New Zealand Open Source Society
organization
The New Zealand Open Source Society is an incorporated society supporting the advocacy and promotion of open-source software in New Zealand.
History
Formation
NZOSS was formed in February 2003, after David Lane wrote an open letter suggesting the use of open source software in Government in 2002, co-signed by over four hundred New Zealanders.
Peter Harrison then suggested that a national organisation be formed to promote and advocate use of open-source software, via the New Zealand Linux Users Group. This led to several meetings throughout New Zealand in 2002 and 2003, and finally resulted in the NZOSS being formed as a formal incorporated society on 27 February 2003. Since this time the NZOSS has been involved with various efforts to promote open source in government, including participation with the Ministry of Economic Development's Authentication Project, and later a report on the State Services Commission guidelines on the legal issues of open-source software.
Current operation
The society has an active mailing list known as 'OpenChat', which is open to participation from anyone with an interest in free/open source software (F/OSS) and the business of the society. Membership of the society is required for voting rights, and helps sustain the society, but is not required in order to be active in NZOSS discussions and activities.
Campaigns
Patent action
In 2005 the NZOSS formally objected to a New Zealand Patent 525484, a patent for "Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML". The opposition was based on evidence cited by the United States Patent and Trademark Office who rejected the patent in the United States. The NZOSS withdrew their opposition in August 2006 as a consequence of Microsoft significantly amending the patent such that Abiword would no longer constitute prior use or prior publication.
“New Zealand Open Source Society” enters the record as organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Zealand, Source and Society can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16957480. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 2002, 2005 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “New Zealand Open Source Society” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.