Open source software is locally relevant, globally competitive and can make good business sense.

That was the message from some of South Africa's top open source
pioneers at the African Computing & Telecommunications Summit in Johannesburg yesterday...

...Dwayne Bailey from translate.org.za said software needs to be made locally relevant. "Localisation is making a piece of software work for you, or your locale, or your country, or your language," he said.

Bailey said the translation of OpenOffice.org into all 11 official South African languages is nearing completion and web browser translations are also in the pipeline.

Bailey questioned society's reverence towards technology. "When we write emails, it is little different to picking up a pencil and writing a letter and posting it," he said. "Why should people have to learn English to learn how to use computers?"

He said Venda speakers, for instance, cannot write in their language because English keyboards do not support the Venda diacritic characters. Once software and hardware is localised, said Bailey, it can lower barriers to innovation.

He said open source advances in localising software are also forcing competitors like Microsoft into providing software in local languages. "We've created a market differentiator that proprietary vendors will try to close."

http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=635