Information Society Watch

23 August, 2007. James Archibald, Tectonic

Free and Open Source software (FOSS) has been steadily gaining acceptance across the world. This article looks at a significant move made by the South African government with respect to usage of open source software in government programs. The SA policy has now changed to mandate the implementation of FOSS solutions as a rule except in cases where a proprietary solution is demonstrated to be significantly superior. This is a major shift in the thought processes of the government with regard to technology and thus marks another important step in the FOSS movement and its quest for greater legitimacy compared to high cost proprietary software.

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