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Sage here in Australia is alive and vigorously kicking thanks in no small part to a dedicated group of individuals who keep it ticking along very efficiently.

Then you should have been at the conference

Guys,

At the last SAGE-AU conference in Brisbane we had J.D. Frazer ("Illiad") as guest of honor.

At dinner J.D. spoke of the difficulties he faced in the early years attempting to make a living from comics - the insanely difficult process of being "sydicated" into newspapers, working out a revenue model for a web-based comic when he realised syndication was too restrictive, and generally attempting to make a living doing something he loved.

With PA and UF being roughly as popular as each other these days and thus (hopefully!) both providing decent incomes, I'd like to hear how you guys coped with "the early years" and how you faced some of what seem to be the common difficulties such as the syndication process, creating a viable revenue model and dealing with early set backs.

This boat is an Incat fast ferry, built in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

... something the article conveniently neglected to mention.

I saw the HSV 2 Swift (from a distance) in Hobart last year while at the SAGE-AU conference.

Nearby was another Aussie-built naval vessel, a Huon-class coastal minehunter - I forget which one, probably HMAS Yarra. You wouldn't know from looking at them that they have a glass-reinforced plastic hull!

SAGE has sample employment agreements online for just this purpose. It gives legal examples to use to add to or modify your existing employment agreement: http://www.sage-au.org.au/osda/

Now we just have to see if Hobart will get it in 2005 or not! I don't know how likely it is - TasLUG isn't dead, but it's not massively active.

However we are getting the Annual SAGE-AU Conference this year (it took us until year number 11!).

I totally agree with this.

You should get a clause signed that any work you do on GPL or Open Source for yourself or the company can not be claimed by the company as well. You can explain that this will allow you to be much more efficient (by using open source tools) as well as being able to get improvements back to the Open Source world. I did this for example with changes to a groupware system (www.phprojekt.com), a web mail system (www.horde.org) and a content mgt system (www.postnuke.com).

You should be able to push this through either in the contract itself. Or if that doesnt work, you can get a separate amendment for you only signed (for those silly standard contracts).

For sample contracts you can check out this page on the SAGE Australia site.

The OSDA Initiative is a collaborative effort to provide resources to help people who work on Open Source projects. The initiative was started as a service to the members of SAGE-AU - the System Administrator's Guild of Australia, and it has now been made available to the general public.

The initial OSDA Initiative resources are a group of documents providing suggested variations to employment contracts that would allow employees to develop Open Source software without encumbrance from their employer, where there is no conflict of interest.

I used one of their clauses in my contract that I use with my clients--I am a contractor. No one has complained and no one has had a problem with it. If they have questions, I just explain it and that is usually it.

Additionally, I just cross out and initialize the IP section when I sign contracts. If it gets sent back to me, I try to provide them with a better clause (such as one of these).

This is what I used as a basis for my contract with my employer and it has worked out great so far.

Ryan T. Sammartino

On a related not, speaking of keeping a contract open source friendly, this is an initiative started by the System Administrators Guild of Australia (of which I am a member). The Open Source Developer's Agreement "provides suggested variation to employment contracts that would allow employees to develop Open Source software without encumbrance from their employer, where there is no conflict of interest." (from the FAQ).

On a related not, speaking of keeping a contract open source friendly, this is an initiative started by the System Administrators Guild of Australia (of which I am a member). The Open Source Developer's Agreement "provides suggested variation to employment contracts that would allow employees to develop Open Source software without encumbrance from their employer, where there is no conflict of interest." (from the FAQ).

They are probably "cracked" on a regular basis, but because you don't hear about it, and so it remains a non-issue. As soon as a little event ends up in the news, this sort of silliness is the result. Hopefully, you'll understand why most companies, including banks, are extremely reluctant to share information with the law enforcement agencies. One simple little attack might take a company's value through the floor because investors don't understand the hoopla surrounding a security incident. You hear about bank holdups all the time, but you'll never hear about real incidents of electronic fraud or Internet banking attacks, even though they occur every day somewhere on the planet.

There are many companies that take a similar risk-managed approach to security. You classify assets based upon their worth to the organisation, and then you protect them to that value. Cracking into the machines that do "download.microsoft.com" is different to cracking into the corporate ERP system or the internal code repositories.

With over 10,000 attacks a week, Microsoft takes a reasonable approach to security, in my opinion. No one can be 100% secure, and it costs so much to be near 100% secure that it's not worth doing so. If you don't agree with me, bite me. Unlike most of you, risk managed security architecture is what I do for a living.

SAGE-AU is holding Australasia's premier System Administration Conference on the Gold Coast, Australia, from Mon 3rd to Fri 7th of July, 2000. Details are available online at www.sage-au.org.au/conf. Mon-Wed is 3 days of tutorials, with the conference proper Thu-Fri. Thursday evening is the conference dinner which is always a great night.

Having been to a number of sysadmin conferences I have to say I think they are a damn fine idea. It's a great chance to see what other people are doing and see how other organisations are solving the same problems you are facing.

Cheers,
Russell.

SAGE-AU is holding Australasia's premier System Administration Conference on the Gold Coast, Australia, from Mon 3rd to Fri 7th of July, 2000. Details are available online at www.sage-au.org.au/conf. Mon-Wed is 3 days of tutorials, with the conference proper Thu-Fri. Thursday evening is the conference dinner which is always a great night.

Having been to a number of sysadmin conferences I have to say I think they are a damn fine idea. It's a great chance to see what other people are doing and see how other organisations are solving the same problems you are facing.

Cheers,
Russell.

Following Red Hat's 1999 international expansions into Europe & Japan, we are now establishing an Asia-Pacific regional headquarters, which will be located in Brisbane, Australia. This center will provide telephone and contract support services for Red Hat users in Australia, New Zealand, South Asia, India, Korea and Greater China.

Several days after the positions vacant e-mail a request was sent to post a mail advertising a $AU3,500 5 day Red Hat training course. From my understanding this is the first time it's been offered in Australia.

Red Hat are setting up office in Brisbane in the state of Queensland. It's a pacfic rim city, closer to Asia than Sydney, and a number of large IT firms are setting up offices there to manage the Asia-Pacific market. I guess big American companies still prefer to setup shop in english speaking countries? Or maybe than just fell for the shrimp on the barbie line?

Psike.

I would have expected to see a question like this directed to one of the sysadmin guilds you're probably a member of (what, you're not?). If you were a member of SAGE, you would be aware of the SAGE Code of Ethics. SAGE-AU has an equivalent code.

In the SAGE code it mentions:

System administrators will not exercise their special powers to access any private information other than when necessary to their role as system managers, and then only to the degree necessary to perform that role, while remaining within established site policies.

The usual path for this sort of stuff is to get the managers in question to publish a policy (even if it's something as crappy as voicemail to all employees warning them of the policy and the consequences of breaching it). It often helps to provide a draft policy to get them started down a reasonable path.
Then your tasks are clearly defined. Without a published policy you and your managers are walking in a minefield.

Keep in mind that the published codes are there to protect you as much as anyone else. If a manager tries to force you to act against your principles you have a recourse. As a member of a guild you can point to the published code of ethics and say "sorry, I cannot do that". "And neither will any other ethical sysadmin".

Whatever you do, get your instructions from management in writing.