In line with global trends, the South African government has decided to implement open source software where possible instead of proprietary products, provided they meet the requirements.Proprietary software is developed by a single company and sold with restrictive licences. Open source software, like the Linux operating system, can be downloaded and implemented without a licence fee, although some suppliers charge packaging and implementation.

For a software product to qualify as open source, the developer is compelled by the rules of the open source development community to make the source code of the product available when he sells it or gives it away.

This gives the buyer the freedom to change the functionality of the software, and he can even release it as a new open- source product, says Stephen Owens, director of iLab EOS, which provides open source solutions.

He says about 170 governments now have open source policies, including 20 of the US states out of 50, and are now using the Linux operating system and open source applications."The website sourceforge.net lists about 65000 open source applications, from office software to financial accounting packages."Some countries like Brazil have gone as far as mandating the use of open source software in government.

The South African government and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research recently launched Project Meraka (a Sotho word for shared grazing),

a resource centre where government departments, companies and individuals will be able to obtain neutral open source information, such as where to find products and support. It is government's vision for SA to become a real player in the global IT software market, in terms of developing open source software applications for the rest of the world instead of just being a consumer, says Owens.

He says total cost of ownership of open source against commercial software can be calculated by working out the comparative cost of procuring the software, the hardware, the people needed to support it, upgrade costs, and the effect on productivity from system downtime, although open source software is not always cheaper.

Source: Business Day