South African Gov't Declared An Open Source Zone

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.'"

Comments

It will be interesting

[Evanrude]

It will be interesting to see what kinds of programs they come up with and how soon other countries follow suite.

CIO ?

[CySurflex]

The South African government has a CIO ? Next thing they'll be offering stock options and buying aeron chairs.

Intellegent thought

[tuba_dude]

I love it! Finally a government entity seems to understand the benifits.

However, Microsoft's response was the kicker.
"It's a very popular technology today, but ultimately it's not a sustainable business model. What happens when the developers who find it exciting today move on to something which will pay the bills?"

I almost fell off my chair laughing. It's interesting seeing them confuse state operations and business...Maybe they've been suckling (sp?) on the US government a bit too hard?

Re:Intellegent thought

[TummyX]

So? What if Microsoft decided that they want to move on an abandon a product? You're screwed there.

At least with OSS you can just contract out someone to continue the work.

Any many OSS projects are paid for directly or indirectly by various business entities anyway.

Re:Intellegent thought

[gmack]

That depends on the reason for writing it in the first place.. was it to do something they needed done? Do they need it to make their own buieness function? Was it something just for fun?

Or hey maybe they were making money off it.. many developers are actually payed by one copany or another. Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, IBM and connectiva all pay developers.

Then again so what if it does get dropped? It's not that hard to hire someone else to fix it.

Then again it's not as if I've never had commercial products simply discontinued on a whim.
At least with Open Source you have options after.

Re:Intellegent thought

[cranos]

Yes the programmer might have realised that he/she could have written the same programme for Windows and then he/she will breathe a sigh of relief that they didn't. Not all developers are after the almighty dollar, nor are they willing to work with inferior tools.

The other point you seem to miss is the fact that OSS software can lead to job creation, need a custom module for Apache? Hire a developer, need a more secure version of Sendmail? Hire a developer. The code is there for anyone to use, as opposed to waiting for the proprietry code to be updated and even then there is no garauntee that the new version will meet your needs.

Re:Intellegent thought

[JohnFluxx]

Hmm I disagree. Companies spend a lot of money of software. Both buying and making inhouse software. If there was a business case for modifying some OS software (e.g. it is projected to save X thousands of dollars) I see no reason why the company would hesitate.

And companies can afford it - the investment is usually worth it.

Re:Intellegent thought

[Elwood P Dowd]

You're trolling.

Nevertheless:

When you're the government, and you need a solution to deploy to a five thousand desktops, the money you spend on licenses could just as well be spent on OSS development. Then, when you deploy to ten thousand desktops, licenses cost nothing.

The programmer *is* making a living writing programs: He's an employee of the South African government, rather than Microsoft. His spending power and expertise improves the economy of South Africa, not Washington state. If he quits, hire and train someone else. It's still a better investment than software licenses.

Re:Intellegent thought

[km790816]

Interesting thought: What if the United States government, which is the largest single purchaser of MS software (if you include the military) spent all of their IT dollars on Open Source solutions?

They could invest in nailing the problems they wish to solve with no worries about future price hikes and inter-op.

What could 100s of millions a year (I'm guessing) properly invested do for big Open Source projects?

Hmm...

Re:Intellegent thought

[Dalcius]

One thing I think you're missing is the concept that most development is in-house or bundled software (with hardware; e.g. drivers). Software resellers don't make up much of the market.

And even then, the idea that you can't sell OSS is a fallacy; people will buy something they can get for free. Seriously, look at all the Linux servers (27% of all servers sold in what, Q4 2002?) being sold; AFAIK, the majority of these all have expensive OS licensing attached, although any IT guy with half a brain can install Linux for free.

It's only one tiny piece of the pie, but the company I work for is completely open sourced and our new stuff is all based on OSS tools. This was a 30-man company during the dot-com era and we're still breathing fine (now running at 50 employees). Maybe it's the exception and not the rule, but I think you'll find that more resale companies base their products on OSS than you think. And resale companies (and even moreso those with a lot of in-house programming) employ developers.

Some of you guys make it sound like the only way a developer can work is by contract. ;)

It's not as clean cut as some folks think; OSS is not all that bad of a gig, money wise.

Re:Intellegent thought

[lactose99]

What could 100s of millions a year (I'm guessing) properly invested do for big Open Source projects?

uh... buy open source programmers $10,000 hammers and $50,000 toilet seats?

Re:Intellegent thought

[rseuhs]

You have no idea, right?

You know why Microsoft's software is expensive?

First, 70% to 80% of Windows/Office is profit margin.

Then we have sales and marketing.

Then we have factories making CDs, packaging them up and sending them around the world where they are further distributed physically.

Then we have all those "features" like WPA, Palladium, copy protection, purposely breaking formats to force people to upgrade, etc. which are not really needed in an OSS product.

I'd be surprised if the cost to maintain Windows or Office is more than 2 or 3% of the retail price.

Just one single developer can maintain even a larger project (hell, Linus still maintains the Linux kernel mostly himself - in his spare time) and the same or (if the project is really huge) another one can add the features you want.

