Open Source Zambia (OSZ) is a no strings attached organization. Come with knowledge, share knowledge, leave with knowledge. The meetings, events, networking and more are all structured in similar fashion.

Healthy Discussion

Want to debate issues related to ICT in Zambia or an interesting thread shared by a fellow African blogger titled “5 Reasons Why Local Developers are Poor and would Remain So” then OSZ is your forum.

Networking

Members of the group work in various for-profit, government and non-profit organizations. They are prominent technology evangelists and are actively involved in organizing events such as Barcamp Lusaka.

Isn’t it time for you to join as well? Sign up for your account at OpenSourceZambia.

In a Press Release, Linux Fund and the Free Software and Open Source Foundation of Africa (FOSSFA) have signed a landmark agreement to promote Free Software and Open Source in Africa. This historic engagement between two Foundations speaks to the success of the Community Summit and Foundations face-to-face meeting at this year’s Open Source Conference (OSCON) which was held in San Jose in Silicon Valley.

Within the framework of the agreement, David Mandel of Linux Fund emphasizes that “Linux Fund will work to raise money to help fund FOSSFA projects and events that expand the use and development of Open Source software, documentation, data, and education in Africa. Linux Fund will also add information about FOSSFA to promotional fliers and other literature that Linux Fund uses at conferences and for direct appeals to potential donors”.

Nnenna Nwakanma of FOSSFA says she believes that Linux Fund support has come at a good time when FOSSFA has engaged in the ICT@INNOVATION project in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Kenya http://www.ict-innovation.fossfa.net and the FOSSWAY (http://fossway.fossfa.net ) project that sweeps across the whole of West Africa and Central Africa promoting and building FOSS capacities in those 18 countries. She also believes that the upcoming projects of FOSSFA on Policy Support to Governments, Management of Internet Resources, Open Source Certification, Resource/Competence Centers and Open Source Solutions for Governance will also benefit greatly from this collaboration. Finally, she believes the upcoming Fourth African International Conference on Open Source and the Digital Commons (Idlelo 4, Accra, Ghana, May 17 – 21, 2010) will be an important event to showcase results of this partnership.

Both organizations will disseminate information about each other’s activities, initiatives, and operations on their web sites, at conferences, meetings and events. FOSSFA and Linux Fund are committed to expanding their partnership beyond funding to include joint projects and events plus strategies for information exchange between their diverse communities. The development of a system that would allow Open Source experts visiting Africa could be linked with speaking opportunities or short volunteer consulting projects during their trips is also under consideration.

About Linux Fund

Linux Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides financial and advisory support to the free and open software community. Linux Fund has given away over $750,000 to open source events and development since its founding in 1999 using funds raised through its line of credit cards and direct donations.

http://www.linuxfund.org/

About FOSSFA

FOSSFA is the premier African FOSS organization, and was founded under the auspices of the Bamako Bureau of the African Information Society Initiative within the mandate given by African Governments in 1995 to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The Vision of FOSSFA is to promote the use of FOSS and the FOSS model in African development. FOSSFA supports the integration of FOSS in national policies and also coordinates, promotes, and adds value to African FOSS initiatives, creativity, industry, expertise, efforts and activities at all levels. FOSSFA partners with development organizations who share these goals towards a participatory and gender-mainstreamed sustainable development and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. The Foundation is already working with the African Union, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the State Information Technology Agenca of South Africa (SITA), the German Capacity Building International (INWENT), the Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA) and the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE)

The event will be held at the Secretariat, Computer Village at 17:30. (See how to get to Computer Village)

On the party time line or agenda for the evening are:

1. Talk about the Secretariat and projects being undertaken and challenges
2. Upcoming events
3. Your copy of Knoppix/Ubuntu live CDs. Please come with a blank CD to get a copy of the distribution
4. Suse Linux
5. Ubuntu Desktop
6. OpenOffice/FireFox
7. A chance to meet and network with peers in the industry

Add your name to the list of attendees by visiting OpenSourceTryOut. If you can’t attend in person, your support by way of joining the OpenSourceZambia online community would be a big pat on the back to the people trying to promote Open Source software in Zambia.

The main objective of the community is to bring about knowledge and awareness of FLOSS. Further to this OSZ aims to develop solutions that are specific to Zambia. The community’s objective is to attain levels were information is readily accessible in sectors such as agriculture, medical records, educational records, governance, or credit records. Zambia lacks a central storage for such information; this could be due to lack of technical knowledge in the record-keeping/management, a lack of interest in embracing technology, or the fear that investing in this technology could be too costly.

