The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (Fossfa) secretariat will move from Kenya to the Meraka Institute in SA next month.
"There`s a greater support for open source software (OSS) initiatives in SA - lots of the organisations that are members of Fossfa come from SA," says Nhlanhla Mabaso, head of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Open Source Centre, which is based at the Meraka Institute.
The Fossfa secretariat moves every two years to a new location, and the choice of SA was made at the Fossfa council meeting in 2004, says Mabaso.
The official handover will take place at Idelo 2, the second African Conference on Digital Commons, which will be held from 23 to 25 February in Nairobi.
The first Idelo conference, held in Cape Town in 2004, attracted 250 delegates.
At Idelo 2, Mabaso expects the delegates to include Fossfa members from across the continent, OSS industry experts (including Mark Shuttleworth), representatives from universities and members of the Creative Commons organisation.
Idelo is aimed at fostering an environment of shared wisdom in the digital environment, similar to the cultural heritage among many Africans of sharing land, explains Mabaso.
"In that way we`re bringing together the old and the new," he adds.
Fossfa is also in transition from a private company to a public institution, which Mabaso regards as an improvement. "The problem with being a private company is that one often gets caught up by the interests of shareholders and issues of competition with other companies."
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