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 14:37, Greig McGill wrote:
... Anyway, in summary - he's a liberal, so he cares about personal freedom, and he is passionate about Open Source. How can that require loose coupling? :)
:) "loose coupling" as in minimising the number of different classes that our class talks to. So when we change our question, we just send a message to the Rodney liberal class as opposed to a collection of x incompatible classes. ... or something like that. Sid.
At 15:45 4/04/2005, you wrote:
"loose coupling" as in minimising the number of different classes that our class talks to. So when we change our question, we just send a message to the Rodney liberal class as opposed to a collection of x incompatible classes.
Interestingly in our context, Rodney Hide is an implementation of the Facade Pattern, as we don't require knowledge of the "incompatible" government interface(s) that are indirectly referenced. Also the phrase "loose coupling" is relatively deprecated and now is most commonly referred to within the Object Oriented arena simply as Abstraction. David
Hi all, Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS? I'll hold my hand up -- bibliography management systems etc. at www.sourceforge.net/projects/wikindx and www.sourceforge.net/projects/bibliophile Mark.
Depends if you count working on the Linux kernel ;-) On Apr 4, 2005 4:15 PM, Mark Grimshaw <mark(a)sirfragalot.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I'll hold my hand up -- bibliography management systems etc. at www.sourceforge.net/projects/wikindx and www.sourceforge.net/projects/bibliophile
Mark.
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Yes I do. On 4 Apr 2005 at 16:30, Ian McDonald wrote:
Depends if you count working on the Linux kernel ;-)
On Apr 4, 2005 4:15 PM, Mark Grimshaw <mark(a)sirfragalot.com> wrote: > Hi all, > > Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many > people here _produce_ OSS? > > I'll hold my hand up -- bibliography management systems etc. at > www.sourceforge.net/projects/wikindx > and > www.sourceforge.net/projects/bibliophile > > Mark. > > _______________________________________________ > wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz > Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug >
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On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 16:15 +1200, Mark Grimshaw wrote:
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
/me http://www.mattb.net.nz/software.php Also, in future please don't reply to a thread and start a new topic. It's not that hard to start a new message. -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 275 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
On 4 Apr 2005 at 16:31, Matt Brown wrote:
On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 16:15 +1200, Mark Grimshaw wrote:
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
/me http://www.mattb.net.nz/software.php
Also, in future please don't reply to a thread and start a new topic. It's not that hard to start a new message.
My judgement was that it was off-topic - hence new thread. I stand by that.
On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 16:40 +1200, Mark Grimshaw wrote:
My judgement was that it was off-topic - hence new thread. I stand by that.
If you'd done that it would have been fine, but you didn't and that was my point. You (or your mailer) included the following header In-reply-to: <6.2.1.2.2.20050404154755.03500408(a)pulsar.net.nz> Which refers to the previous mail sent by David Hallet, hence your message was part of the previous thread, but with a new topic. That is bad. Regards -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +64 275 611 544 www.mattb.net.nz
On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 04:40:25PM +1200, Mark Grimshaw wrote:
On 4 Apr 2005 at 16:31, Matt Brown wrote:
On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 16:15 +1200, Mark Grimshaw wrote:
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
My judgement was that it was off-topic - hence new thread. I stand by that.
I think the problem is that you didn't start a new thread by writing a new email, you hit reply to another message, so everyone's mail client filed your new message as a reply (due to the following headers):
In-reply-to: <6.2.1.2.2.20050404154755.03500408(a)pulsar.net.nz> References: <200504041545.05208.sns(a)paradise.net.nz>
Anyway, I've been a developer of the greenstone digital library/text indexing software, written a program that works with cheap dick smith electronics webcams that don't otherwise work under linux (since they lack the hardware to convert the raw image formats to a decent format), and submitted bug fixes and patches to several packages. I also have a bunch of programs that I've been meaning to make publicly available if I ever find time to tidy them up, and one day I might release the software I developed for my thesis (for doing recognition of scanned sheet music). John McPherson
On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 04:15:29PM +1200, Mark Grimshaw wrote:
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I can't say I produce it, I would if I could but I'm not a programmer. I do submit bugs, and would like to think that I'm doing my part by communicating back to the developers/maintainers. There would be a lot of people sharing this boat I'm in ;) Cheers, James.
