[Gllug] Re: OT: New arrival & status of open source in the UK.

[Liam Smit]

Hi

Well in South Africa it's not doing as well as we would like, of
course we would not be satisfied no matter what.<g>

There is a daytime program on Saturday's called Go-Open which is
sponsered by TSF, the CSIR, HP, etc and it is having an impact, I've
had people who run windows only shops asking me about it. It was great
fun pulling out an Ubuntu CD pack and handing it to the business owner
who asked me about it.<g>

There is a bIg push into schools with computer labs of refurbished
computers in a thin client configuration - gratis (another TSF
project). Microsoft responded absolutely perfectly IMO by offering
free software to schools - they send them a pack of software with
corporate install media and licences after they complete and send off
an application form.

Impi linux has been largely eclipsed by Ubuntu linux but Cubit is
starting to gain ground as an accounting solution. Very impressive and
useful in that you can run it as a web based server & client access
system and be completely cross-platform.

The freedom toaster project is starting to take off now (i.e. many
more toasters are now ready and are being shipped around the country).
Here you can rock up with blank CD' s or purchase them from a
neighbouring vending machine and burn 1 or more of the 12 or so linux
distro's on the toaster. This was very popular at the last Futurex
conference in Cape Town. It's also burned many distro's at it's
permanent home at the MTN science centre.

Of course in SA bandwith / telecommunicatiosn are rather more
expensive than they would be under free competetion, but the
regulatory environment is rather restrictive when it comes to licences
required to provide telecoms services...

Eh well in SA I worked at a mostly windows shop (Linux, BSD servers &
windows 2K & XP desktops) but by the time I left, Thunderbird had
taken hold, as had Firefox and OpenOffice had gained enough users to
reach tipping point in the organisation.

I believe that OpenOffice has quite a decent following here so I might
have to focus on other areas if I end up working in a windows shop.<g>

I'm sure that there are many other things I could talk about if
someone asks the right questions.<g>

Regards,

Liam


On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:44:03 +0100, Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org> wrote:
> > So let me know how open source is doing in London and / or the UK.
> 
> Free software is doing pretty well over here.  We're not advertising
> for positions at the moment though :-(
> 
> Rich.
> 
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> Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
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