Local businesses urged to opt for free & open source software

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) is entreating local businesses to explore cost-effective alternatives in software applications to manage their operations.

Project Coordinator, Silvia Aimasso says local organizations have the option to choose between pirated software and open source applications to improve their productivity.

Free and open source software (FOSS) refer to software that is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code.

Madam Aimasso says the efforts of local software developers must be supported to produce such applications through high patronage of the software.

She spoke to Luv Biz Report on the sidelines of the Fourth African Conference on Foss and the Digital Commons (Idlelo4) holding in Accra. FOSSFA has being training media practitioners from West Africa on 'CAMPWARE Suite' as a pre-conference event.

Madam Aimasso observed there are sustainable job opportunities in free and open source applications.

“One of the advantages of free and open source software is that it gives people the opportunity to localize it and this is a great opportunity for African countries because they are used to importing software applications that are created in another environment. There is an industry that can be created in Ghana or in order African countries. Ghana has a quite good number of developers, programmers, trainers that work on ICT. So if the SMEs, with support of government, acquire open source software, they'll be forced to get those services locally”, she noted.

Madam Aimasso the move would help develop the local ICT sector, required to improve the industrial development of the country.

There are presently several Open Source applications platform including Linux, IBM and Novell.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh