Many people wonder why we need to carry out advocacy activities targeted at Government policy when it comes to promoting FOSS. Those whose interests are put on the line by the rapid march of FOSS argue that we should let the government decide for itself what kind of software it will use in its departments. They say that if government should develop and adopt FOSS policy, then it will be going against the principles of having a level playing field.
Individuals with experience in Linux training, Advanced linux users and administrators
This group is meant for experienced Linux users who intend to participate in this project as trainers. There are two categories in this group, which will both work together.
The first category is the Linux Power users who have already been delivering training on Linux, most likely leading to a certification like LPI or Red Hat etc. These individuals will participate in our training of trainers where we will deliver training to increase the number of Linux trainers in the target countries. Their level of experience is 5 years and above with Linux
In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would ever get to sit down with Jon ¨maddog¨ Hall over breakfast and discuss open source. This happened during the just concluded Idelo4 conference in Accra, Ghana. I was totally blown away by his humility, taking into consideration that he is one of the foremost open source evangelists in the world. I got to discuss many issues with him and his presentations at the conference were extremely inspiring. In terms of the Idlelo being a time and place for the open source community to refresh and refuel, this one was way up there.
This years Idlelo conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons is taking place from May 17th – May 21st, 2010 in Accra, Ghana. The IDLELO Conference, themed „Development with Ownership“, is a premier international forum on Free and Open Source Software in Africa and is therefore an especially important event for any ICT programme. It presents the opportunity to discuss new issues, tackle complex problems and find advanced enabling solutions able to shape new trends in FOSS and related technologies on the African continent.
Training institutions offering courses based on FOSS like LPI, Linux+, Redhat, PHP, MySQL
This group consists of organizations and institutions that offer FOSS training. This may be training in Linux and Linux certification like LPI, Red hat etc. There are also other FOSS trainings like OpenICDL, PHP, MySQL, Python etc.
If your organization is interested in participating in our project with the intention of offering trainings on open source, then we encourage you to join this group so that you can keep up with the discussions and plans.
I have been involved in FOSS advocacy in Kenya for the last 7 years. My love affair with FOSS started when I was looking for a content management system (CMS) for a sports portal I was proposing to develop back in 2003. I looked around and what I saw was not impressive. The figures that were being quoted for applications like octigon were basically far out of reach for me as i was just starting out in my consulting business (BTW, just google that name and see what happened to them).
The call for "FOSS Certification Manager for the project ict@innovation" has officially closed. We are happy to announce that we have received a number of very interesting applications and are currently reviewing these. We thank everyone who applied for the position!
After the review process selected candidates will be interviewed before a final choice is made and all candidates notified personally via email.
The third workshop part focused on concrete recommendations by the workshop participants for the ict@innovation FOSS Certification programme. The outcomes provide building blocks as an input to detailed programme planning and development.
Short-Term and Long-Term Perspectives
The ideal vision of FOSS certification in Africa, and what would be feasible in the short term, within the duration of the remaining 2 years of the ict@innovation programme, diverged.