Mark Grimshaw wrote:
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I'll hold my hand up -- bibliography management systems etc. at www.sourceforge.net/projects/wikindx and www.sourceforge.net/projects/bibliophile
Some of the highlights of things I work on: * undernet's irc daemon as a comaintainer http://coder-com.undernet.org * Some other bits and pieces related to IRC: http://sf.net/projects/gnuworld http://www.rage-irc.com/ * WANd (Wide Area Network Daemon, not the Waikato network research group, well, I work for them too, but they're not an open source project, uh you know what I mean anyway) http://wand.sf.net (while wand isn't well used these days, parts of it such as it's libconfig is used in several other projects esp within the WAND research group, and the firewall I wrote to deal with it appears to be widely used within WAND) * Traceroute mesh software http://tr.meta.net.nz/ although I don't advertise that it's available for download, but when people have asked in the past I have given away copies of all the source for this (including the server) under the GPL. * I supply patches to various other projects as I need them eg: http://coders.meta.net.nz/~perry/patches/ipv6-source-selection-2.6.5.patch http://coders.meta.net.nz/~perry/patches/gtk+-move-displays.diff I have some patches I'm working on right now for mozilla to support server name identification for TLS, and some patches for bittorrent to support better peer selection, but of which aren't ready for use yet. I also have a long string of random little projects of things I'm interested in that have never been released mostly because noone has shown any interest in them. I've also written some software in the distant past which is more or less dead now that you sometimes run into such as ipt, FTNManager etc. This is by no means exhaustive, but covers most of the either the large things, or the current things I'm working on. Also, I occasionally sleep.
And I've done all my programming in Microsoft's Basic's - go stand in the corner!!! On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 17:21 +1200, Daniel Lawson wrote:
Craig Box wrote:
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I'm not a programmer. Does that make me a bad person?
Only if you whinge about it :)
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On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 20:33 +1200, Lindsay wrote:
And I've done all my programming in Microsoft's Basic's - go stand in the corner!!!
What on? A C64? Regards -- Oliver Jones » Roving Code Warrior oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 » www.deeperdesign.com
Craig Box wrote:
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I'm not a programmer. Does that make me a bad person?
(This isn't directed at craig but in general), as a programmer, things I love non programmers to do: * Write good bug reports. A bug report means absolutely nothing if I can't reproduce the bug. If I can't reproduce it it means I can't prove that I've fixed it. Some bug reports I've got in the past: Re: [SEVERE BUG] Crash after 10 minutes
The server crashes after 10 minutes, the server isn't in the process list anymore.
I mean, what am I supposed to do with this? after 10 minutes it's still working for me... Things to include: * what os you are running (the output of uname -a), what version of the software you are running. what distro you are running (and which version of that distro). * The config file you are using (remember to remove passwords!) * Tell me what was happening at the time (netsplit?) * If it produces any error messages, /please please please/ tell us what they are! "assertion failure 0 != cptr at client.c:212" may not mean much to you, but it means the world to me. * Run it with full debugging on, and either send the full debug log, or if it's huge, just the last 1mb or so. * If it generates a core file, I will want a backtrace, this is easy to get: gdb ./program-that-crashed ./core then at the gdb prompt type (gdb) bt full and paste the entire output into the bug report. Please don't just send me the core file, in general it's useless to me, and I don't want a 1gig file emailed to me that I can't use. Also, I'm a programmer, I suck at documentation. It's far too easy to think "thats obvious", or just use bad terminology or spelling. What really helps is getting someone who isn't a programmer to give the documentation a once over and send in suggestions. The wlug wiki is a great example of this. If someone asks me something I usually try and get them to wiki it (why? because if I have to wiki everything I'm asked, I'm gonna give up answering questions, and people tend to wiki things from their point of view (I want to do this) as to mine (this is how the program works) I always go back and check what people wrote to check it for accuracy and for clarifications. If you have a problem and spend time researching it and find the answer, please wiki it, so that others can benefit from your help, or more importantly in 6 months when you're trying to remember how you did whatever you did you have a reference. Writing up "howto" documents in the wiki is surprisingly addictive, as is cleaning up old pages in the wiki. perhaps starting at http://www.wlug.org.nz/WantedWikis
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I'll hold my hand up -- bibliography management systems etc. at www.sourceforge.net/projects/wikindx and www.sourceforge.net/projects/bibliophile
Mark.
