Debian developer Jonathan Oxer has been elected president of Linux Australia and will take over the role from Pia Smith early next month.

An active member of the Linux community, Oxer has organized the Debian mini-conference, which precedes Linux.conf.au, for the last four years. He is also a member of the Melbourne PHP User group.

Oxer, who uses Debian, PHP and MySQL in the operation of his e-commerce company, said his coordinator and organizational roles were the reasons behind the decision to take on the position.

"One thing that's become really important with Linux Australia is encouraging enthusiasm.

"So you need to find what people want to do [to help] and encourage them to do it."

This was particularly the case with Linux.conf.au, according to Oxer, still the organization's showpiece event.

Oxer also hopes to help Linux user groups work with others across Australia.

Plenty of groups could benefit from working with similar groups interstate, he said.

"I'll be acting as a focal point for a lot of the sub-groups around Australia."

Also on Oxer's agenda is to continue Linux Australia's work in raising awareness of the Free Trade Agreement and ramifications for open source developers.

"In this 12 months we'll see if it happens and what effect it has."

Oxer will officially become president after election results are ratified at the organization's February 7 annual general meeting.

Smith will move to the position of vice-president.