Fresh faces for local open-source body

Australia's peak open source body has fresh faces on its board and a renewed focus: the public sector.
When Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA) was launched this time last year, it tasked itself with "increasing the uptake of free and open source software (FOSS) throughout the corporate, government and education sectors".
The election of its new board one year on, however, reveals a strong focus on the public sector. Of the seven new board directors the body announced this morning, six have recently been involved in high-profile government activities involving open-source.
New director Marc Englaro confirmed the trend to ZDNet Australia . "I think there is definitely now more of a focus on government," he said, highlighting recent events such as the appointment of the NSW government's panel of preferred Linux suppliers and the release of the Australian Government Information Management Office's (AGIMO) guide to FOSS for agencies.

But government work may not be what keeps dinner on the table: "I also think that while government work is high profile, for the most part what keeps OSIA's members busy and profitable is small and medium private sector work," said Englaro.

The directors are all male and for the most part employed in small Australian businesses well-known in the open-source world.

Avi Miller works for Canberra-based Squiz.net, which has for some time provided its MySource content management system to AGIMO. However, the software's open-source credentials are currently in doubt due to the terms of its licence.

Solutions First's Dave Kempe and Si2's Englaro have recently seen their companies appointed to the NSW government's preferred panel of Linux-based services suppliers. In addition, Si2 was a key player in the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority's (RTA) state-wide roll-out of Sun's StarOffice office suite.

Brendan Scott, too, has been involved with the NSW RTA, in addition to other government clients. Scott runs an open source legal practice.

Babel Com Australia director Del Elson has also seen the NSW government from the inside, having worked on the state's open source information Web site aimed at its agencies.

Well-known local open source player Con Zymaris is chief executive officer of Melbourne-based Cybersource. The company aided in the production of AGIMO's FOSS guide. It was recently revealed Cybersource was talking to several local banks about providing desktop Linux services.

Last on the open-source roll call is Arjen Lentz, MySQL AB community relations manager. The company develops the popular open source MySQL database software.