Free Culture South Africa Celebrates Software Freedom Day

Students of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) joined the Free Culture movement in South Africa to celebrate Software Freedom Day 2005. The day was marked with an exhibition and Talk, close to hundred students turned up for the event, of which only a quarter were women. The exhibition attracted Open Office.org Southern Africa, Computer Science Department of UKZN, and the local Free Culture chapter. Many Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) materials were distributed including Ubuntu Linux CDs, Open office.org CDs, Creative Commons badges and stickers and free culture flyers. A Freedom toaster donated by the Shuttleworth Foundation was also exhibited and many students had the opportunity to `toast' some CDs and to learn more about FOSS.

Speaking at the talk, Craig Adams South Africa representative for Open
Office.org, said, proprietary software was denying computer users their fundamental freedoms and that the right to choose is been compromised by proprietary software.

Luke Voster, the coordinator of the Open Source project in the university said, eight of the university's computer labs were currently running on Open Source software, he added that an integral part of the university's FOSS programme is to ensure that lecturers are trained in the use of FOSS to ensure that students assignments can be accepted in FOSS format.

Kofi Mangesi of the UKZN Chapter of Free Culture, commenting on the event said `we believe this event has sparked the beginning of serious discussions among students on the need for copyright reform in the digital age'.