Yet More Open Source for South Africa

Yesterday I wrote about India's opposition backing open source more fully, and here's a good update on what's happening in South Africa:

“The move to open source software has not been as fast as we would have liked, but we are now entering a new era. In the past, open source deployments were mostly spontaneous and ad-hoc. We now have a more systematic approach.” In years past many government departments pursued their own open source migrations, usually in isolation from one another, and with varying degrees of success.

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Now, says Webb, the State IT Agency (Sita) is assuming the role of paving the way for OSS migration by finalising standards and conducting pilot projects to make it easier for all to implement open source software successfully. ... Webb also says that Sita expects all government department websites to be running on open source software “very soon”.

There's clearly a pattern emerging here around the world, as governments their loyal opposition first experiment with open source, and then commit to it whole heartedly.