[ubuntu-za] Setback for FOSS in South Africa

[Neil Blakey-Milner]

On Tue 2005-10-11 (09:38), Robert Schumann wrote:
> Just thought this should be more widely known:
> http://mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=253198
> 
> It appears that Microsoft has negotiated a deal to install their 
> software in public telecentres throughout the country. The Shuttleworth 
> Foundation's position, that "there are many software alternatives in 
> open source", starts to sound a little hollow; if Microsoft is offering 
> to install and maintain the software, what open source company is going 
> to offer such a service for free, even if the software is free as in beer?
> 
> Microsoft is offering the better deal. Yes, I know it's not better in 
> the long run and morally and all that, but what can be done?

Action is needed from the top-down and the bottom-up, both as part of a
long-term process.  Top-down is being covered adequately, but it seems
bottom-up isn't.

What's needed are companies that can be relied on to take on any tender
out there, and apply for them.  Perhaps that's the market ImpiLinux is
going after (since they went after the SARS and SITA tenders, from what
I recall, and they've got some capital to work with).  Perhaps that's
also where Novell fits in, and they seem to be going after it too
(they're a bit of an unknown to me, as I don't know the depth of their
in-house capability ).

Until the bottom-up is there, and there is no question of the capability
of people to deploy and maintain systems, there will be
reasonably-justified decisions to use other alternatives.  Obviously, in
the long term, these just hurt the country in terms of vendor lock-in,
lack of agility, and inability to access the country's assets in full.

And, even in the short term, these count against the open source
attempts - we've made it newsworthy, and that counts against us when we
lose.

I guess it's a matter of building up trust - which is mostly being seem
to be successful, which either means winning and being successful at a
few large projects, or winning and being successful at many slightly
smaller projects.  And being seen - which means coverage of projects not
only at the winning phase, but at the acceptance and rave review phase.

Even I don't know who I can trust to handle a project of a certain size
at a certain budget...

Neil
-- 
Neil Blakey-Milner
nbm at mithrandr.moria.org
http://mithrandr.moria.org/