Author: Danie van der Merwe

Worked at SA Police and then SITA for a total of 35 years before taking retirement. My passions now are promoting open source software, green environment tech, and blogging about gadgets and technology.

Top 10 open source tools for working from home including an excellent collaborative online whiteboard app and document editing apps at zero cost

With the current pandemic taking the world by storm and many small businesses having to suddenly cater for working from home, FOSS can provide some excellent tools at zero cost. When you’re away from your colleagues, it’s vital to connect a few times a week, even if it’s just so you have a human connection as you otherwise toil away in solitude.

Covered in the linked post are:

  • Jitsi video conferencing
  • Drawpile collaborative whiteboard
  • Kanban as Trello alternative for projects and task management
  • Joplin personal notes
  • Riot team chat as an alternative to Slack or MS Teams
  • Etherpad to work together on a document
  • Ethercalc to work together on a spreadsheet
  • Nextcloud for file sharing, storage, calendar, video chat
  • LibreOffice for free installation on home computers to edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations in docx or odf formats

These are all free to get small businesses (or large ones) productive without license restrictions where workers must use private computers from home.

See https://opensource.com/article/20/3/open-source-working-home

A Fresh Look at FOSS Policy Failure in the SA Government

A presentation by Dr Derek W. Keats on an ecosystem approach to FOSS policy failure in the South African government. Watch at https://youtu.be/1bUMnpAgwK0 or click below.

An ecosystem approach to FOSS policy failure in the South African government

SITA braves open source – ITweb 11 June 2008

The State IT Agency (SITA) is transferring its entire technology infrastructure to free, open source and open standards software (FOSS).

SITA CEO Llewellyn Jones says the organisation hopes to complete this process within the next four to five months.

“We are doing a lot around FOSS within our organisation. In terms of our back-end environment, we are already using open source to a large extent. Now we are focusing on our user environment; open source offerings are just as good as – and sometimes even better than – their proprietary competitors,” he explains.

The organisation’s chief information officer, Eghshaan Khan, says this is a positive move for SITA, but admits he has some concerns.

“This movement proves again that open source or FOSS is not a myth. We embrace the principles of FOSS: interoperability, building communities and sharing. The one concern I have though is change management. We are confident the software portfolio we have chosen is just as good, if not better, than what our people have been working on; but, they need to discover this for themselves in order to buy into the project,” he explains.

SITA has chosen Ubuntu for its desktop operating environment. Running on top of this will be open office, as well as several other FOSS applications, aimed at improving SITA’s collaborative and engagement environments.

SITA’s transition to FOSS is seen as an important step in its promotion of open standards to government departments.

Jones explains: “How can we encourage our customers to adopt FOSS when we ourselves are not far enough advanced with our transition? Yes, we have seen Cabinet adopt an open source policy; but our responsibility is to be a proof point to our public sector customers.”

Despite government’s policy on FOSS, Jones says the agency has received mixed reactions from its customers on adopting open source software.

“The question is always going to be around comfort levels and interoperability concerns. Some departments already have strong open source philosophies, like Home Affairs, while others would rather delay as long as possible.”

From https://www.itweb.co.za/content/O2rQGMA54XXMd1ea

Very Positive To See An Open Source Tender Advertised By SANParks

The organisation is also looking for an accredited service provider for the provision of open source e-business technologies on an on-demand basis for a period of three years.
Non-compulsory briefing: 21 Feb
Tender no: GNP- 039- 19
Information: Technical: Nedret Saidova, Tel: (012) 426 5283, E-mail: Nedret.Saidova@sanparks.org. General: Quinton Chetty, Tel: (012) 426 5247, E-mail: Quinton.Chetty@sanparks.org.
Closing date: 6 Mar 2020

‘SA needs tech boost in case Trump recalls US companies’ says SA Comms Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams

Communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams  is concerned that SA relies heavily on software produced by the West or the East and says its time government focuses on home-grown technologies.

Her reasoning is that if US president Donald Trump, for example, was to prevent all US companies from operating in SA, the country could be in trouble.

Our view is that open source software offers the ideal vehicle for this as it’s already available, in use in many enterprises as well as governments, and can be modified for use within South Africa without starting from scratch. No-one can disable or refuse our access to open source software, and this also gives South Africa an opportunity to contribute back to open source communities globally. Open source would also mean that South Africa cannot be held hostage even by local vendors (which has happened in the past). Savings from existing annual licensing can be ploughed into this initiative as local economic investment.

See the media article at https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2020-01-30-sa-needs-tech-boost-in-case-trump-recalls-us-companies/

Response to SA Police Tender: RFB 2040/ 2019: Enterprise architecture toolset for SAPS

Response was sent on 6 December 2019 to Lesley.Chauke@sita.co.za – No reply

Hi Lesley, I note this tender is advertised but would like to point out that going to tender could possibly miss out on far more cost effect effective and free and open source (no annual license renewals or restrictions) products such as ArchiMate or similar toolsets. Thinking back to the recent events for SA Police when they were held to ransom around their forensics system by the external provider, I would think they would be very interested in rather using an enterprise open source tool which is not only free of cost and procurement, but has no license restrictions in its use.

ArchiMate is a tool provided by the Open Group who also runs the various TOGAF courses that most departments of SA government attend. There was a move, within SITA as well as government, to try to standardise on the use of ArchiMate for SA government for the above reasons.

It would be a great pity if SAPS were again locked into an expensive proprietary product set. This could be the opportunity for SITA to take this requirement up a notch and look at it transversally for SA government.
The approach for SA gov, SAPS, or SITA to procure an open source tool would involve two steps:

1. A methodology to evaluate suitable free toolsets on the market without bidding. If a suitable tool is found then you go to step

2. If not, then an open bid is advertised knowing there was no suitable open source tool available.2. Use of a contract such as contract 1183 to select a local service provider to install, configure and support the toolset if no internal resources are available.

SA gov’s open source policy approved by National Cabinet is still in force for procurement by SA government – see https://foss.oss.gov.za/?p=2373.

From https://www.archimatetool.com – “The ArchiMate® modelling language is an open and independent Enterprise Architecture standard that supports the description, analysis and visualisation of architecture within and across business domains. ArchiMate is one of the open standards hosted by The Open Group® and is fully aligned with TOGAF®. ArchiMate aids stakeholders in assessing the impact of design choices and changes.”

I’m hoping the above could save time, costs, and prevent any vendor lock in.

Response to NSFAS RFI003/ 2019: contact centre solution

Sent 6 Dec 2019 to their SCM at scm@nsfas.org.za – No reply:

Hi, I am not formally submitting a solution but can point out that Armscor is using free and open source iTop as listed at https://foss.oss.gov.za/?forum=oss-products-discussion/helpdesk-software.

The advantages for you would be:

1. No procurement delay or cost in procuring actual product – can download and use.

2. No vendor lock in with any specific company – anyone could train up and support it.

3. No annual license costs or restrictions if you wanted to expand scope.

4. Transversal contract 1183 could be used to select a vendor to support it, or an open bid, but the value would be a lot less than buying a commercial product.

Re iTop: “A simple, web-based IT Service Management tool. iTop adapts to the needs of digital businesses (infrastructure or application service providers, software, telecom) to manage multiple customers, contracts and SLAs.”

Hope this helps with your RFI process.