The Pari library was started in 1987 - the same year as Perl - apparently by Professor Henri Cohen of the University of Bordeaux in France. Being able to do arithmetic with arbitrary precision and at high speed, it is an essential part of stacks like Crypt::OpenPGP. I have imported the oldest tarballs for pari I could find into git here.

Virtualisation seems to be becoming a buzzword, so I thought I'd take a little time to look into some of the features in the upcoming Linux 2.6.25 release. In particular, it should soon be quite possible to build an open source version of Amazon's EC2 on vanilla Linux - giving the benefits of hardware/network proximity, and avoiding provider lock-in.

Well, it was a conference of five parts, and on the day, Open Source was the winner.

Pre-OSCON: the Reposithon

Ok, so gnat's reading out the awards for the "lifetime dedication to open source", and saying "this person wrote bind(8), ran one of the root servers...", etc. I realise the award must be going to Paul Vixie. Paul was actually sitting next to Penny and Brenda, goes up and fetches his award.

I realised that they hadn't mentioned another of the major programs he wrote - the humble cron(8). So, when he gets back, I pointed this out and said that was a great program too. I'm so glad I did.

"Oh, you liked that, did you?"

"Sure, I use it every day..."

The Stuff editors have kindly agreed to let me write about open source on stuff.co.nz. Regular postings to appear at:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/passthesource

This is quite exciting for me and will hopefully give us quite a wide audience with which to interact on open source software issues. Two posts there (only one published at this point), I have the inspiration and several topics ready to go - all I need now is time.

This time team MALAS, on "One Red Dog" took out the class. I am hoping for a free pizza for the crew at the end of this series. Hot off the press our own Grant Dalton says:

"Terrific result MALAS. 4th on line 6th on handicap. Turns out we beat Testarossa by 1s and Baileys were not over the line so they missed their shotgun start (gutted is not the word).

By my reckoning the MRX table is as follows

MRX 9002 One Red Dog - 18 / 39
MRX 9005 Bexhill - 21 / 40
MRX 9003 Bayleys - 34 / 56
MRX 9004 Loaded Hogg - 51 /65

Go the opti sailors..."

By my calculations, Saturday 7/7/7 was Catalyst's 10th birthday. Yay for us.

We are "celebrating" by organising and underwriting the New Zealand Open Source Awards. This is our way of acknowledging the importance of Free and Open Source Software in our successes to date.

Get your entries in quick, time is running out.

So the NZOSS AGM seemed to go off well. It was good to see quite a few people turn up to the Wellington meeting, log into IRC as well as get together in Auckland and Christchurch.

Some good organisation, especially from Carl who organised all the motions so they could be voted on online in the blink of an eye.

I was elected President, a result which stands despite my request for a recount. Thanks to all that took the time to participate and to vote.

Another excellent mini webstock. Main presenters Rob O'Callahan and Leigh Blackall followed by a debate in which Mark Cubey (from Radio NZ) got to wipe the floor with his opponents - and still lose.

I am full of admiration for Rob. He has come back to NZ, kept his job with the Mozilla foundation (think Firefox) and managed to persuade them to let him set up a development centre in Auckland (quietly, he is recruiting). Rob is in yr intrntz and in NZ.

One of the things about being involved in running a business is the shear disbelief you feel when people would actually come and work in your company, especially when you consider the choices out there these days. Chris Daish is a humbling example.

The New Zealand Open Source Awards was an idea he had to celebrate Catalyst's 10th anniversary. We said, "yeah, go for it". And he has. Props to Evonne for the design work.