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.

After several days of intense debate, APC members identified six issues as the key strategic areas that APC must tackle in the next five years: advocating for affordable internet access for all, ICTs and the environment, building the “information commons” , defending internet rights, critical and creative engagement of emerging technologies from a social change perspective and improving governance, especially governance of the internet. Why did APC members prioritise those six issues? What are the key challenges and opportunities that they perceive regarding the freedom of the internet and its use for social justice in the coming years?

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.

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.

At a ceremony that took place last January, the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport presented a new information and communication technology (ICT) textbook that are to be used in all schools, universities and teacher training facilities in that country. The new textbook teaches the use of Khmer language free and open source applications, such as OpenOffice, Mekhala (Firefox) and Moyura (Thunderbird), which have been fully translated to Khmer language.

The first APC FOSS Prize established in 2006 to honour Chris Nicol, a long time FOSS advocate and activist who for many years, worked with APC, has been jointly awarded to Free Geek (USA) and NepaLinux (Nepal).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Seven short-listed prize finalists in 2007 are currently under consideration by an international jury of experts. In September, APC will award the $4,000 USD prize to up to three of these outstanding initiatives.

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].

South Africa-based APC member Community Education Computer Society (CECS) is working to build a free knowledge and ICT literacy portal as part of its wider goal to promote "ICT Literacy For All".

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.

APC member in Croatia, ZaMirNET, has joined an information and communication technologies industrial cluster working on free and open source software. Interview with Danijela Babic of ZaMirNET in this part two (of two) on Croatian software policy.

Subramanya Sastry is an Indian techie who holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin but chooses to deploy his software skills for the development sector back home. A tool he created, called NewsRack.in, is drawing rave reviews from the few who have encountered it early.

Can free and open source software (FOSS) make a difference to the way in which local government functions in the Philippines? Manila-based Institute for Popular Democracy believes it can. It is therefore working on sharable, localised and relevant software.

A consortium of socially-aware free and open source software advocates was launched on Software Freedom Day, September 16 2006, at the University of the Philippines. Commonly referred to as BUKAS (new open formation), it consists of seventeen organisations, which share the view that FOSS has become a political imperative in light of the actual Filipino “intellectual property” regime. “Information technology should make us not just a nation of users but a nation of creators. This can be done much better with Linux,” a founding member declared at the launch.