So, the advisory body that reports to the South African Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology is in favour of open software and open standards.
I, for one, am thrilled by this news. And while I`m not naive enough to believe that this document is not going to come under heavy fire and fierce opposition, it is heartening to see that someone inside of the government is prepared to take a new, and brave, angle on technology and skills.
The bigger task ahead is to convince the powers that be that open source software is more than just cheap software.
Alastair Otter, Journalist, ITWeb
There has already been surprisingly wide ranging response to the document, both on the National Advisory Council on Innovation (Naci) site, as well as more broadly on Internet discussion sites.
Notably, news of the document made it onto Slashdot.org, one of the most widely read alternative news sites on the Web. And despite some typically short-sighted and arrogant comments from what one suspects is under-informed Americans, clearly the issue of open source software and the contribution it can make towards bringing the so-called developing world closer to the developed world is weighty enough to warrant more than a cursory look.
No surprises
Interestingly, the response from established vendors of proprietary software has been somewhat subdued. What response there has been from these companies is, however, predictable and typical of the way they try to characterise the open source world. It is the stock standard answer one expects from the likes of Microsoft: Open source is killing intellectual property; nothing commercial can be made from open source software; and the like.
For the open source movement, it is a small but significant victory to get free software even considered at this level. But getting this far is just a small portion of the battle. The bigger task ahead is to convince the powers that be that open source software is more than just cheap software.
Rather, open source software is about accessibility. It is also, perhaps more importantly, about community; a community built on the knowledge that practically any computing task is possible with enough dedication, time and effort.
Locally, the last year has been a productive one on the open source front and a number of organisations have begun work on making open source, and in particular Linux, more accessible to South African users. Translate.org, for example, has been steadily working on translating KDE into a number of local languages and Linuxlab has been working on getting computers into schools. These are largely volunteer projects and are the kind of commitment one expects from the loose affiliation known as the open source movement.
Software powerhouse
Where else do you find this type of community commitment? Not in the large corporate donations that regularly get press coverage and certainly not in the proprietary world where every piece of software sets you back a small fortune.
I`m not knocking the donations made by companies to underprivileged communities and schools because each and every effort to address the technology disparity in the country is valuable. But what will truly turn the country around is commitment by those that have access to technology to helping poorer sections of society to help themselves. Armed with free software, the task becomes a lot easier, not to mention a lot cheaper.
One can only hope that the Naci advisory is not sidelined by corporate interest and that government starts to take open source software seriously as a way to develop skills locally that could well turn SA into a regional software powerhouse. After all, who says that because you learned to program in C++ using open source tools, you can`t produce commercially viable software?
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