This article was originally written for Tectonic Magazine and appeared in the preview edition. X was originally created in the mid-80s by a research group from MIT. Its goal was to create a windowing system quite unlike any that had been conceived before. Thus X\’s design differs greatly from that of other windowing systems, having [...]
South Africa\’s CSIR and the University of the Western Cape have been selected as research partners for a European Union-backed global study of free and open source software. The two-year project involves 17 partners from 12 countries around the world. The two local partners, CSIR and UWC, will jointly receive R4,8 million from the EU\’s [...]
Creative Commons, the growing global movement to relax restrictions on the fair use of intellectual property, launched its South African chapter in Johannesburg this week. Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig, speaking at the launch event, described Creative Commons as recognising the need for sharing works and cited several examples of how CC was being used [...]
After close on two and a half year\’s research Bridges.org this week released the findings of its study into the use of free/open source and proprietary software in public computer centres. The report finds that while free and open source software(FOSS) is increasingly being used in community centres there are still many challenges for the [...]
Almost two years after it was launched to promote the understanding and use of open source software in South Africa, the CSIR\’s Open Source Centre has been incorporated into the newly formed Meraka Institute and given a healthy financial boost. The Meraka Institute is now focused on the growth and promotion of ICT and technical [...]
As more and more businesses – and particularly smaller ones – switch over to open source software it\’s always good news to hear traditional players extending their support to operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD. A few days ago BitDefender did exactly this when it released BitDefender for FreeBSD and just yesterday the company announced [...]
\”Can South Africa compete with China and India in the software market and tackle large software projects? No we can\’t, we just don\’t have the scale,\” SA Revenue Service CIO Ken Jarvis said this morning. Speaking at the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering colloquium on The State of Software Engineering in SA, Jarvis said that [...]
Ubuntu Linux has signed Obsidian up as the first certified support partner in South Africa. Obisidian expects to certify 15 engineers for Ubuntu — the same number of certified Red Hat engineers it has in its stable. Announced at the LinuxWorld show in Sandton yesterday (18 May), the relationship is described as \”arms length\” at [...]
Long-time Linux advocate and a keynote speaker at the first LinuxWorld ZA conference, Jon \”Maddog\” Hall yesterday said the the real value of open source is not captured in a total-cost-of-ownership calculation. He referenced the ongoing campaign by proprietary vendors to convince customers that their solutions had a lower TCO. \”I don\’t care,\” he boomed [...]
Following on from the highly successful mass-LPI examination fest which saw the qualification of 37 new level-one and three new level-two LPI graduates in February this year, Linux Holdings and The Shuttleworth Foundation yesterday held another mas LPI certification event. This time it was held at the first LinuxWorld show in Johannesburg. Alan McKinnon, head [...]
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