Last week the busy organisers for the linux.conf.au 2009 conference launched a new website and put out the call for speakers and miniconf organisers.

We are looking forward to lots of great proposals, and while we can't accept them all, we expect LCA09 to have a very full and interesting schedule.  Read More »

Just thought I'd post a quick blog message about our recent completion of the University of Tasmania's project to deploy Linux Live CD's on computers for conducting exams.

For the full announcement, please visit this link.

I hope to keep you up-to-date with the progress and outcomes of this little test project.

HI
And welcome to the first blog from my corner of the interweb.
Firstly let me introduce myself again for those who haven't or can not be bothered to read my profile page. My name is Zachary Rappell and I am, like most people I know, an avid user of Open Source and in particular Ubuntu Linux. However, this does not mean that my thoughts or writings represent the same of those on the Open Source Technology Solutions team. Luckily for me they have kindly given me this little niche into which I can culture my own thoughts and given me the privilege to share them with you, the avid reader.

Now that that little disclaimer is out of the way I can now commit to the question in the title. What can Linux do for the Average Joe?  Read More »

This is a post in a series on the importance of open source. If you are not familiar with term "Open Source", I recommend you read this blog post first.

Why is open source so important? Why I am so passionate about open source? Why does Open Technology Solutions support open source?...

I have always had a strong passion for technology. When I was younger I would tinker with circuit boards, build basic robots and always be fascinated by anything new and revolutionary. This passion naturally led me to computers and eventually to the wonders of what you can achieve with software.

We do so much with our computers. We manage businesses, talk to friends, find information, relax with multimedia, play games and much more. But imagine where technology would be if we didn't share one key thing. Knowledge. Imagine if the best scientists and brains in the world withheld their findings. Imagine if Newton, Einstein or Bohr didn't share their research. We would be living in a very dark and disadvantaged world indeed.

Collaboration is what allows us to live in such an advanced society. Without it we would be thousands of years behind in technology. We learn from each other. We gain wisdom from others mistakes and build upon their successes. Likewise, open source allows for this freedom, for freedom of knowledge, for multiple people to build upon software, for programmers and developers to share their wisdom and for the world to advance technologically.

This idealogical philosophy of open source also extends to open content. In the same sense, imagine where the world would be without the combined knowledge, research and discoveries of individuals. It is for this reason that I support wikipedia and their mission. I highly recommend you watch this video. The video (embedded below) was made to promote their donation system, but it is still a great example of how people around the world are working together to provide information to everybody and every culture. It is a beautiful example of how collaboration can create such a solid product.

A brilliant example of the importance of open collaboration is the 2004 United States presidential election controversy. In short, the computers basically failed to calculate electrical results accurately, resulting in a biased election. If these systems were open to public scrutiny, a lot of the issues could have been avoided. Another example of how important collaboration is in software, is how stable and fully featured Linux and Apache are. Without development, research and a collaborative effort from countless organisations, businesses and individuals, these products would not, or could not, lead the Internet server industry as it does today for the above reasons.

So there are many reasons for utilising open source (see my other blog posts), but not only is it great to individuals, businesses and organisations, but it advances technology and the world!

Read more:

• http://www.istl.org/05-spring/article2.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

This is a post in a series on the importance of open source. If you are not familiar with term "Open Source", I recommend you read this blog post first.

I previously discussed why open source is important to businesses, but one thing I (purposely) left out, was how open source can save you and your business money. I left this out because "Ultimately people who have been using open source for a long time will always come back to greater strategic control, not cost" Jeff Waugh, 2007.^[1]

There are many advantages to open source software. These can be ethical, moral, flexibility or licenses^[2], but to most newcomers to open source, it is the price. A lot of open source software, if not the majority, will set you back close to $0 upfront.^[3] While there can be expenses in training and maintaining, the benefits greatly outweigh these costs.^[4] Having most open source given away for free is an excellent way for individuals and businesses to try and test out solutions before committing to one. This means companies can experiment and migrate slowly over to a new system instead of diving head first into a multi-thousand dollar venture.

In the average Information Communication and Technology (ICT^[5]) budget for companies and enterprises, software only makes up about 5-10% (the rest is hardware and physical requirements). So even if you go pure free (gratis) and open source you may only be saving 5-10% on your total budget. That said however, there are many other advantages to utalising open source software that can also save you money. For example open source is well known to be much more effecient with hardware. Be this due to the large community of developers or otherwise, open source is leading the market in scalability through visualisation and clustering. A great example of this is thin clients. If you were to set up a classroom in a school with 20 computers, you could buy one big main computer and 20 screens + keyboards and save on not having to purchase individual machines or licenses. You can also expand your networks and server power more efficiently, for example, by adding new servers to a cluster rather then upgrading your mainframe once a year and hoping the new one works.

While I have avoided talking about Linux and Unix^[6] so far (since I wanted to keep to open source software in general), they serve as great examples in both cost and maintenance. There is 1 Linux administrator to 100-400 Linux machines compared to 1 Microsoft Windows administrator to 40-100 machines.^[7] This shows how much more efficient it is to administer a Linux based machine. One Linux administrator can do nearly 10 times as much as one Windows technician. This enables a company to invest their money more effectively or have their technical staff work on more important and interesting ventures.

Imagine benefiting from hundreds of thousands of incredibly smart and wise people collaborating on the one problem or product. Imagine the quality of the product. Imagine the superb documentation, stability, security and support. But ah... where is the support? Large open source companies such as Redhat, Canonical and Novell are dedicated to providing enterprise support and services. Thanks to these vendors, corporations are able to adopt open source software without having to worry about sustaining it internally. This is also something Open Technology Solutions offer. Where appropriate our solutions and products are built around open source so you can save money and benefit from all these great things. We are also able to offer support and services to businesses who wish to start using open source software.^[8]

So overall open source doesn't just save you money upfront, but the quality, the flexibility and the choice in open source software allows you to save much much more.

Read more:

• http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.8249
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FOSS_A_General_Introduction/FOSS_Success_St...
• http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;444981959

1.

10^th Oct. 2007, The open source roadshow (Hobart).

2.

http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Advantages_open_source_soft.html

3.

For example Linux and Apache, two of the most common pieces of open source, are completely free.

4.

See the benefits of open source

5.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_Communications_Technology

6.

The two mainstream open source operating systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

7.

Refer to The open source roadshow.

8.

To learn more about how Open Technology Solutions uses open source in their products, click here.