Microsoft refused to voluntarily surrender the patent late last month and said they would respond to the case made against them during revocation proceedings. Now anti-patent advocates are preparing to file a revocation order with South Africa\’s patent authorities. \”They turned down our very generous offer for them to voluntarily surrender their patents,\” says University [...]
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth today announced his venture capital business HBD had made a \”significant investment\” and taken a majority stake in South African distribution ImpiLinux. Other investors include empowerment group Khuselo Investments. ImpiLinux — which previously developed its own distribution — will now base its operating system on Ubuntu Linux. The company says it [...]
Somewhere out there, is a copy of a Project Gutenberg DVD — filled with literary delights such as Best Russian Short Stories, the Illustrated History of Furniture and, my favourite, the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. The DVD is out there, in Johannesburg, because I got impatient with a Freedom Toaster on a go-slow. [...]
Africa Source II, a week-long workshop that will bring together free software developers from across the continent, is to be held in January next year. The workshop will be held in Kalangala, Uganda, from January 8 to 15 next year. The first Africa Source meeting was held in Namibia in March 2004. According to organisers [...]
The open source message is being mixed to a new beat on Gauteng’s airwaves in September and October. The “Mad Half Hour Open Source Mixes†competition currently hosted on YFM gives aspiring DJs and producers the opportunity to create their own half hour music mixes using Creative Commons-licensed music. Six exclusive tracks have been mixed [...]
South African software house Dariel Solutions has launched a full service level agreement (SLA) for Jboss and PostgreSQL platforms. Dariel says it chose to offer this service to the market as support of open source platforms is still not widely available locally. “Our offering is based on a monthly retainer fee agreement with customers that [...]
Oh, it\’s so exciting! The latest Ubuntu, Breezy Badger, hot off the web and on my desktop. Judging by previous Ubuntu Linux releases, the preview edition is a pretty good indication of what to expect from the final product, which usually just gets a slight tune-up just before release date. Apart from a new boot-up [...]
Last week, president of the SMME Forum, Tebogo Khaas, caused a stir at iWeek when he told delegates there are no ADSL installations in Soweto — one of the country\’s best developed townships just outside Johannesburg. Khaas told the conference that Telkom was failing to provide Internet access to people living in townships and urged [...]
Pablo Machon, a founder of the Free Knowledge Foundation(FKnK), told delegates at the second International FLOSS and Free Knowledge workshop yesterday that the successes of the free software movement had created a valuable example of how a similar free knowledge system could work. Machon, himself a free software advocate, said that current systems often make [...]
PCs loaded with Novell\’s Suse Linux operating system are to be withdrawn from Dion stores in Johannesburg after only two months of being offered for sale. Almost a year ago Novell SA MD Stafford Masie said the company was looking to sell affordable Linux PCs through major retailers and supermarkets. And earlier this year Novell\’s [...]
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