March 2008
8 posts
DIS-29500 / OOXML
The South African vote is in, and I do not think that there will be any surprises. Our National Body registered a complaint to ISO/IEC JTC1 on February 20, 2007 in which it stated that our default position for fast tracked standards would be to vote negatively. Therefore even a tie would not have been enough for those wanting our NB to change it’s vote. I have been corrected by Garth (see...
Document Freedom Day
This from http://www.oss.gov.za The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day of celebration which is supported by a group of organisations and companies, including, but not limited to the Free Software Foundation Europe, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, IBM, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, Inc. “We’re proud to support this global effort to encourage open and inclusive information...
Poor Journalism
An article published in the Business Day really irked me. Another example of lazy or is it incompetent journalism, I am sure that it is not anything more sinister then that. The author, Thabiso Mochiko has a headline that reads, “Minister locks horns with IT sector” and then qoutes Paulo Ferreira of Microsoft. Surely, Microsoft does not speak on behalf of the entire IT industry, in...
Idlelo 3
Well, I am back from the Idlelo 3 conference held at Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar. Part of a truly pan African campus with over 10 000 students coming from the rest of Africa ( If I understood the translators). I must say that I am glad that I had the opportunity to attend the conference as it gave me an opportunity to meet with government officials, FOSS developers and advocates from...
Idlelo - Opening Address
This is the Opening Address, by the Minister of Public Service and Administration, South Africa, Ms. Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi I have uploaded the video —————————————————————————————————Thank you for...
Idlelo 3 - Senegal
I am in Dakar, Senegal for Idlelo 3. I will be speaking today on the governance track about our FOSS policy and on Wednesday I am part of a panel discussing standards, I will touch on our Standards policy at that session. I’ll try and post from the conference. I am looking forward to our Minister of Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi’s opening address this...
Limpopo Foss Day
On thursday I drove down to Polokwane to speak at their FOSS day. It was mainly people from SITA and the provincial government. It was amazing to see and hear the commitment to the FOSS policy from all the players. We can expect to see some progress in Limpopo since the Premier, the DG and SITA are fully in support of the Policy.
Hello Blogosphere
I’ve started this blog for all of you that requested more information about what is happening in government around FOSS. This hopefully will complement the website which should be getting a refresh.