LINUX WORLD NEWS LINUX WORLD NEWS FIRST NEW ZEALAND OPEN SOURCE AWARD In October, more than 200 sion won the prize for “Open Additionally, the NZOSS honored people – among them the Source Use in Government,” and the work of the Open Polytechnic country’s Minister of Infor- the category “Open Source Use in and Michael Koziarski with two mation Technology, Hon. Business” went to Zoomin and Pro- special awards. David Cunliff – celebrated jectX for online mapping of New The jury of seven, convened the achievements of New Zealand. by Don Christie, the president Zealanders in the develop- New Zealand’s own “Summer of of NZOSS, had to choose from ment and use of open source Code” project received the prize in 34 finalists, the essence of more at the Intercontinental Hotel the category “Open Source Use in than 130 nominations. The in Wellington. The privately Education,” and the not-for-profit awards were presented for the sponsored “New Zealand VetLearn Foundation, which pro- first time. Open Source Award” was vides a successful Moodle portal http:// www. nzosa. org. nz/ presented in eight categories. for veterinarians, won the category http:// nzoss. org. nz/ Peter Harrison, the founder “Open Source Use for Community http:// nz. youtube. com/ and former president of the Organizations.” results?search_query=NZOSA07 New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS), went Another portal, Julian Oliver’s http:// www. gwprojects. org/ forum/ home with the title “Open Source Ambassador,” SelectParks, aimed at open source http:// www. e. govt. nz/ policy/ and Perlmonger Chris Cormack won the “Open game developers and artists, went open-source/ Source Contributor” category. The New Zealand home with the award for “Open http:// www. zoomin. co. nz/ Open GPS project received the prize in the “Open Source for Creativity.” This cate- http:// www. smaps. co. nz/ Source Software Project” category for their commu- gory hadn’t been planned at first, http:// www. summerofcode. co. nz/ nity-developed auto-routing maps. but was introduced when it be- http:// www. vetscholar. org. nz/ The Information and Communication Technolo- came clear that many nomination http:// www. selectparks. net/ gies branch of the country’s State Services Commis- entries fell into this field. http:// www. openpolytechnic. ac. nz/

OPENDOC SOCIETY FOUNDED TESCO In October, the OpenDoc Society was formed tember vote in the ISO committee to standard- in the Netherlands to promote open standards ize its Office Open XML file formats, sup- PRE-LOADING for office documents. The group includes big ported by Office 12 and Apple’s companies like , Sun Microsystems, and iWork suite. UBUNTU IBM, as well as organizations like OpenOffice. Meanwhile, the group has held workshops Tesco, the UK’s biggest and org and Ubuntu and smaller companies like and informational gatherings aiming to con- the world’s third-largest gro- RedNose. The group’s main aim is to endorse vince businesses and governments to embrace cery retailer, has started sell- the OASIS/ISO-standardized and vendor-neu- ODF as their documentation standard. Later ing entry-level PCs with tral Open Document Format (ODF). this year, the society will broaden its focus to Ubuntu pre-installed in their During the foundation meeting, not only Belgium, and other countries will follow in latest Tesco Direct online cat- members were present, but also the minister 2008. At the time of writing, Microsoft hadn’t alog. An Intel Celeron with of Foreign Trade, Mr. Frank Heemskerk, on be- formally responded to the move. 256 MB memory is sold for half of the Dutch Government. Heemskerk ex- http:// www. opendocsociety. org/ UK£ 139.93, and an plained the importance of using an open stan- http:// www. iso. org/ iso/ newsandmedia/ AMD3600 with 500 MB RAM dard in the government field and underlined pressrelease. goes for UK£ 189.93. Both the importance of his plan of action to move htm?refid=Ref1070 PCs offer an 80GB hard drive. toward ODF Tesco advertises the products rapidly. as “less prone to virus at- The Open- tacks.” Doc Society http:// direct. tesco. com/ quickly formed q/ R. 200-6129. aspx after Microsoft http:// direct. tesco. com/ lost the Sep- q/ R. 200-3224. aspx

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