The Shuttleworth Foundation recognises the important contribution that Microsoft is making by providing their proprietary software free of cost to 32 000 schools in South Africa. This gesture will assist in the development of basic computer literacy skills, a challenge which has long since been overcome in first world countries.
However, South Africa should not merely aim to be on par with basic international computer literacy requirements, we should aim to be at the cutting edge - something we have proved possible in the spheres of science and medicine. To do this, we need to look at current and future international trends so that we may adequately prepare our learners for a global and competitive IT market. The Shuttleworth Foundation believes that in order to achieve this, South Africa needs to embrace the open source philosophy.
One of the strongest current trends in the international IT arena is the use of open source software. Simply put, software that is open source refers to software that makes its source code openly available for people to read, redistribute, and modify. In this way, the software evolves. This can happen at a speed that is incomparable to the general slow pace of conventional software development. Experience in the open source community has shown that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model. For a large part, open source software is technically solid and, where in the past software development has very much been dictated by needs of the west, it provides an opportunity for software to be developed locally to suit the needs of SA and the rest of the developing world. It is through open source that South Africa can ensure the development of technical skills on a long-term basis and in this way, better able to position ourselves as global players in the technology arena.
Thus, The Shuttleworth Foundation will continue with its strategy to initiate open source systems in libraries, establish Linux labs, facilitate basic Linux training programmes and will embark on a vigorous media campaign to disseminate information promoting the open source philosophy