_______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug -- Oliver Jones » Roving Code Warrior
<holds up hand> I haven't got any personal "projects". But I have contributed code to existing Open Source projects. Nothing major. Just bug fixes and snippets of code. In recent memory that includes the Apache Commons IO project and Phrame 3.0.x. Regards On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 16:15 +1200, Mark Grimshaw wrote: oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 » www.deeperdesign.com
Mark Grimshaw wrote:
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I'm surprised that a fairly large number number of the regular posters are developers rather than users, perhaps wldg would be a better name ;-). To add the list I wrote the epson stylus color 300 driver in Ghostscript and co-wrote the microtek scanmaker 3600 driver in SANE, which due to lack of hardware documentation is a big and ugly hack that I'm not proud of. I also contribute the odd bug report and patch to various projects. g -- Glenn Ramsey <glenn(a)componic.co.nz> 07 8627077 http://www.componic.co.nz
I'm not that surprised. I would imagine a lot of Linux "users" are developers to some degree. Even if it is only shell/perl scripts to help themselves. Linux is an OS by and for its users. It didn't spring out of thin air. It requires people to constantly add to and refine it. It is a fundamental aspect of Open Source/Free Software that all users have access to the source code of the software they use. It only requires a little determination and learning for a passive "user" to become a proactive "developer". Regards On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 21:42 +1200, Glenn Ramsey wrote:
Mark Grimshaw wrote:
Hi all,
Just curious. Among all the emails about _using_ OSS, how many people here _produce_ OSS?
I'm surprised that a fairly large number number of the regular posters are developers rather than users, perhaps wldg would be a better name ;-).
To add the list I wrote the epson stylus color 300 driver in Ghostscript and co-wrote the microtek scanmaker 3600 driver in SANE, which due to lack of hardware documentation is a big and ugly hack that I'm not proud of. I also contribute the odd bug report and patch to various projects.
-- Oliver Jones » Roving Code Warrior oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 » www.deeperdesign.com
Is hoiho setup to allow public html dirs in users directories? you know what i mean (i hope) www.wlug.org.nz/~kyle/ and all that bizzo.. no internet at home == teh lame (for all those who were wondering why i wasnt idling in irc all day.) 11 days till adsl at the new house.. and only 22 days or so since i ordered it so far ;-)
On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 02:10:53PM +1200, s swami wrote:
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 08:34, Greig McGill wrote:
Hi all,
After Rodney Hide spoke to us last year, he suggested that our most effective tool for advocacy would be to formulate a list of parliamentary questions. A good explanation of the usefulness of these can be found here:
It will be the most effective tool for Rodney Hide. Has the WLUG approached a local MP who is a member of the Government yet (whoever that is)?
In case you weren't at the meeting, he will ask the questions verbatim as given to him by us. I don't think it matters which MP asks an oral question, the relevant minister will still have to answer it. (Rodney gave the example of asking Dr Cullen "who owns the reserve bank" because someone asked him to ask that question...) John
On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 02:18:33PM +1200, John R. McPherson wrote:
On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 02:10:53PM +1200, s swami wrote:
...
It will be the most effective tool for Rodney Hide. Has the WLUG approached a local MP who is a member of the Government yet (whoever that is)?
In case you weren't at the meeting, he will ask the questions verbatim as given to him by us. I don't think it matters which MP asks an oral question, the relevant minister will still have to answer it.
... except in this case it will be a written parliamentary question, not an oral question (which is different), I think. Sorry if this adds to any confusion. See the notes from the meeting: http://www.wlug.org.nz/MeetingTopics.2004-11-18 John
s swami wrote:
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 08:34, Greig McGill wrote:
Hi all,
After Rodney Hide spoke to us last year, he suggested that our most effective tool for advocacy would be to formulate a list of parliamentary questions. A good explanation of the usefulness of these can be found here:
It will be the most effective tool for Rodney Hide. Has the WLUG approached a local MP who is a member of the Government yet (whoever that is)?
At the risk of answering a question that seems to be well answered already, we have no reason to believe that our local members of Parliament have any knowledge of or interest in any of the issues regarding open source. This is in no way really related to the region, other than Hamilton is obviously where all the cool people live. Better to have people with an interest in OSS presenting it, and even better if they are outside of the Government so they can ruffle a few feathers! Craig
participants (16)
-
Craig Box -
Daniel Lawson -
David Hallett -
Glenn Ramsey -
Greig McGill -
Ian McDonald -
James Clark -
John R. McPherson -
kyle＠feet.net.nz -
Lindsay -
Mark Grimshaw -
Matt Brown -
Matthias Dallmeier -
Oliver Jones -
Perry Lorier -
s swami