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The Free / Open Source Software (FOSS) community is incredibly diverse with a corresponding variety of reasons for participation. At one end of the scale is dreamy idealism, which aims to free all information for the good of mankind. At the other end is economic pragmatism, which sees Open Source as a powerful business opportunity and software development model.

Is there common middle ground where both ends of the spectrum can meet? Can Free Software really can be Pragmatic Idealism? And what are we doing as a country in terms of building a sustainable local ICT industry?

Stream: Licensing, Strategy, Business Models, Case Studies

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Jonathan is President of Linux Australia (www.linux.org.au) and has presented dozens of seminars, tutorials, papers and keynotes on a wide variety of technical and business-oriented topics at conferences around the world. He is also a regular guest on radio, sits on the Advisory Board of Swinburne University's Centre for Collaborative Business Innovation, is the author of "Ubuntu Hacks" (www.ubuntuhacks.com) and "How To Build A Website And Stay Sane" (www.stay-sane.com), and is Founder and Technical Director of Melbourne-based web application development company Internet Vision Technologies (www.ivt.com.au).