Re:Intellegent thought

[Isofarro]

You know why Microsoft's software is expensive?
Then we have factories making CDs,

Now this is a laugh when you think about it - if a government orders 10,000 copies of windows, what's the point of sending 10,000 copies of the same CD.

Here Open Source makes so much sense. Download one copy, or order one copy on CD and install it on as many computers as you would like. Logical and simple.

Re:Intellegent thought

[Peer]

Now this is a laugh when you think about it - if a government orders 10,000 copies of windows, what's the point of sending 10,000 copies of the same CD.

That's what they have site-licenses for.

Re:Intellegent thought

[tshak]

First, 70% to 80% of Windows/Office is profit margin.

At the surface by quickly glancing at the SEC filings one would assume this to be true. Don't get me wrong, Windows/Office are HUGE cash cows, but read prior threads from a few months ago that explain why this is not a correct conclusion.

/me rolls the dice

[coene]

"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"

You have to love it when governments take a "why not" approach to innovation. It's something a lot of USA busineses (and government entities) could take a lesson from.

Re:/me rolls the dice

[Sgs-Cruz]

I don't know about that... lots of debate is a good thing. People say that they wish the government made more 'snappy' decisions all the time, because we only ever hear about the times when a 'good' decision is delayed. When a bad decision is shrugged off by the due parliamentary process, we simply say, 'oh, democracy in action.'

If totally open-source were good for the U.S. gov't (and you have to look at the whole picture, not just the fact that it would be good for Linux :), then I'm sure the bill would have come up at some point.

Remember that the U.S. gov't is very different from the ZA gov't in terms of money to buy proprietary software, and control they have over the owners of said proprietary software. (Though with the amount of respect Microsoft is giving their conviction, this might not be true!!)

Re:/me rolls the dice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it was certainly innovative when the South African government declared that AIDS doesn't exist and is just a figment of the imagination. Presumably they used the same sort of 'logic' to arrive at this decision.

Re:/me rolls the dice

[tuba_dude]

You make a valid point, but we here in the good ol' US of A like big companies. Individuals and individualists are terrorists these days, didn't you know? That and Microsoft (and offtopic, the RIAA, MPAA and friends) pays for a good portion of election campaign bills, among other things.

Re:/me rolls the dice

[Narcissus]

"control they have over the owners of said proprietary software"?

I'm sorry, but I think it's the control owners of said proprietary software have over them that has prevented more open discussion/acceptance of open source software...

Re:/me rolls the dice

[tuba_dude]

"...becuase if it ain't broken, they don't want to fix it."

Sorry, don't mean to be an ass, but shouldn't that read "...because if it ain't broken beyond repair...?"

I don't know about the rest of you, but Windows for me is like an old portable CD player. It works, but you have to shake it a bit before the disc starts spinning.

Re:/me rolls the dice

[seanadams.com]

Now money is in the hands of a privilaged few, and they don't want to risk losing it.

Are you fscking kidding me? Are you referring to the last two years, or the last two centuries?

From 1997 - 1999, anyone with an idea and the balls to walk into a VC's office could walk out with a pile of cash. Privilidged few, my ass. We're in a recession right now, but even so, the opportunities available for low-to-middle class Americans are absolutely staggering compared to what they were two centuries ago.

But I'm sure you've personally spent your entire adult lifetime toiling in a 19th century factory, so what do I know.

Re:/me rolls the dice

[Anonymous Coward]

Those years (97-99) weren't about innovation at all. They were about get-rich-quick schemes and screwing stupid people out of money with BS techno-babble.

Re:/me rolls the dice

[Planesdragon]

I'm sorry, but I think it's the control owners of said proprietary software have over them that has prevented more open discussion/acceptance of open source software...

Get OpenOffice to spell-check around em-dashes and placement of bookmarks in PDFs, and you'll do more to help OSS and harm MS than any number of irate /. comments could ever do.

Then again, I just downloaded OoO 1.0.2... maybe it works now... (yeah, right...)

Top quote:

[achurch]

"It's a very popular technology today, but ultimately it's not a sustainable business model. What happens when the developers who find it exciting today move on to something which will pay the bills?"

Well, that's an easy one: the high school and college kids who were watching the developers will take their places. Duh.

Heh.

[Black Parrot]

> 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.

Someone must not have found it too terribly compelling, or else they wouldn't have spent a whole year debating it.

At any rate, it's easy to imagine that billg is packing his bags for another emergency handout run right now.

SA more progressive than the US?

[blackcoot]

(Note: this isn't a flame or a troll, just the obersvations of a South African living in the US)

It appears that, in general, South Africa has leapt way ahead of the US in a large number of policy areas, not just Open Source. They've got fundamental protections in their constitutions which are significantly stronger than those in the US (for example, you can't discriminate based on percieved sexuality, domestic partnerships are law, with same sex marriages in the works, etc.) Now, to be fair, I haven't been back in SA since the '94 elections, so I don't know how much of the new government's legislation has made it into actual practice, but it does seem odd that SA is apparently overtaking the US in terms of the general "cluefulness" of the administration.

Re:SA more progressive than the US?

