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South African Education Department Bans Free and Open Source Software

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday October 9, 2013 @05:22AM from the 1993-wants-their-programming-language-back dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The South African Education Department has effectively banned the use of FOSS software in state-run schools by forcing all candidates writing the Computer Applications Technology examination to use Microsoft's Office 2010 or 2013 as the only supported options. In the same circular, the state has mandated that all schools use Delphi, instead of Java, as the programming language for the country's Information Technology practical paper. South Africa, notorious for its poor performance in Maths and Science and for having vastly over-crowded and underfunded schools, are now locked into costly Microsoft licensing because of this decision."

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Re:Sounds like kick-backs by bleh-of-the-huns · 2013-10-09 05:34 · Score: 4, Funny

In SA, they do not call it a kick back, they call it a "Facilitation Fee" :P

--
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Re:(sniffs cautiously) by sneakyimp · 2013-10-09 05:38 · Score: 4, Funny

Oh please! This is just an innocent foot-hunting Safari! Everybody knows it's easier to shoot your own foot than someone else's.
Re:How many people where bribed to make this deal? by Nerdfest · 2013-10-09 05:46 · Score: 4, Funny

Relax, all the documents created are ISO standards. There's no lock-in here.
Re:(sniffs cautiously) by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-09 05:53 · Score: 5, Funny

Hey now, have an open mind.
It could be all three!
Re:Holy Hype-fest Batman! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-09 06:03 · Score: 3, Funny

Of course Delphi is closely tied to the oracle. It already was in ancient Greece. ;-)
Not very Ubuntu by Meeni · 2013-10-09 07:00 · Score: 4, Funny

That's not very Ubuntu feelings, I can feel.