Kevin Carillo a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington's School of Information Management is producing a PhD Thesis Project that hopes to identify the experiences of newcomers to open source projects and the behaviors of established contributors.
Although not specifically about Ubuntu, software patents affect all Ubuntu users. Here a kiwi FOSS software developer talks about Software Patents in New Zealand and implications abroad. Dave Lane is a long time Free Software advocate and experienced developer. He's currently a Director of Egressive, an open source Christchurch-based company that builds web solutions for a variety of clients utilizing Drupal, among other technologies.