[God! Awful 2]

It appears that, in general, South Africa has leapt way ahead of the US in a large number of policy areas, not just Open Source. They've got fundamental protections in their constitutions which are significantly stronger than those in the US (for example, you can't discriminate based on percieved sexuality, domestic partnerships are law, with same sex marriages in the works, etc.)

90% of the Western world is ahead of the US on social issues like this. South Africa may have been the longest hold out in the segregation battle, but the US isn't far behind. What other Western country is ruled by a powerful religious lobby?

-a

Re:SA more progressive than the US?

[adaknight]

Not really a fair statement. This will depend on which U.S. state you are talking about, some will be more progressive than others and will match or exceed the "progress" (which is always up for debate) you describe above. The administration of government elected by a progressive population will pass progressive laws, and that elected by a conservative population will pass conservative ones. This is as true for South Africa as it is for America; American law is simply reflective of the voters that exercise their power.

Re:SA more progressive than the US?

[tshak]

for example, you can't discriminate based on percieved sexuality, domestic partnerships are law, with same sex marriages in the works, etc

Good, so I can get a tax discount for marrying two women, or even my dog now, right?

Seriously, I'm not trolling, but to me the entire concept of marraige tax benefits is for the purpose of having a family, which science has dictated quite plainly that it takes a male and female. Now, if two people, or even three people want to be life partners, that's their choice. I just don't see why they should get a "family" tax benefit.

Re:SA more progressive than the US?

[blackcoot]

It's not just tax benefits. With marriage comes something like 2743 rights in the state of Virginia (your mileage will vary state to state) including shared insurance benefits, hospital visitation rights (which is a big one), power of attourney rights, etc. Quite frankly, the tax benefit doesn't make such a huge difference when you've got another mouth (or two or three) to feed.

Re:SA more progressive than the US?

[Ancil]

• I haven't been back in SA since the '94 elections, so I don't know how much of the new government's legislation has made it into actual practice

Ok, I'll fill you in. South Africa has perhaps the greatest divide between Law and Reality that has ever existed. Government wonks in gated communities debate protecting sexual orientation while half the nation live under the tyranny of warlords. There are whole cities in SA which, for all practical purposes, have no police presence. Expats like you talk about how great things are, but probably couldn't be paid enough to go back.

Re:SA more progressive than the US?

[radish]

By that argument, why should a childless hetrosexual couple have a tax benefit? Or indeed, why should a homosexual couple with an adopted child not get a benefit? In the UK we have a benefit which is paid out to parents (all parents) per child. That seems like a sensible approach if you really are concerned about "making families". On the other hand, if you're simply trying to attach some entirely false special meaning to a hetrosexual pairing then I'm afraid you're on to a loser.

Amazed at common sense.

[eniu!uine]

I am very pleased at the news that open source software will be used in SA, but it's certainly not amazing. What's incredible is that more governments haven't switched to open source. There is excellent software out there being given away for free, but people are still using inferior software and paying money for it. It only stands to reason that eventually all smart governments will adopt the 'don't pay for what we could get for free' policy. The Microsoft reaction seemed entirely panic-driven(giving software to schools), and their argument is weak. They are right about one thing though, open source software in itself(i.e. just the software) isn't a sustainable business model. Of course that's completely irrelevant. What's relevant is that the software continues to advance in leaps and bounds, is free and is showing no signs of stopping. Let the open source companies worry about business models, I'm only concerned with my free software that I'm free to change however I like.

sed s/developers/YourMonopolisticSupplier/g

[JayateMo]

MS Gordon Frazer said

"It's a very popular technology today, but ultimately it's not a sustainable business model. What happens when the developers who find it exciting today move on to something which will pay the bills?"

A slightly different perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the areas for future growth for Microsoft was developing countries, so this is an interesting trend. If developing countries adopt OSS policy, that severely limits the growth potential and forces microsoft into a position it doesn't want to be in. Wall Street ranks companies based on growth, and if growth slows or stops all together, it looks bad. Does this mean the company is bad? No, just that wall street thinks in twisted ways and down grades the stock from buy to hold.

Microsoft is still trying to figure out web services and .NET. The first version of .NET has a lot of improvements over IIS 3 and 4, but it still isn't enterprise class. For small and medium business with minimal needs, it's fine. For serious enterprise apps, it's still has a long way to go.

If microsoft can't get windows and .NET up to enterprise class in 5 years, they can forget about it happening. I know first hand many large financial corps are moving towards clustered/grid approach to next generation platform, so there's only a small window for microsoft to break in. If they delay be 2 years or more, linux will become the defacto clustering platform for PC hardware.

Re:A slightly different perspective

[WiPEOUT]

"If microsoft can't get windows ... up to enterprise class"

Linux's clustering capabilities are indeed better than those of Windows, but only in the engineering and scientific calculation space.

You seem to be overlooking the enterprise database space, where Microsoft has thoroughly smacked-down the competition, both in overall performance and price-performance.

For "enterprise" computing, what is more important: scientific calculations or databases? I think you will find the latter more critical to the overwhelming majority. Many, if not most, enterprises do not perform the kinds of engineering and scientific calculations that grid computing targets, while most would be hard-pressed to find a company that does not use a database.

I'm not trying to ridicule the apparent success of linux in this space, but don't delude yourself into thinking that this is the be-all and end-all of computing just yet.

