The Open Source Evangelist

September 4, 2008 by Solomon Kembo ·
Filed under: Technology

Introductions first, Solomon-Hopewell Kembo is the name, but you can call me “solkem” its short for my name. Am more than excited to be blogging with energetic spirits like James and company. I have no doubt we can use this blogging platform in “making a dent in this universe” in our different ways.

Well Open Source Software(OSS) is the angle I will be using to dent this beautiful planet of ours on Zimbablog. I am the “self-proclaimed” open source evangelist in Africa. My hope is first, to demystify OSS Technologies and together as entrepreneurs we can collaborate on ways to effectively use this noble concept in business models and explore the resultant benefits.

Wikipedia defines OSS as “Computer software for which the human-readable source code is made available under a copyright licence (or arrangement such as the public domain) that meets the Open Souce Definition.” Simply put it is when some geeky software engineer distributes the code representing instructions to a computer( a software program is essentially a set of instructions to a computer) so that anyone is free to modify and redistribute it as their own.

There are thousands if not millions of open source programs free for anyone to use. A good example is Joomla, a content management system James is passionate about which a rival to my personal favorite Drupal.( more of this techno mumbo jumbo later).

I am not trying to draw battle lines between Microsoft and Google but this is the best example I could think of to simplify an illustration of how OSS works. When you buy your favorite Microsoft Office Package from Microsoft, the license you get is one of the several varieties of its commercial licenses. In essence in most of these licenses Microsoft retains ownership of the software. So chances are if you “own” an Office license, you actually don’t own it, Microsoft does, you just have a license to use their software. However if you use Google’s Google Docs which is the equivalent of Microsoft Office in functionality, you can download the Open Office source program(the human-readable form) that it was derived from and actually own, modify and redistribute it as your own. In short I hope this explains OSS to the lay man, apologies if I have failed.

So why have I decided to be the evangelist of OSS in Africa? I believe OSS provides the most affordable and open, learning platform for most developing countries in this world particularly in Afica & Asia, that cannot “legally” own commercial software licenses. Its a pity universities have not been pro-active enough to embrace and make the most use of this opportunity in teaching ICT technologies ( i know because I worked at one such rigid university before). In my humble opinion OSS is the most viable technology transfer program since it has no strings attached in most instances. It is my hope that one day we will talk about the role OSS plays in Globalization. For now Tchao.

Tell the world: