coffee.geek.nz

it's in Wellington New Zealand - 18th Jan to 23rd Jan.

There's still time to submit a speaking proposal to a miniconf:
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/miniconfs

There are 3 funding programmes, if you're an open source contributor and need $$$ to get to Wellington for the conference.
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/media/news/89

The Programme is out - checkout the speakers and topics:
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/schedule

There's is a partner's programme -- details coming soon.

Accomodation - there's student-style accomodation (which I reccomend) - also 4 star, 5 star, and apartments for groups/families.
This year there are couple and family accomodations available.
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/register/accommodation

The primary sponsors, who you should all be thinking good thoughts about now, are: Internet NZ and Google....

other sponsors: Catalyst, Canonical, Egressive, 3months, amberDMS, Dreamhost, Ingres, iwantmyname.com.

I'm confused as heck by what licence WURFL is under

the xml file itself is aparently not under copyright at all.. or copyleft.. according to: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/licence.php

the WURFL is an XML file, i.e. data. As far as we understand, you are not allowed to copyright data. As a consequence of this, we can't copyright (nor copyleft) the WURFL itself.

the wurfl_php library is partially under Mozilla Public Licence..
and, according to the source code also under "All Rights Reserved" licence.

/* ***** BEGIN LICENSE BLOCK *****
* Version: MPL 1.1
*
* The contents of this file are subject to the Mozilla Public License Version
* 1.1 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
* the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
* http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/
*
* Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" basis,
* WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License
* for the specific language governing rights and limitations under the
* License.
*
* The Original Code is WURFL PHP Libraries.
*
* The Initial Developer of the Original Code is
* Andrea Trasatti.
* Portions created by the Initial Developer are Copyright (C) 2004-2005
* the Initial Developer. All Rights Reserved.
*
* Contributor(s): Herouth Maoz.
*
* ***** END LICENSE BLOCK ***** */

So.... is this opensource ... or not.. can i edit it and share the changes? Can i edit it and sell it and not share the changes? confused as heck.

Learning to Learn - Love is a better master than duty | coffee.geek.nzSource: coffee.geek.nzMel Chua and Walter Bender, both contributor/leaders in the OLPC and Sugar Project world, came to visit Wellington yesterday    Walter compared sugar to crumple zones in cars - don't lock down technology to be unbreakable - if you do this then the crumple zone becomes the passengers, or rather, the users - who cannot change the technology they are using.

Instead, unlock the technology and let the user break it as they wish. Sugar created easy recovery methods so children can break their XO software and then easily and trivially recover back to stability.    

Mel Chua and Walter Bender, both contributor/leaders in the OLPC and Sugar Project world, came to visit Wellington yesterday

Walter gave a short talk on sugar, the software that runs on most OneLaptopPerChild XO laptops.

He spoke on learning, and how if you're going to give every child in the world an ipod, you should also give them a synthesizer to make the music - give a child a wiki with an edit permission, not a pdf. Even though you can read a wiki page as easily as a pdf, the difference is important.

Sugar, which is essentially a window manager with a suite of contributed learning apps, will run on any linux distro now - and those linux distros in turn run on almost any hardware, so sugar can go anywhere, not just the XO laptops.

Sugar enabled "1st class participation" in creation. Children can appropiate the technology - and sugar gives the tools for solving problems, instead of giving out the solution.

Walter compared sugar to crumple zones in cars - don't lock down technology to be unbreakable - if you do this then the crumple zone becomes the passengers, or rather, the users - who cannot change the technology they are using.

Instead, unlock the technology and let the user break it as they wish. Sugar created easy recovery methods who children can break their XO software and then easily and trivially recover back to stability.

Child then become involved in the technology, not just recipents.

The New Zealand open source awards are tomorrow night - I wanted to ask what your picks are for winners? The finalists are listed on the NZOSA website

Open Source Contributor
This is a really hard one, as there are massive contributions by all four contributors. My pick is Francois Marier, due to the huge number of contributions as a debian package maintainer for over 50+ packages.

Open Source Software Project