Open Source Centre Success

Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), is software which is liberally licensed allowing users to study, change, and improve its design via the availability of its source code and to freely and legally redistribute it with minimum restriction. The word "libre" is included to emphasize the "freedom from entanglements."

Open Source Software (OSS) is being developed by millions of dedicated people all over the globe who form the Open Source Software Community. OSS is constantly being improved, with new features being added frequently and bugs and security flaws being fixed, thus leading to extremely high quality software that is free for anyone to use. Gift of the Givers uses this same software to run their own critical operations.
Currently, we have only one center setup. This is the first in KZN and is the second largest in South Africa. The system runs on a thin client model, this allows us to use low-power secondhand machines as client computers. This drastically reduces the administrative and financial costs for the center while not compromising on the performance of the system. There are many advantages to this, it allows us to easily recycle older machines and to run the latest software without high costs. The same software can also be given to students free of charge to use at home and to give to their friends and family, the software can also easily be modified to suit the conditions of any center.

Benefits for the Poor

FLOSS is beneficial to poorer communities in the following ways:

1. It's free.
2. You do not pay for the latest and greatest upgrade.

3. Since you have access to the code, you could easily teach yourself to program.
4. Because you have a choice, you can run the software on older and less powerful computers that were bought secondhand or received by donation.
5. These machines can be made to function just as well as new machines depending on their purpose.
6. Any student who uses this software at school can take a copy home and use it and can also share it with relatives and friends.
7. The skills learned using OSS can be easily transferred to other platforms.

The Open Source Centre run by Gift of the Givers is basically a room with 50 computers that all run on OSS. These computers can be used to write documents, perform calculations, program, surf the internet, et cetera. The 50 computers are older machines, they use Pentium III, 400 megahertz (Mhz) and have 64 megabytes (MB) of random-access memory (RAM). They all connect to a more powerful server which also runs OSS and which takes care of all the heavy work. A similar type of center using propriety software would cost at least three times as much, if not more.
The center currently caters to students where it is homed, however, it will soon allow access to the public and surrounding community. Gift of the Giversis a quality-sensitive organization and not quantity driven. We plan to open up many centers like the one described all over Africa, but we will only begin once we are completely satisfied with the progress of the pilot program.
The South African government is the largest user of OSS in our country, and wherever possible, the government uses OSS instead of propriety software.