News: Free software
Regional FOSS workshops in five African countries
The Community Education Computer Society (CECS), an ICT training NGO established in 1985 in South Africa, is conducting two-day workshops on free and open source software (FOSS) in five Southern African countries. Workshops will build awareness of FOSS and build capacities to conduct OpenOffice Writer courses in Lesotho, Malawi, and Namibia; and build partnerships with organisations and individuals in Angola and the Democractic Republic of Congo, to translate the FOSS portal to Portuguese and French.
APC strategic priorities for 2009-12: The challenges and opportunities to using internet for social justice today
Free software, free society
In recent years, Kerala India has come forward in the international free and open source software (FOSS) community for its use and promotion of free software. As an emerging FOSS user, Kerala will host the second international conference on freedom in computing, development and culture: Free Software, Free Society. From December 09 – 11, APC staff member Cheekay Cinco will be one of five women speaking at the conference, among a list of 50 prominent speakers. APC is also working with experts on free software Aslam Raffee and Sunil Abraham, who will be speaking at the conference about implementation of pro-FOSS policies in South Africa and on the topic of open information sharing/licensing. Find out more about the programming and how to watch a live video stream of the events as they unfold.
Software: free West Africa?
The use of free software in West Africa would represent an opportunity to reduce the digital divide with the South. In this region, the low level of free software production goes hand in hand with marginal usage. Free software is present in certain businesses, in education, etc. but there is mistrust, as a result of the fact that free software is developed rapidly and is proliferating. It causes fear because there is a belief that “whatever is free is not of good quality”. IDLELO3, a panafrican conference on free software, will look at these questions and beliefs from March 16 to 20 2008 in Dakar, Senegal.
Cambodian education system switches to Khmer language free software
Winners of the APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize 2007 announced
Free Geek has been keeping the needy nerdy for seven full years
Contribute your work, and get a computer! That’s the option offered by the Portland,Oregon-based Free Geek. They have been "helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the third millennium”. In recognition of their work – made possible with GNU/Linux and free software – this not-for-profit community organisation was jointly awarded the first APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize. Journalist and BytesForAll co-founder Frederick Noronha (FN) interviewed Elizabeth Swager of Free Geek, to find out more about the project, its challenges and how it can be replicated.
Protege QV celebrates Software Freedom Day 2007 with workshop
APC member Protege QV celebrated a belated but successful Software Freedom Day on Saturday 6 October 2007 with a Web 2.0 and web-based project management application workshop. The international day to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the availability of free and open source software (FOSS) was officially 15 September 2007, but due to technical constraints, Protege QV pushed its plans ahead.
In Himalayan Nepal: Where language can propel FOSS
NepaLinux, an initiative to create a localised GNU/Linux distribution in the Nepali language, has been chosen as a joint-winner of the first APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize, by an international jury. APC-member BytesForAll co-founder and journalist Frederick “FN” Noronha interviews NepaLinux’s Bal Krishna Bal, who explains the project’s relevance to FOSS local language computing solutions in Nepal, the challenges their project faced, why he carries on confidently, and his vision of the future.
Cooperation and collaboration holds the key: ICTs in classrooms
Education, collaboration and co-operation marry and merge in the Argentine classroom, through a unique volunteer-driven project called GLEducar. This project was innovative enough to earn a special mention from the jury of the first APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize. In this interview, Gleducar secretary Daniel Osvaldo Cardaci explains their logic and concerns.
Cambodia: KhmerOS to have a social impact
PHNOM PENH (Javier Sola for Open Institute) – The goal of the KhmerOS project is to produce the basic computer technology necessary for Cambodia to enter the age of technology. The requirements for this technology are clear: It must be in Khmer (Cambodian) language, sustainable, and well adapted to the socio-economic situation of the country. Cambodia not being a profitable market for software companies, the only option left to undertake this effort is to base it on free and open source software (FOSS), which allows translation, adaptation and free distribution of the software.
Cambodia: KhmerOS to have a social impact
APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize 2007 finalists announced
Open technologies bring government transparency, development
Technology put in the public information and communication domain (internet) can bring transparency to government behaviour, argues a high-profile forum that has just come to a close in Brasov, Romania. eLibretica, organised by the Romanian Open Source and Free Software Initiative and Agora Media and held at the end of May 2007 did not go unnoticed in the new European Union member country, reports Mihály Bakó of APC’s romanian member StrawberryNet Foundation [in Romanian].
An ICT literacy portal is in the works in South Africa
“We want to make FOSS producers more influential, customers happier”
ZaMirNET joins a Croatian free software cluster
The APC member in Croatia, ZaMirNET, has joined an industrial cluster working on free and open source software. Read part one (of two) of this new adventure which might help transform Croatia’s software sector. The full interview in part two reveals the specific role ZaMirNET will play in the still-in-formation economic network.
