Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
9. Mention is made of a number of contributors in the "Acknowledgements" section of the report. Were any of these individuals paid or in any other way provided recompense for their contributions?
I asked one of the people mentioned about this directly and the response is given below.
10. And finally, the use of Adobe InDesign to produce the report does sound a bit off-key considering the subject under consideration. Was there no way to do this using an open source solution?
This question had also been raised by Williams; it often bemuses me that open source advocates are the last to use the fruits of labour of their own community.
On April 29, Jeff Waugh replied thus: "We've already done an article about the survey with your editor, who is also aware that we have no interest in working with you under any masthead."
iTWire had already done two articles on the survey; he seemed to be unaware of the second piece. He also seemed unaware that there are many categories when it comes to writing - straight news, analysis, comment, editorials, investigative pieces, etc. It's important to note that none of the questions was dismissed out of hand.
As one of those listed as contributing to the survey, technology writer Sarah Stokely, had written a couple of pieces publicising the report, I wrote to her asking why there had been no disclosure about her involvement in the project when these articles were written and also querying whether she had been paid for her work on the census report.
She replied: "I wrote one story about Pia and Jeff Waugh's presentation on the Census at Linux.conf.au for IT News in February. Their talk was the first time that I'd heard of the Census. I was not involved with it and there was nothing to disclose. I thought that the Census was a cool and worthwhile project, and I volunteered to help by doing some writing for them. As it turned out, they didn't need any help on the writing front but I ended up doing a few hours of editing for them in late March shortly before the report was printed, which is why I received a credit in the report. They offered to pay me but I decided not to accept payment to ensure that it remained a volunteer activity for me."
Good on her, for not taking the money.
My conclusion? There is a limit to openness, even when it comes to matters connected with open source. I asked a series of serious questions and the response, to put it frankly, was disappointing.
Until these queries are answered, I would not put my money on the results of this survey - the community figures, that is. Nor should anybody else, Companies associated with open source should be prepared to undergo the same grilling that others do - indeed, since open source often takes the high moral ground, they should be willing to be more open. Sadly, a Taliban-like attitude seems to prevail.
David Bass
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