Technology (DST), Dr Phil Mjwara, at the Software Freedom Day, DST
offices
16 September 2006
All protocol observed, welcome.
The doors of learning and culture shall be opened!
* The government shall discover, develop and encourage national talent for the
enhancement of our cultural life
* All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange
of books, ideas and contact with other lands.
The Freedom Charter
I would suggest that at the congress of the people in Kliptown, on 26 June
1955, if they had known about the impact that Information and Communications
Technologies (ICTs) would have on our lives they would have included software
or software code in the above statement.
In South Africa, as in many developing countries, there is a lack of ICT
infrastructure and connectivity, low levels of ICT literacy and, a lack of
awareness of these resources. We need to achieve true transformation that will
see all sectors of society not only being passive recipients of technologies
developed elsewhere, but participating in all aspects of innovation. The Free
and Open Software (FOSS) phenomenon, by its very nature, encourages this
approach. It calls for the freedom to:
* run the software for any purpose
* study how the software works, and adapt it to your needs
* redistribute the copies and share the knowledge with your neighbour
* improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the
whole community benefits.
Software Freedom Day is a global effort to educate the public about the
virtues and availability of FOSS. In keeping with the drive by government in
creating awareness and promoting the benefits of FOSS the DST is celebrating
this day.
There has always been good support for Software Freedom Day from the South
African government; in 2004 the Minister of Department of Public Service and
Administration (DPSA) gave the keynote address at an event hosted by the State
Information Technology Agency (SITA) and in 2005 the Minister of Science and
Technology was at Wits University to address celebrants. Today that honour
rests with me. Unfortunately we do no expect to get the same crowds that
attended previous events as we are quite new to hosting this event and when our
communications people advertised software freedom day they forgot to add that
the entrance was also free. Some people might think that we are hosting this
event to raise funds to pay for this new building.
While the others who have the full picture might think that if the event is
free it can't be very good. Just like FOSS we hope to prove them wrong. Civil
Society Organisations have a petition to government to adopt FOSS on the table
outside because they believe that we have the ability to influence the ICT
market as a result of our large ICT spend, and that we therefore have the
ability to make FOSS more readily available. I can assure them that it is the
policy of the DST to migrate to open source software. DST 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. The vision is that all new
software developed for or by the DST will be based on open standards, adherent
to FOSS principles, and licensed using a FOSS license where possible.
Edward Rakate was the first person in the DST to be migrated to FOSS and by
the end of this month the entire National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI)
unit will be running FOSS. The NACI desktop now consists of Kubuntu Linux as
the operating systems, Open Office as the productivity suite and Firefox as the
web browser. The plan is that this desktop will be rolled out to the entire
DST.
This is in addition to the FOSS we are already running on our web servers,
firewalls, private automatic branch exchange (PABX), proxies, mail relays and
network tools amongst others. We promote FOSS not only because we want to use
high quality software and the latest technology but because FOSS is an
excellent platform for scientific computing, it gives scientists access to the
tools they require to perform their work no matter what area they decide to
specialise in. Therefore you will find FOSS in our bio-chemistry projects, our
astronomy projects, and our Human Language Technologies (HLT) and access
programmes.
We hope you enjoy the programme that we have put together and take the
message of FOSS back to your communities so that we grow the community of Free
Software users and innovators which we hope will lead to locally-relevant and
globally competitive technology solutions.
Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
16 September 2006
Source: Department of Science and Technology (http://www.dst.gov.za)
