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Despite having an open source strategy the South African government doesn’t really understand how to benefit from OSS. This is according to Microsoft director of corporate standards, Jason Matusow. Matusow, who was in South Africa on an “external outreach” trip around the time SA adopted ODF as a national standard, writes on his blog that not only does government not understand how to benefit from open source software, but South Africans were unlikely to ever do any “deep” development work on Linux.
“South Africa has taken a most unfortunate position of late – the government has sought to put a political mandate in place for the adoption of open source software,” Matusow writes.
“But, the most serious issue to me is that they are not looking at the real benefits that OSS can bring them.”
Matusow says that for South Africa to really benefit from open source it should apply OSS development and licensing methodologies at the app-dev and tools layer, rather than thinking of the core OS as an OSS opportunity for them.
Development not likely in SA
“Deep dev of the core OS” was not likely to happen in South Africa where students were “still grappling with coding skills”, says Matusow. They are “not going to dive into the inner workings of Linux”, says Matusow.
“Any innovation on Linux that is broadly applicable will immediately be picked up by Red Hat or Novell and commercialized globally with little economic benefit coming back to SA.”
Matusow says that he is “against all technology mandates, and this one is no different. Ultimately, it constrains decision-making away from technology, solution quality, ROI on existing investments, people issues…in short value-for-money – all in the name of a political position. Worse, it is pushing CIOs into decisions that they don’t want to make – essentially taking working environments representing huge investments and moving to untested, more expensive solutions.”
Matusow argues that the developing world still thinks of OSS as “free as in no money, and that is widely known to not be the case.
“I heard this same point of view for 5 years all over Asia, parts of Europe, and Latin America. I saw governments try to incubate OSS businesses solely because “OSS” was in the title and mandate. Then, those businesses failed, and the mandated solutions turned out to be far more expensive than other commercial alternatives. Almost uniformly this came about through a misunderstand (in my humble opinion) of what OSS can do for organizations.”
One response to Matusow points out that a number of key open source projects have South African roots. Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution, was founded by South African Mark Shuttleworth while OpenBSD and OpenSSH are the brainchild of ex-South African Theo de Raadt.
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You South Africans are SOOOooo dumb; dumber than a box of rocks.
Don’t believe it? Just ask Microsoft.
(Lessee now: (1) Ubuntu is a VERY real threat; (2) VRT (see #1) developed by a South African; (3) …Naawww, no way…)
Does any one really believes that the SA Government got onto the open source wagon because of the technical or financial merits thereof? B.S. Take this possible scenario: The SA Government and SITA got onto the open source band wagon to get back at MS who threatened hefty penalties because of pirated MS software. Then there are a number of role players who could not get MS to pay backhanders. With open source backhanders become so much easier to handle. New players in the market were carefully coached (even in Maputo) in how to use open source not as as a benefit to the Governmnet but to line the pockets of the new IT roleplayers who has no IT experience, but HUGE corruption, manipulation and “politicking” experience. It is like most “transformation” projects in SA. Designed to benefit a few at the expense of the masses… Where in the world would you get CIO’s of government departments enjoying regular extravagant vacations with “friends”, who fortunately lands very lucrative open source deals with them, despite being the most expensive?? Only in the SA! Forget about technical or financial merits of open source or proprietary software. That is not the point at all. It is who is the easiest to manipulate and line the pockets of corrupt officials who gets to write the stategy… In that open source has unfortunately aligned itself (unwillingly but non the less) with real “winners” in the Sa Government. … and off-course this is just a possible scenario. Just as possible as “equality before the law for politicians and most members of parliament.”
[...] – South Africans don’t understand OSS – Microsoft (27 912 [...]
Oh wait – what happened to last year’s FUD from MS about ‘you get what you pay for’, and that OSS cost savings imply a lack of quality?
Now, it seems, the Microsoft products cost less than OSS. Back at ya Microsoft! I’d rather pay more to run OSS than put up with the insulting, unreliable rubbish that is Microsoft software – after all, you get what you pay for!
@Chris:
Microsoft is still losing tons of money on the XBOX division.
The company’s cash cow are Windows and Office.