Software Freedom Day - the South African way
Software Freedom Day in Pretoria was attended by a variety of characters, from geeks, to students, to government officials and non-profit organization representatives, to open content advocates like Kerryn McKay and Andrew Rens from the African Commons Project, and myself.
The event was held at the high-tech Department of Science and Technology building. The morning’s proceedings consisted of a variety of presentations. These included Kerryn McKay and Andrew Rens’ presentation on Creative Commons. Kerryn demonstrated the multimedia curriculum ‘Copyright, Copyleft and everything in between.’ The training material has been developed as a pilot project with The Shuttleworth Fourndation, for grade 9 learners, and gives an overview of the history of copyright, the uses of open source software and open content from an African perspective.
Dwayne Bailey from Translate.org discussed the issues around translating software to allow all non-English speakers access to technology in South Africa. Anna Bodimo, chairperson and co-founder of LinuxChix Africa, told the audience about the organization which is one of the fastest growing female networks around the world. Her presentation was titled ‘Cinderella or Cyberella? Why the issue of women in FOSS is relevant in this era’, and advocated that women need to move away from being labeled ‘administrator’ (Cinderellas) towards fulfilling the role of technical developers (Cyberellas).
A Freedom Toaster was in full use at the venue, with people queuing to burn free software onto the CDs they had brought along. ‘Elephant’s Dream’, the first film created with open source software, and ‘Cosmic Africa’, were also screened.
This article has been adapted by the article generated by Daniela Faris for http://www.icommons.org