Re: Open Source (and PostgreSQL) in South Africa

Anton de Wet wrote:
> I was at a very interesting meeting at the CSIR (Council for Science and
> Industry Research) on Friday. The CSIR is the one of the main players in
> developing suitable technology for the South African and African markets.
> With the high level of interest in open source in the .za government, the
> CSIR has taken upon themselves to start at home and look at all their
> internal systems and see what can be switched to open source systems and
> platforms.
>
> The meeting I was in, was about their internal systems (currently Oracle
> Workflow and PeopleSoft running on Oracle) and how they can switch as much
> of the systems over to Open Source. They made it very clear that their
> purpose with this was not saving money, rather to experience the
> possibilities first hand so they can be a source of information on how to
> do it (or not to do it) in Africa.
>
> One of the main messages that was given to the PeopleSoft representative
> was that they would like to see their software running on PostgreSQL!
>
> Other interesting things that came to light was that one of their
> divisions had already developed workflow applications for clients (eg. the
> University of Pretoria) that was originally developed on postgres but
> deployed on Oracle for the clients. They would investigate if the clients
> would be interested in open sourcing the developments and the looking at
> that as an alternative for their internal Oracle workflow use.
>
> The CSIR has recently launched an Open Source Centre
> (http://www.csir.co.za/plsql/ptl0002/PTL0002_PGE100_LOOSE_CONTENT?LOOSE_PAGE_NO=7127887)
> and are keen to look at ways to improve the use of and contribution to
> Open Source in general.
>
> My company (Obsidian Systems) does Open Source (mainly Linux) support,
> training and development and we have been getting quite a few requests
> for PostgreSQL training. These movements from the CSIR is sure to increase
> that demand.
>
> Anton
>

Anton, thanks for the news.
Hopefully, the Open Source Software movement will make its way in Africa
too.

Best regards.

Arcadius A.