OSZ is determined to bring FLOSS in the business stream and use it to solve current ICT problems being faced in Zambia. FLOSS provides many opportunities for developing countries and Zambia is placed at an
advantage to benefit from it. The social sector in Zambia has lagged behind in adapting Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to efficiently deliver services in various communities. Being a country that suffers greatly from the digital divide, OSZ’s promotion of FLOSS arms Zambians with the tools necessary to bridge this gap cost-effectively. The nature of FLOSS and the invitation to users to participate in its growth increases people knowledge, pride, and personal accomplishment. FLOSS liberates users from being mere users but transforms to contributors of the software development process itself. Developing countries such as Zambia can boost the morale of its citizens by encouraging them to use and participate in the use, development and growth of FLOSS.

OSZ community has human resource that can be developed and harnessed to develop and support ICT projects. OSZ thrives upon the expertise of many IT professionals who are specialized in various aspect of IT. Granted, a great deal of this expertise of strongly closed source inspired. OSZ has human resources who are fully capable of setting up Ethernet networks, wide area networks, and metropolitan area networks. The OSZ human resources are also fully capable of developing software solutions in various formats, web-based, Windows-based, and Linuxbased solutions. The OSZ human resources is capable of setting up various types of servers ranging from web servers, DNS servers, DHCP servers, mail servers, authentication servers, as well as a plethora of other servers as may be required.

OSZ will undertake various projects ranging from consultancy to direct user support and software development in order to cover running costs. With a human resource crew that can deliver almost all types of IT solutions, OSZ will charge for services rendered. The cost of the services will not be exorbitant but will be much cheaper than commercial rates; costs are kept low in order to promote open source.

PDF Download of Open Source Zambia Developers Community Proposal

More than that, the open source way represents a collaborative, generous and community-oriented way to get things done, and this software development methodology is carried over into how people learn and interact. OpenSourceZambia aims to become a focus, in Zambia, for developing the community of people interested in the benefits of technology for themselves, and for encouraging the international open source community to assist in the advancement of open source software in Zambia.

OSZ is dedicated to promoting the knowledge and use of open source software in Zambia.

Apart from monthly meetings in Lusaka, we are also trying to formalise our structure in order to be able to solicit funding for some of our projects and to take on a significant role in advising public and private bodies on their use of free software. We are currently working on a constitution to sort out how we are run.

Please browse (and contribute to!) our website and sign up to the mailing list, which is where much of the discussion of our projects and meetings happens.

Please make comments regarding these proposals.

1. Name of organisation
2. Location of hosting server
3. Website issues
4. Mailing list issues
5. Delegation of other responsibilities
6. Immediate projects
7. Deadline

Discussion

1. The name Codezed has already been arrived at, and it therefore has the benefit of pre-eminence. Another thought might be OpenZambia. The Zimbabwe people have gone with ZOSS. Any other suggestions? I also believe there should be an “incorporating Zambia LUG” somewhere in the subtitle of the name, but ZLUG (as a name) is probably too restrictive. These issues, and the issue of an emblem to put on a letterhead, become important in the context of applying for server space with Zamnet, and prehaps registering codezed.org.zm.
2. Zamnet has offered the space (and are quite enthusiastic), and we should probably use it. We just need to put our request in writing, which is in the process of happening; then we need to arrange the transfer.
3. I strongly feel that the website should be operated as a Wiki. The current choice between forum/book/static page/poll/story/blog confuses me thoroughly, and doesn’t allow for easy collaboration on documents (which would be helpful for things like this very document). I can put a demo online if people want to try it out, but I’m heading for one just like Ubuntu.
4. What mailing lists are required? Only one? In that case, we make it codezed-general. Later iterations might include codezed-business or some such.
5. CDs, regular meeting, launch party, library, seeking sponsorships, website, mailing list, business liaison – take your pick of things to do.
6. Immediate projects: I think there is an urgent need to do OSS evangelism at UNZA, to recruit young enthusiastic people with perhaps a bit of time on their hands and more bandwidth than is good for them.
7. It would be nice to see the migration to Zamnet, the first open meeting, the mailing list and whatever else up and running by a certain date, in order to start publicising Codezed’s presence to other LUGs and in Linux journals with things already in place. This will be a great help in raising the profile of the community and perhaps furthering the sponsorship, training and business aims of the group.