open source

In case you wanted another reason to be South African, our Cabinet recently approved a policy and strategy to implement Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) throughout the government. In a media briefing at Parliament government communications head Themba Maseko said that

"All new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS

Just before I left for Qatar, Aslam Rafee (who is a Senior IT Manager at the GCIS) gave me a brief overview of work that IT staff from different parts of government were putting into getting buy-in for a shift to open soure. Hats off to all those who worked to get this policy passed. Now it is up to them to move from policy to implementation which is no easy task.

Alan Levin has an excellent timeline of events and an outline of what the policy means :

1) The South African Government will implement FOSS unless proprietary software is demonstrated to be significantly superior. Whenever the advantages of FOSS and proprietary software are comparable FOSS will be implemented when choosing a software solution for a new project. Whenever FOSS is not implemented, then reasons must be provided in order to justify the implementation of proprietary software.

2) The South African Government will migrate current proprietary software to FOSS whenever comparable software exists.

3) All new software developed for or by the South African Government will be based on open standards, adherent to FOSS principles, and licensed using a FOSS license where possible.

4) The South African Government will ensure all Government content and content developed using Government resources is made Open Content, unless analysis on specific content shows that proprietary licensing or confidentiality is substantially beneficial.

5) The South African Government will encourage the use of Open Content and Open Standards within South Africa.

It is worth reading the Open Source Software and Information Society report which was one of the landmarks to the adoption of this policy.

hat tip: damien