Pollies flock to penguin show

Politicians will gather in Adelaide next week for a new open source in government conference, running alongside an annual technical Linux conference.

Federal MP Andrew Prescott, on behalf of Federal IT Minister Daryl Williams, will speak at the Linux and Open Source in Government conference, to be held on 12 to 13 January.

Federal opposition IT spokesperson Senator Kate Lundy and Democrats' South Australian deputy parliamentary leader Ian Gilfillan will also address the conference. Gilfillan made headlines last year when he put forward a Bill compelling South Australian government offices to consider open source software over proprietary software wherever practicable when making future purchases.

The government “miniconference” is being jointly organised by Australian UNIX and Open Systems User Group (AUUG) and Linux Australia, running under the framework of the annual linux.conf.au, a technical conference for open source developers.