Tectonic — Linux and open source news

I was notified of this news item via a PubSub alert and I’m glad I took a look at it. This blog (Tectonic: Africa’s Source for Open Source News) entry talks about a method for getting the word out about free or open source software in Namibia. The problem appears to be with teachers or educators, who don’t seem to know much about what is freely available for classroom use. If you find this interesting enough to follow the link (above), be sure to click on the graphic showing a comic. I did, and found mention of things like Wikipedia, OpenOffice, and Project Gutenberg. Interesting!

Many people don’t stop to think about the international benefits of these kinds of projects. I know that many librarians in third world countries are very interested in or are already using open source library software like Koha. A few years ago, I met with two librarians from Kenya, Charles and [Daniel], for the purpose of helping them (along with colleagues from Wheaton College, who were much more heavily involved with them, e.g. in sponsoring their U.S. trip) investigate Koha and/or other free software that they could use to automate their libraries. Charles and [Daniel] are leaders in the library world in that country. I hope that they and others are also paying attention to open-ils.org, a.k.a. the Evergreen Project in the state of Georgia here in the U.S.