The Free Software Innovation Unit of the University of the Western Cape(UWC) today released a public beta of its KINKY application framework and KEWL.NextGen e-learning system. KINKY and KEWL are free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The launch of the public beta of Kinky coincided with an Africa-wide developer workshop being […]
A new South African company, OpenVOICE, has launched into the local market with a range of low-cost telephony products, including voice over IP solutions. The reason for the low cost? Because they have turfed out the proprietary software they were developing and adopted the freely available open source Asterisk software. Clayton Hayward, executive director at […]
This is a hot topic, and like religion and sport there seems to be as many opinions as there are people. But we can all agree on the real purpose of certification. It is a way to measure something — competence. It turns out that this is very very hard to do properly. Firstly because […]
Following on from the developer roadshow held at the University of the Western Cape last month (here), free software developers from nine African universities are again meeting at the university this week. This time they are learning about and developing software for the Kinky application framework. Universities taking part in the workshop are University of […]
The International Open Source Network, an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme, has produced a 48-page primer on Free and Open Source Software and Education, which is now available for free public download. According to the IOSN the primer is intended to help policy-makers and decision-makers understand the potential use of Free and Open […]
PostgreSQL 8.0 was released this week and includes a host of new enterprise-ready features. Most notably the inclusion of native Windows support, a lack that has plagued the database for some time now. In a recent report PostgreSQL was found to be lagging behind its two main competitors in the open source database market — […]
Four years since its inception and hundreds of thousands of visitors later, Tectonic.co.za is readying to launch the continent\’s first-ever Linux and open source magazine. \”Over the past year we\’ve seen phenomenal growth in interest in free and open source software,\” says editor Alastair Otter. \”We came to realize that there was a growing readership […]
Organisers of the South African LinuxWorld show are looking for speakers for the two day LinuxWorld conference scheduled for May this year. Aldean Prior, director at Exhibitions Africa, says they are looking for both keynote speakers as well as speakers and presenters that are able to present workshops and feature presentations. \”We are looking for […]
Lisa Retief is owner and lead developer at South African open source software company Sadalbari. Founded in 2001, Sadalbari\’s core products, Zinf, a product-driven case handling framework and eWage, a human resource system, are both in the open source domain. Gavin Dudley spoke to her to find out how things are going and how her […]
How did 2004 rate for the growth of free and open source software in Africa? What do you think were the major achievements of the year and how much progress was made? A lot has been achieved although it is difficult for FOSSFA to gauge the depth of the success. We (at the Secretariat) feel […]
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