Re:A slightly different perspective

[rseuhs]

All of Microsoft's growth markets are already stopped by Linux:

On servers Windows should have been the Unix-replacement (and in the mid-90's it was), but now Unix-shops migrate to Linux and Windows-shop also start to migrate away....

WinCE should have been the hot embedded OS for the 21st century. But with the noticable exception of PDAs, it isn't doing too well and can't even replace DOS. While DOS ran on about half of embedded systems in the mid-90's less than 1/4 of todays projects are using WinCE. (I'm working in embedded systems BTW.)

Microsoft is currently in the phase of being stripped of all their growth opportunities and is reduced to their core markets. Those will be the next to go.

Re:A slightly different perspective

[7-Vodka]

well I'm not saying anything. But, maybe this guy is a little biased you think?

It's funny how the link he uses shows no results for linux. So your results show that microsoft beat linux but linux wasn't tested?

Also, if I recall, microsoft is one of the biggest sponsors of that organization.

Logic flaw?

[Flamesplash]

"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," says Moseki.

If it was so compelling why did it take a year of debates? Why did the debates not come across this compelling solution, and have to stop, not decide, and just choose one?

Maybe the person was misquoted but it sounds a bit illogical.

Your sig

[Dwonis]

A set of...three button choices: Back, Next, Finish, and Cancel. --Windows SDK

I'm all for criticizing Microsoft, but that's going a little overboard. It's an honest mistake, and many of Microsoft's competitors (especially OSS developers) have made much larger blunders.

This quote is more fun:

Because both the system's privacy and the security of digital money depend on encryption, a breakthrough in mathematics or computer science that defeats the cryptographic system could be a disaster. The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers. Any person or organization possessing this power could counterfeit money, penetrate any personal, corporate, or government file, and possibly even undermine the security of nations [...]
(The Road Ahead)

[emphasis added]

Another Stop For The Gates World Tour

[E-Rock-23]

Can we expect to see Bill Gates making a trip to South Africa now? After India just said they were leaning towards it, MS wandered over there carpetbagging "Free" software. I garuntee that within the week, there'll be an MS rep on the Dark Continent preaching the joys of their software. Let the countdown begin.

Re:Another Stop For The Gates World Tour

[mrselfdestrukt]

As a South African I am fully aware that we have good programmers and a lot of open source followers.I myself use Linux and FreeBSD as much as possible. Even at home. The rest of the world usually find it very weird to hear that we even have computers. We might not be the US , but our cities look just like any other city in Europe. But with our budget and problems, we need to take steps like this to save costs.This is excellent and I'm very glad to hear that our govenment made that choice.
The funny thing is that recently Microsoft offered a couple of schools (in rural areas where they just recently got running water) *free* copies of MS-Office, but the government made their calculations and realized that the schools would not be able to afford the licenses for Windows and the computers, so they said.Thanks , but no thanks. That was funny to see MS's publicity stunt backfire like that.

Three thoughts to repudiate Microsoft FUD in this

[Anonymous Coward]

(1) Open-source isn't a "sustainable business model?" So, according to Microsoft, forcing annual upgrades and software subscription on businesses IS a sustainable business model? In the now-infamous Peru letter, didn't Microsoft state that sales make up only a small portion of the overall software cost -- support, integration, and customization make up a far larger percent. That sounds like a sustainable business model to me. Being a US school district that received an audit threat letter from their marketing department, we sure aren't impressed with Microsoft's business model anymore. That's why we switched to StarOffice on 1000 PCs last fall (grand total cost, $25.00)

(2) What happens when "the developers ... move on to something which will pay the bills?" Well ... either (a) others keep the project open, (b) you hire programmers yourself to keep the project going (and reap the rewards), or (c) you yourself learn to program and keep the project going. Tie in with #3 below.

(3) What happens when "the developers ... move on to something which will pay the bills?" Well ... what happens when proprietary software is pulled from the market and no longer supported? My school district has a pile of software (as I do at home, for many years) that's been abandoned by their owners. I remember paying $$$ for Lotus Magellan back in the early 90s - incredible software, became abadonware within a year. I could name many more -- I work in education, we a lot of our software gets abandoned over time. You're out your investment. I guess the business model didn't work in those cases???

The Microsoft FUD machine is really revving up ... but dominoes are still starting to fall.

Saving lives?

[egoff]

especially considering the high costs of HIV/AIDS treatments, anything this government can do to same money in sensible ways is a much, much bigger plus than merely its effect of the open source community, or /. world. People are dying at incredible rates because of a lack of education (costs money) and treatment (costs money). Excellent idea.

This is AFRICA not America

[HanzoSan]

The average African does not make the same amount of money as the average American.

So when you say stuff about people in Africa somehow getting rich off of windows programs, you would be right if this were happening in 1995-99, but its 2003, theres no longer a shortage of programmers, the supply of programmers are endless and the supply of software is limited, at least in africa where the people cannot afford the software.

Their best solution is to develop their own software using their own labor, and then they can build the technology they need to export to the USA and thats how they can REALLY make money.

