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

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

[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:/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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.