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South African Gov't Declared An Open Source Zone

Posted by timothy on from the nice-to-own-what-you-pay-for dept.

fungai writes "The Business Day reports that the South African government has decided to adopt open source software and develop support programs with local research institutes and universities. The CIO of the State IT Agency says: 'The logic for open-source is so compelling that after a year of debates we decided to stop talking and declare government an open-source zone.'"

3 of 540 comments (clear)

  1. OS: good for translating in SA's many languages by Reinout · · Score: 3, Informative

    This story at kde.dot.org tells about an effort to translate KDE into all seven official languages in South Africa. No way any commercial program (like windows) is going to go through that effort.

    But open source software allows you to do it yourself. KDE is a nice one in that regard because they have good tools for translations and a good process for dealing with it. Before a big release is made, there's plenty of time for the translators to do their job. There is a "string freeze" to allow every translation to get completed.

    (Other big projects probably 've got something similar, KDE is just an example where I know it worked).

    So: You want the functionality badly? You pay for it (with time or money) and there is nothing to stop you from getting it! Nice, that open source software.

    Reinout

    --
    Reinout van Rees
  2. Re:Billions, Really ?? by bob_dinosaur · · Score: 3, Informative

    Now start adding up the cost per server. CALs, terminal services licences, Window 2K Advanced Server, etc all add up.

  3. Re:This is great.. by sunbane · · Score: 3, Informative

    South Africa's government is not just choosing this as a "disadvantaged" nation - they actually have some major industry down there and the government is quite well funded (diamonds, gold mining, etc.) Having lived there for a couple years, I found it is far less third world than you would think - there are definitely impoverished areas, but there are also a lot of very educated well off people backing this decision.

    That said, this does not surprise me that they would do this. The So. Africans viewed the American computer industry quite negatively - all of our companies (IBM, et al) pulled out due to the apartheid situation (which is ironic as they were the companies hiring diversity - a topic for another day) and left them in the lurch. Some have probably returned now, but those negative feelings toward "Western" companies remain. So it does not surprise me at all they would go open source.