Re:This is AFRICA not America

[mpe]

This is *not* AFRICA we're talking about; it is "South Africa", not your average african country. South Africa has one of the highest GDP per capita in the world. In fact, several years back, they were #1! Diamonds are really worth something.

This kind of measure dosn't tell you much about the typical person in South Africa. To find this out you'd be better off looking at median or mode figures for the population than the arithmetic mean.

Africa doesnt need jobs it needs an economy.

[HanzoSan]

Africa needs an economy. They have more than enough workers, what they need is infastructure, they need an OS, they need plenty of software which they can develop on their own considering they have unlimited people power,

Its almost like China or India, yes they can make money making Windows software but they would make ALOT more money if they didnt have to pay for licenses, this would allow them to advance in the information age faster because even with a poor economy they'd be able to compete with and even surpass us in terms of software development and engineering.

Robotics, AI, and alot of computer devices they create could be exported giving them a similar economy to that of Japan. Japan currently sells playstation 2 and electronics devices which require alot of programming, Africa has the ability to have an economy like this easily.

Re:Africa doesnt need jobs it needs an economy.

[fungai]

Unfortunatley, you're wrong. I'm a South African, and the masses over here does not have the level of skills they have in India or China. The education programs are lacking too much. The privileged few, sure, they are well trained at top universities. The rest can hardly afford a computer.

Fungai

Re:Africa doesnt need jobs it needs an economy.

[Isofarro]

I'm a South African, and the masses over here does not have the level of skills they have in India or China.

And why don't they have the level of skills? Is it possible one of the main reasons behind this is the financial cost involved? Surely the saving made by not buying proprietory software and going for Open Source alternatives allows a larger portion of the population to get involved in obtaining these skills because of the reduced costs.

Its the financial cost factor that's the barrier. Removing it or reducing it allows entry by more people. Certainly not all people, but more than before. Its progress.

The rest can hardly afford a computer.

So the people that previously couldn't afford a computer and its software but can afford just a computer -- isn't that an improvement? If you want to change an entire country, start with one person.

Re:Africa doesnt need jobs it needs an economy.

[johnnyb]

"their governments continued to cut taxes" - I'm not sure what you are implying with this, but government tax revenues have gone _UP_ every time a significant tax cut has been issued, because of how much it stimulated the economy.

Re:What is the population of Africa?

[chromatic]

You can't count every one of a billion Africans as a potential programmer. Not everyone has electricity, for one thing. Of those who do, not everyone can afford a computer -- and there aren't a lot of libraries with public Internet access.

US Navy goes the other way

[Camel Pilot]

The Navy/Marine corp is presently going in the opposite direction. They are launching a large scale contract (NMCI) that restricts all Navy IT to MS and MS solutions. No room for further innovations with other platforms or the application of appropiate technology to the task, just a rosey pink homogeneous MS world. Under the new system you are not even allowed to connect a BSD, Linux, embedded network device or even a MAC machine to the network anywhere.

At the Navy labs, this one size fits all approach is even more short sighted and foolish. The upper echelon has yet to catch on that the network is the backbone or the infrastructure that enables an ever increasing plethora of monitoring systems, data acquisition and control systems, collabration and communication mechanisms, etc. As more and more devices become Web enabled the Navy has effectively locked itself out in the cold and crawled in bed with built in obsolesce - not to mentioned left itself vulnerable to an attack or virus that would spead like wild fire in a homogeneous network.

Re:US Navy goes the other way

[valisk]

Considering the problems they had with the Yorktown and its fantastic fallover NT Cluster. I am suprised that they would ever consider MS again.
Just goes to show that hard headed stupidity reigns, just lets all hope that they don't have to reboot their systems in the middle of a combat op. because Microsoft Automated Missile Defense 2.1 caused a BSOD.

Re:Probably not the best country to have done this

[grammar nazi]

Greetings friend.

I am from nigeria and I have a huge fortune in source code (100,000,000 lines of source) locked up in the South African government. A friend at the embassy has made me aware of your trustworthiness... and should you help export this sourcecode from my dictator government, then I will give you 25% of the sourcecode. I will keep 60% of the source code and the other 15% will go towards the fees of transfering it out of my country and into an american repository.

I need to move fast, since I have only days to export this sourcecode out of my contry before the dictator finds out.

Shortsighted and blinkered

[christophersaul]

I feel it's nonsense to declare any governemnt department or private institution an 'open source' zone, if the implication is that only open source solutions will be considered.

What happens when they need functionality that the open source world doesn't offer. I'm thinking of things like the scalability and availability features you get from the big Unix guys (and no, sticking 100 Dells together is not always the answer for big systems). What about when something like SAP, Oracle Apps, Siebel, etc, etc is required?

Support issues and costs are not instantly solved just because you can look at the source code. That is utterly irrelevant to most IT managers. The last thing govt IT workers I know want to be told is that they no longer need that support contract - they can just look at the code man'. That simply doesn't hack it in a large number of situations. If it does work, then use it, but it shouldn't be the sole policy.

No IT solution should be dismissed out of hand, whether closed or open.

Re:Shortsighted and blinkered

[bain]

As a South African all I can say is, In the years of boycots and trade embargo's we have survived and innovated without the help of overseas companies and technologies. South Africa probebly has more raw talent then most 1st world countries, and I see it everyday in my work.

