The lack of awareness on free and open source software (FOSS), market acceptance, lack of government policy and little standardisation, were the main issues that surfaced in a Western Cape OSS audit.
The aim of the audit, released today, was to determine where OSS skills lie, where there is a need for skills development in order to align OSS implementation projects and the migration of skills that do exist.
The audit was a collaborative effort, between the City of Cape Town, the Cape IT Initiative, Sentient Communications and OSS publication Tectonic. It surveyed 75 companies located within the province.
Of the companies surveyed, 57% were launched in or after 2000 and 17% have been operating for between 12 and 18 months. Almost half had a staff complement of five people or less, while 21% have between six and 21 employees. Eleven percent has between 20 and 100 staff members and only four companies are larger.
Some 13% of the companies were 100% black-owned and a further 19% met current BEE criteria. A large number indicated they were pursuing empowerment initiatives and many expect to meet the criteria within the next two years.
According to the audit, few companies have learnership programmes in place and it recommends that this may be a good place for government assistance.
A main theme in the responses was that OSS is here to stay and any company ignoring it would get left behind.
Nirvesh Sooful, CIO of the City of Cape Town outlined the four motivations towards his municipality`s OSS policy. These were: choice and empowerment, developing local industry skills, sovereignty and security, and financial benefits.
The emphasis is to develop the OSS skills in Cape Town so that the city becomes a net exporter of technology rather than a consumer of it, says Sooful.
Alastair Otter, editor of open source news service Tectonic, says, that as far as he is aware, this is the first FOSS audit done by any government entity in the country and the results were encouraging.
"While it is encouraging to see the passion of open source companies in the region - even to the point of rhetoric - an area that needs attention for many open source service companies is the development of a business plan," he says.
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