FOSS in Africa

FOSS Africa ConventionIndaba HotelApril 2010

Paul Scotthttp://www.paulscott.za.net/

Casting a larger net

Working collaborativelyAfrican talent

Bandwidth constraints

Cultural constraints

Communication is key

How do you collaborate?

We need to use low(er) bandwidth friendly technology

Mailing lists, IRC, Web optimised for low bandwidth

Constant communication to create community

Everyone feels part of the community, no matter what the situation is!

Version Control

What is version control?

Must be used in any collaborative effort

Not just for code, docs, wiki and images too!

Must be distributed and provide a central repository

Single point of truth for collab efforts

Able to operate in low bandwidth environments

Marketing

Single most difficult thing to do

We have a culture of not thinking the best of ourselves

US and EU projects look to us for the lead (Drupal, Joomla! Etc)

Marketing costs a lot of money

Not many people experienced in tech/FOSS marketing and community building in Africa

Social Media

Marketing can be achieved informally too

Search Twitter for #Chisimba! Constant tweets and updates from many sources

Subversion also tweets so stakeholders are made aware of progress constantly and in real time

Facebook group

Flickr group

Blogs, forum and Google Groups

IP / Patents

IP laws are becoming restrictive

In SA, software patents are not yet a major risk, but have the potential to be soon.

US and EU patent systems can be limiting, but with careful licensing and distribution channels the risks can be mitigated.

MSN case

The tangible dangers

Licensing

GPL is a Free license

Allows works to be used in commercial projects too

All we ask is that if you make enhancements THAT DO NOT CONTAIN YOUR BUSINESS MODEL (i.e. NON differentiating software), please share them and make the world a better place

Many other Free licenses, all in simple English and minimal legalese

Documentation

The bane of a developers' existance!

Self documenting code is the norm in FOSS

Great docs can be generated autoatically from the sourcecode

User manuals are written more slowly, but do appear.

Great way to contribute to FOSS projects if you are not a coder!

Sharing is caring

There is very little software that contains proprietary business process within the sourcecode

There is no reason not to release most source into the public domain. Who knows, you may even get some improvements free (as in beer)!

Leverage the FOSS communities and they will help you out. Contribute back for added fun and profit!

"The most fundamental way of helping other people,is to teach people how to do things betteror how to better their lives.

For people who use computers,this means sharing the recipes you use on your computer,in other words the programs you run."

Richard StallmanFree Software Foundation.

What does Free mean?

The freedom torun the program for any purpose

study how the program works,

and to adapt it to your needsredistribute copies

improve the program, and release your improvements to the public.

These freedoms require access to the source code

Source code:if encrypt(password) == encryptedpassword, then login=1, end

Compiled code:001001011101010011001100001111011000110001110001101

What are you getting into?

Hugee.g. IBM > 1 billion $ per year

e.g. 230K projects, 2M contributors @ sourceforge.net

Well organised

Several business models

User friendly written by users for users

Cross-platform recompile source code

High development pace reuse of best modules

High quality peer review, reuse = survival of the fittest

High security peer review, Unix origin, modular, encryption

Why FOSS?

reduce (license) costs

reduce digital divide

eliminate software piracy

easier license management

easy to localize and customize

better quality(peer review, intrinsic-motivated developers)

increase security(security by design vs security by obscurity)

increase interoperability (open standards)

reduce dependencies from monopolies & foreign software companies

Percieved barriers

Perceived barriers

Perceived barriers

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt aboutfeatures?

quality? (hobbyist programmers)

sustainability?

support?

requirement to participate in the community?

Perceived barriers

anti-competitive behaviourmonopoly abuse

secret formats

secret protocols

data and vendor lock-ins

It comes down to

EducationWe teach MS because that is what companies use

CompaniesWe cannot use FOSS because our employees don't know it

EmployeesGrowing number starts using FOSS at home

Not happy with inferior software at work

When to migrate?

Time transitionsat the end of existing contracts

at hardware / software upgrade times

Consider migrating in phasesservers

desktop applications multi-platform

web-based

desktop OS

Key success factors

resources to experiment

an evidence-based choice

involvement of both technical and non-technical users in the selection process

choice for a new system which is in all aspects at least as good and easy as the previous one

reporting detailed migration plan to management and get their approval and support

in-house expertise with open source software and communities

contact with the developers and users community

The Open Way

avoid local customization withoutcontributing back

participating in the community

establish an 'open source culture' of re-use, collaboration and sharing

share experiences

Acknowledgements

PicturesDoubt by Elenaa Marie (Flickr)

Lockin, claustrofobia by Laororo (Flickr)

SlidesSome slides remixed from Prof. Dr. Frederick Questier

Some slides remixed from Prof. Dr. Derek Keats

Some slides remixed from previous AVOIR slides

All slides licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Sharealike

We are grateful to the IDRC, USAID, the Department of Science and Technology,
UNESCO and Sun Microsystems for financial and other support to the AVOIR project. We are also grateful to those organizations who had enough confidence to contract us to develop applications even though we were then unproven.Online: http://www.chisimba.comEmail: pscott@uwc.ac.za

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