Open Source, the next generation at NZCSRSC08

On Wednesday, 16 April, I had the honour of giving the keynote talk to the NZ Computer Science Research Students' Conference at the University of Canterbury. The talk was titled "The Open Road" (subtitled: "Doing the Right Thing and Making a Living") (pic). Many students it turns out, although open source appeals to their idealistic side, assume that they'll have to compromise their ideals and ethics to find work (or even teach) in the corporate IT world.

(n.b. looks like ethics is becoming more and more of a differentiator in the marketplace... Long may it continue.)

Both the students and the lecturers in attendance welcomed the news that, from my commercial perspective at least, this is no longer the case. In fact, it's almost the reverse: despite massive marketing dollars being spent to take attention away from the fact - open source software is quietly taking over. A developer with strong skills in open source technologies like Linux, Java, PHP, Python, C/C++ is never going to struggle to find a job. It was exciting to see that

• all of them are using open source software for their postgraduate research, and enthusiastically so,
• more than half were planning to release their research software under an open source license,
• almost all of them disagreed with their university's "intellectual property" policy for student research (they think open source should be the default policy),
• probably 1/3 of them run Linux on their desktop, and most would if their university IT departments allowed it.

This is particularly heartening to me given that these people will either be teaching the next generation of kiwi software engineers or be hiring them to help out with their start up businesses.

Following the talk, where time constraints limited questions, I did have a chance to meet informally with people who attended the talk to discuss things further. I chatted to a group of Waikato postgrads who were very positive about open source, incorporating open source tools in their research into areas like commodity-based long-distance wireless and data mining. We made tentative plans to catch up later in the week at the Effusion Group's traditional "beer o'clock" 3rd place, the Twisted Hop.

I was able to get back to the conference to take part in the evening event where primary conference sponsors NZi3, BuildIT, and Orion Health gave presentations on their activities and motivations for acting as sponsors. Following that we went en mass, across campus to the HITLab building to check out some of the very cool projects students and staff were working on. I'm somewhat chagrined to say that I didn't look at as many exhibits as I hoped to, as I almost immediately got stuck into a conversation in the hallway with a couple of German postgrads from Massey (Albany) who were working on some very interesting projects. Soon the group in the hall got to about 15 people and we were clotting - blocking other people moving between rooms (pic), so we wandered into a quiet room for more of a chat. The passion for open source ideas, their already substantial involvement in things like the NZ Open Source Society and a prescient awareness of IT political issues like the recent debacle of Microsoft's "Office Open XML" format (not to be confused with Open Office although I'm sure that was Microsoft's intention when naming their format) being accepted as an ISO standard. After chatting for a couple hours (which went by alarmingly quickly), I was able to catch up briefly with a very impressive guy, Moffat Mathews, the Canterbury PhD student who headed the conference organising committee who originally invited me to speak. He was very pleased with the way the conference was running, and from what I'd seen, it was thanks largely to the smart people involved and the energy apparent in Moffat and his committee.

It was great to hear the degree to which postgraduates were promoting the use of open source software in the Computer Science departments around NZ. I was, however, alarmed to hear the degree to which corporations appeared to be trying to buy influence within technical departments like schools of engineering, physics, and computer science. I've already heard about the "Microsoft Evangelists" - students who promote Microsoft technologies on campus (including through departmental email lists) with all the fervour and dubious sincerity of religious "campus crusaders" I've encountered in the past. Looks like Microsoft is working hard (funding faculty chairs, and "technology and research centres" with the tacit understanding that this will buy their technologies pride of place in the curriculum) that the next generation of developers and technology business leaders only know their products. Sadly for them, this seems to be strongly at odds with the prevailing spirit of the postgraduates I met.

On Friday, a group of 10 or so Waikato postgrads turned up at the 'Hop, and we had another rip-roaring discussion about the lay of the IT landscape, from all of our viewpoints. We discussed approaches to influencing their departments and universities on software teaching decisions and on "intellectual monopoly" (which is a much more accurate term than "intellectual property" for reasons I outline in my talk - see below) decisions. I don't think that the postgrads, on the whole, realised how valuable they are to the university system (in terms of research grant funding obligations, assisting with teaching and providing lots of contact time with undergraduates, acting as the conduits of information between the faculty and students, etc.), nor how much the future IT industry of NZ depends on their technology choices and business acumen. I trust they're a bit more aware of their ability to influence things now - and I have confidence that they'll use it!

I'm still buzzing 5 days later. The conference opened my eyes to the great promise that these very sharp, energetic, and principled people hold. I'd intended to ask them in my talk whether they were motivated by money, but as one student told me at the 'Hop - they wouldn't be postgrads in computer science if money was their primary objective. He believed he was speaking for all of his peers, and I agree with him. I think they represent open source's future and a potential knockout punch for all the failings that I see inherent in both the NZ business IT industry and technical education institutions.

My talk is available online, and may be reused under the terms of the Creative Commons Share-alike Attribution license. The talk includes my speaking notes and asides as well. I understand that the talk was also videoed, so feel free to subscribe to this post and I'll updated it with a link if/when one becomes available.