I have high hopes of this move from the govornment and if there is needs we will develop it ourselvs if need by. that is afterall the strength of linux. scratch your itch.
Just because we are on the southern tip of Africa doesn't mean we need the rest of the world to write code for our functionality.

Re:Shortsighted and blinkered

[fferreres]

What happens when they need functionality that the open source world doesn't offer.

That doesn't happen. Open Source is not a kind of product, but what under what conditions you will accept to purchase software. If the seller never let's you own the software you are funding then the Goverment can't buy it (not even to self support it if the developer drops the product).

Remember, there are hundreds of rules that must be followed if you want to be a goverment provider. This is just one more of the requirements, and one that makes a lot of sense.

Why pay billions every year to end up owning nothing, getting more dependant on a foreing monopolist. Putting billions and billions on open source will really be a bargain: nobody can charge you ever again for it, nor force you to upgrade, nor lock you into it. And the pools of countries investing in Open Source ("Public Goods") will grow, and these funds are "additive"...

MS has done great things, and keeps doing great things, but "the world" no longer wants to pay the monopolistic rent, they realized they want to pay for the cost of production. And they get "National Security", a local software develoment markets and a better current account as a bonus.

Re:Shortsighted and blinkered

[Isofarro]

How much does SA spend on foreign made vehicles? Does that mean it's worth developing their own car manufacturing industry?

Foreign-made vehicles in South Africa are merely luxury items for those people with more money than sense. South Africa's car manufacturing industry is World Class. Notable achievements:

* All right-hand drive BMW's are made in South Africa. Germany produces only left-hand drives now. BMW South Africa scored better quality ratings than their German counterparts for 2002. Both have extremely high quality levels
* Volkswagen South Africa won the sole contract to supply China with 300,000 vehicles a few years ago.

Re:What a surprise!

[xrayted_za]

This sounds a typical comment by one of my fellow white South African. Sure our government has made mistakes and has some bizarre policies, but which countries government does not. The government has been resolute enough to put a decent fiscal policy in place that is seen by the international community as one of the best in the world, even though large parts of the population would have preferred a more socialist policy rather than a capitalist one. We have an economy poised for a major upturn where as most of the rest of the world is teetering on a depression. If you are no longer living in South Africa then good riddance, if you are then get off your whinny butt and do something for your country or emigrate if you think the rest of the world is going to be so much better!

A Sustainable business model? Really? Hmm...

[4_Scythe]

It seems every time a "big time" Open Source story like this appears on Slashdot, all the posters turn into blind zealots.

Sure, this is great news - but that's no reason to discount what Microsoft is saying.

Microsoft may be guilty of a lot of things, but sofar I agree with the "paying the bills" statement. There's scarce few major success story from any developers coding Open Source software alone - but yet there are many successful proprietary developers.

It seems to me that Open Source software works best when the collaborators are working on behalf of different companies on the one piece of software. That is, the businesses themselves are not reliant on the software, but the collaborative development benefits all those involved.

A serious question...

[boomgopher]

Is this move by South Africa, People's Rep. China, et al. really a big win for the Open Source movement, or is it just governments taking free stuff?

Maybe I'm being a cynic and/or misunderstanding, but I'm not expecting some of these governments to actually contribute anything back to OSS. I half expect some of them to end up violating any licensing the code is released under.

Re:A serious question...

[jbolden]

Why? Government universities have a long track record of giving their software back to the community. Government agencies inside the US were actively improving Linux before they were stopped due to lobbying. The government of Germany is funding work that is going into KDE which will be available to everyone.

I don't see any evidence at all that governments aren't willing to widely share code. Their perspective is likely any of the other major players: if they don't share the code then they have no chance of getting the code in the main tree and they have repatch every new release which is an impossible amount of work.

Re:A serious question...

[pjrc]

...but I'm not expecting some of these governments to actually contribute anything back to OSS.

Time and time again, people have tried this and failed again and again. When the primary goal is to simply have a good program to USE (not resell to others), it just doesn't work not contributing back. Many have tried this and regretted it.

What inevitably happens is the "official" project improves, both fixing bugs and including new features. The private code diverges from the public version, even if only in minor ways, it becomes a headache when a patch doesn't apply cleanly. Whomever "maintains" the private code needs to reimplement the improvements that are deemed critical from the public code, and as time goes on this becomes more and more hassle.

Often the private changes are contributed back into the public version, simply because that is the only viable way to "maintain" the application over time. Sometimes, the private version stagnates or diverges too far. Either way, the lesson learned by an organization who's primary purpose is simply using the software is that it's in their own self interest to merge their improvements back into the public project, where they will be maintained and tested together with all future improvements contributed by others.

Re:A serious question...

[IamTheRealMike]

Maybe I'm being a cynic and/or misunderstanding, but I'm not expecting some of these governments to actually contribute anything back to OSS.

They probably won't, but that's expected. Maybe one day everybody will use Linux and most of our software will be open source, but I don't expect Joe and Jane User to start sending me patches. Right through the history of open source software, the answer has always been "if you want something, do it yourself". That worked because if you were using open source software, you were probably also a programmer.

In the future, that won't work, because they'll just be users who even if they wanted to help out could not, because they don't have the skills.

So the idea that if you use open source software you should contribute back is unsustainable really. I mean I use the road network, but I'm not expected to take part in filling holes, that's somebody elses job. Via taxes I pay them to do that for me.

I think in the future maybe when users outnumber developers in linuxland you'll start seeing people scanning bugzillas for high voted bugs and offering to fix them in return for cash - you want CYMK in the GIMP? How much is it worth to you (and others). So, although I expect the majority of the work would still be done by volunteers, some of the other things would be contributed to by pure users, perhaps business and govt amongst them.

I've often thought I'd try it after I leave university, in about 3/4 years. But I don't really know what the user:developer ratio will be then, and I wouldn't want to ask money for a feature when probably most of the people who'd contribute were themselves volunteer developers. That'd feel wrong. So, we'll have to see how it goes.

Anyway, my point was that in the future very few users will actually be able to contribute back patches or docs or whatever directly, so I should think economic models will arise that let them do it indirectly. Governments probably will contribute back in this way.

Re:Probably not the best country to have done this

[Blue Stone]

"Speaking from a publicity standpoint, South Africa seems to have little credibility in the world these days."

Unlike... say... The United States of America! :o/

US will be seing this soon

[adamruck]

k.. im really tired and I cant think that good, so this wont be very clearly written how long do you think it will be before we will see more and more state and local goverments doing similar things? There is a HUGE deficit and money shortage, and many groups are looking to cut costs. The public school system in my area has to cut there budget by 2 million dollars(the latest proposal was to cut media aids). Ive got a feeling that more and more people are going to be looking towards open source solutions in the near future.

Re:Internet Cafes.

[Ami Ganguli]

If were're talking about Africa as a whole (rather than just SA, which this story is about) then I'd say Africa is _much_ worse off than China.

Africa still has a fair number of extremely corrupt governments and civil unrest. Chinese peasants are poor, but they don't have to worry about thugs coming through their villages and spraying the buildings with gunfire like in the Congo.

Lots of reason to hope, of course. Good government in Ghana. South Africa is making progress. But I think China and India are much more likely to become world leaders in the next 50 years.

Good news for other countries

[mr_tenor]

And now the US navy get 0wnz0red by hostile countries. Well, it's their choice.

today, bedroom, henceforth, albeit, saucepan

[dark-nl]

English has always had a tendency to gradually combine words that are often used together. Each of the words in the subject was combined from words that used to be separate. Often they merged through an intermediate hyphenated form (bed room, bed-room, bedroom), but sometimes they skipped that.

It appears that the same thing is happening to "a lot". Deal with it. If you want to complain, why not go straight to the source and complain that "a lot" makes no sense as a term of magnitude? "a lot of wood" used to be a specific amount of wood, i.e. one lot. This was gradually perverted into meaning "any large quantity of...", and is now about as meaningful as "many". People used to complain about ye fuck-tardes who use "a lot" on its own, as in "I swear at people at lot". "A lot of what?" they asked.

Re:What is the population of Africa?

[chromatic]

Your point was ... ?

... quite lost on you, evidently.

HanzoSan claimed that the existence of a billion Africans meant that they had an unlimited base of programmers. I responded that there are other factors that exclude many people from being even potential programmers.

Any conclusion involving Americans exists only in your mind, not in my argument.

3rd world country looking for brownie points ?

[bushboy]

Being a South African myself, I just hope this isn't another one of our Governments tricks at appearing to be 1st world and 'up to date/ahead of' 1st world countries.

Whilst people in our country remain illiterate, homeless and diseased on a vast scale, the government implements such things such as this, instead of facing up to our most immediate problems.

They implement laws such as 'no smoking in public places', yet fail to curb the serious offences, such as murder, rape and robbery.

They implement grand new schemes, such as this Open Source 'initiative' when millions are without homes, clean water or electricity.

It's just lip-service - they can pat themselves on the back and say "Look, we're just as good as the 1st world" while ignoring the real issues that face our country.

Re:3rd world country looking for brownie points ?

[curious.corn]

How many vitamin A integrators will your government buy for the price of a M$ license? How many abused safe-homes can be financed for the price of a department upgrade to the latest & greatest WinXP? How many extra rural computer terminals can be deployed for the same investment and at what usaqe rate can they hit if they come in all the possible languages (people, the less educated especially, don't get the feeling they're being 'colonized' but rather treat the novelty as an 'extension' of their own culture)?

Billions, Really ??

[pjrc]

They're going to save BILLIONS. Wow.

I was wondering how much that really is. Wandering over to XE.COM, one US Dollar is equal to 8.9 South Africa Rand. The article's writing style seems a bit odd to me, but maybe that's how reporting is done in South Africa. Quoting....

The move should save at least R3bn a year, says agency chief information officer Mojalefa Moseki.

Now I'm wondering if "R3bn" is (roughly) equivilant to 337 million US dollars. Suppose the average PC gets $600(usd) installed on it, in windows, office, and a couple other apps. I just pulled that $600 out of a hat, but it seems a reasonably conservative (high) estimate of the amount of proprietary software you'd purchase per machine, on average.

That'd put their annual software purchasing at (approx) 561600 PCs per year, or 1.12 million PCs in use on a 2-year Microsoft "software assurance" upgrade cycle.

Is that reasonable, or did I add something up wrong?

Re:Billions, Really ??

[bob_dinosaur]

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

OS: good for translating in SA's many languages

[Reinout]

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

Re:A Sustainable business model?-Yes it is!.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well both you and the original poster are guilty of misquoting. Here's the original. "It's a very popular technology today, but ultimately it's not a sustainable business model. What happens when the developers who find it exciting today move on to something which will pay the bills?" He's trying to cast fear and doubt on there being anyone to back your software "investment", if the developer loses interest. He's viewing the world through the "old model" point of view.. However OSS as you should have realized by now, doesn't play by the same rules. Having the source code puts control of the "investment" back in the hands of whomever holds it, not a company in Washington state. A successful OSS project is one who's code is being used, regardless of how much or how little. Not how much money the developers make:i.e. "successful proprietary developers." Also your "successful proprietary developers", have tied their "success" to a single point of failure. So Microsoft fortunes go, so theirs go. The governments and businesses who are giving OSS a try are simply breaking that link, and placing their success were it should have been all along. In their own hands.

There's probably another reason behind OSS

[jthorpe]

I have lived in South Africa for almost all my life and four years ago, got out of there and have moved to Sydney, Australia (like most who can, do!). The primary reason for this was the amount of corruption going on, largely due to the shocking government in South Africa (it's disheartening to say this, but SA is going like the rest of Africa).

The RSA Government has obviously recognised OSS software as a means to reduce costs which is excellent news for them, and good for the OSS community, but it won't be sustainable for very long. Professionals are leaving RSA in droves and whilst it's cheap for the government to hire such people to manage Linux systems, corners will be cut everywhere and the South African government's greed will simply make the project fail (OSS software is good, but often requires a little more expertise to implement than other solutions which is ok in almost all circumstances).

In the end, the corrupt government will screw things up so bad that they can't even afford to maintain even OSS systems.

MS SA pricing

[KeenestSA]

As a South African business & games software retailer, I can tell you Microsoft is one of the few companies in the country who refuse to adjust their software prices based on the country they are dealing with. For example the Age of Mythology retails on average here at R 545 (exchange rate R8.80 = $1.00) Whereas a company such as Electronic Arts average PC Games retails for R 299 or even lower in SA. Taking Microsoft pricing policy forward to their business software and licenses, one can see they are horribly overpricing themselves in a country who can ill afford their high prices.

Wrong in the context of SA

[SerpentMage]

What bothers SA is that they buy licenses of software, but yet not one company develops software in SA. Using Open Source they are giving the chances to future generations of developers. In other words they are becoming self reliant.

Lets put it in their context. Would you not do the same? Would you not want to have your people be part of the digital revolution? Buying software does not make you part of that revolution.

and in the other news..

[Extrymas]

B.Gates and S.Balmer is going to South Africa next week to discuss aids and education problems in the country with SA Gov't.

Re:cluestick

[dipipanone]

Communism is flawed because it allows powerhungry people to obtain a permanant position without checks and balances.

You're confusing the political philosophy with the bureaucratic organization of the state apparatus. There's no inherent connection between these two things. There's absolutely no reason why you can't have a communist state that has free and full elections and limits on holding power.

Communism as a political philosophy may have flaws, but they aren't the ones you say they are.

Re:Three thoughts to repudiate Microsoft FUD in th

[m00nun1t]

"That's why we switched to StarOffice on 1000 PCs last fall (grand total cost, $25.00)

So the people who managed the deployment were free? How about the user training? How about the lost productivity time as end users got used to the new app? How about the conversion problems on the few especially complex documents star office struggles with?

It's been said before, and here it is again... free software is only free if your time is.

This is great news for Microsoft fans everywhere..

[weave]

The more threatened Microsoft feels, the better their software will become. If they lock everyone in, watch the innovation grind to a halt. With the subscription model for software, they now have even less need to improve the products (since the upgrade income is no longer an issue, it's now guaranteed).

Just look at IE. It's been almost two years since IE 6 came out, and that was just a minor upgrade over 5.0 and 5.5. When Netscape ruled the browser kingdom, IE was progressing at a rapid pace. Now if Mozilla, Safari, Opera, etc, make serious dents in market share, watch IE development take off again...

Competition is a wonderful thing.

Re:Get a grip

[Isofarro]

America [...] We have on of the least risk adverse but still responsible business cultures in the world.

Enron. WorldCom.

Re:This is great..

[sunbane]

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.

Lucky Iraq's navy isn't much to speak of

[alienmole]

...otherwise, the US could be in serious trouble.

I'm not kidding. There ought to be a Federal law against this sort of thing, for government agencies. In the commercial world, when a company makes dumb technical decisions, in the worst case, it can go out of business. When the US Navy makes dumb technical decisions, it could literally cost people's lives, and affect national security.

This gives new meaning to phrases like "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM (or Microsoft)". No-one ever got killed by allowing heterogenous systems.