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  • Our Projects

    Please scroll down for the featured projects:

    • General FLOSS Advocasy
    • tuXlab Program
    • Digital Doorway Project
    • Prisons OpenICDL Certification Project
    • iLAB EduSuite

    Free and Open Source Software Advocasy

    Introduction

    When you buy software at a store, you don’t really buy the software, you buy a license that allows you to use the software. Most software licenses are there to restrict your freedoms. Software is often licensed in such a way that you may only use the license you have purchased on a single computer, and you’re not allowed to copy it to your friends.

    These software licenses came into existence in the late 1960’s. Before then, computer software was available freely to modify and to share with friends. A small group objected to the new licensing schemes, but there was nothing they could legally, or otherwise do, to prevent this from happening. Software licensing has made many companies and individuals very rich, and the business plans of these companies started to revolve around these licenses, meaning that they most certainly won’t return to a license that gives you more freedom. However, this small group of hackers decided to write their own software, and create a special license that would ensure that the software remains available for all. The Free Software Foundation was founded, by Richard Stallman. His main goal was to create a complete computer operating system, along with all the tools that you would need to use your system effectively.

    Since the late sixties, when the free software movement started, the system that they have been working on have evolved into an elegant operating system, which is currently in many ways superior to even the non-free systems, called ‘proprietary’ systems. Many businesses now rely on free software to run their business.

    Who creates free software?

    Initially, most of the free software were created by hobbyists and hackers. Companies weren’t very interested, since there was no proven financial reason for them to do so. As the software evolved and matured, people started using the software in production environments, and made lots of money from doing so. Google, for example, decided to run all their systems entirely on a free software platform. This meant that their startup costs were incredibly low, and due to the design of the software, they could scale up much faster than any of their competitor, giving them a great market edge. These days, companies such as Google have full-time staff working on free software. Companies such as Novell, Canonical, HP, and many others also have staff that work full time on free software.

    How do people make money out of free software?

    Surprisingly, very similar to how they would make money from non-free software. When implementing proprietary software, a company would usually charge for the licensing of the software, implementation, support, training, consulting, etc. With free software, there are many companies that will provide all these services, except that they won’t charge you for the licensing of the free software. They are, however, allowed to charge you whatever they like for the actual packaging and distribution of the software, but generally, that approach does not work, since anyone else may package and distribute the software as well. This creates a healthy competitive market, which benefits the end-user clients tremendously. In the free software world, companies don’t compete for the highest licensing returns, but instead compete on who can provide the best service. This means that in a free software implementation, you pay for service, and you get actual value.

    What can free software do?

    Around the world, thousands of people are working right at this moment to improve and create new free software. If there’s proprietary software product out there, there’s a good chance that someone is already working on a free software version. Possibly the most important piece of free software that currently exists, is Linux. Linux is the operating system, which can replace a Microsoft Windows machine. Linux is used widely across the world, and is gaining ever more popularity. OpenOffice.org is a free office suite, which is very similar to Microsoft Office. There’s Firefox, which is a web browser, which is vastly considered the best web browser available. There’s plenty of other open source products and suites. Many of the free software vendors even ship versions for Windows and MacOS, so you do not need to run Linux in order to take advantage of free software.

    What is Open Source?

    In the 1990’s, when free software became stable, and made business sense to implement, many advocates felt that pitching something that’s called ‘free software’ to management of large companies were difficult. The term ‘free software’ refers to freedom, not free as in ‘gratis’. Another group then founded what’s called the Open Source Initiative. They created the Open Source definition, which is very similar to the free software definition. The Open Source Initiative tracks different software licenses, and approves licenses as open source or not, depending on various qualifiers, while the Free Software Foundation continues to facilitate the creation and improvement of free software.

    How does free and open source software fit into Inkululeko?

    Inkululeko Technologies uses free software in all of its solutions. Quite often, there are some additional functionality that our clients require, and we develop it under a free license to allow other people to benefit from it as well. All software developed by Inkululeko Technologies is licensed under a free software license. Currently, all of our software is licensed under the GNU General Public License. We believe that an open culture facilitates innovation, and that all human knowledge should be available to all who can benefit from it. Free software opens up many doors to those who can usually not afford to gain access to technology. It also has various superior design methodologies and philosophies from a technical perspective, bringing down maintenance costs and increasing the lifespan of a typical computer. It is with this in mind that Inkululeko Technologies chose to use free software in its implementations.

    Does this mean that Inkululeko Technologies is against proprietary software?

    We will use free software wherever we can, however, there are some circumstances where free software is not available. Examples of this include localised educational software. It is expensive to develop, and requires many full time staff members, and no one has quite worked out a business model where profit can be generated from free educational content. There are also other examples where proprietary software does have it’s place. We believe that a true professional always advises what’s best for a client, and we will only implement a free software solution when we know that it will be of benefit to our client. Quite often, our implementations include a mixture of proprietary and free software. In some cases,

    Links

    tuXlab Project

    The tuXlab project was initiated as a Shuttleworth Foundation project in 2002. Since then, the projects has produced a free ICT model for schools, a free operating system environment, and have provided more than 200 schools in South Africa with computer lab environments with the aid of its volunteers and sponsors. The tuXlab project, and it’s associated projects is now managed and maintained by Inkululeko Technologies. Please refer to the tuXlab website for more information.

    Related Links:

    Digital Doorway Project

    A joint initiative by Department of Science and Technology and the CSIR aims to introduce computer literacy into the ambit and experience of all South Africans through the implementation of the concept of Minimally Invasive Education. The aim is to provide people in rural and disadvantaged areas with freely accessible computer equipment and open source software, enabling them to experiment and learn without formal training and with minimal external input.

    It’s a public access computer system, designed to be resistant to vandalism and allow easy and free access. This system is also connected to the Mindset network, and users of all ages are able to use these public machines to educate themselves, and gain access to information. Each implementation includes a local copy of the web based encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, as well as information on road safety, and HIV/AIDS. Inkululeko Technologies serves as implementation partner for this project, and also did software development work on the project.

    Related Links:

    Prisons OpenICDL Certification Project

    The tuXlab prison project was initiated through a partnership by Minister Balfour, Correctional Services and the Shuttleworth Foundation. The aim was pilot the replication of the tuXlab program in the prison rehabilitation and education program. Offenders participated in an open source based skill and certification education program. To date over 160 offenders from Pollsmoor female and Malmesbury Adult Prisons participate in the Program. These installations proved largely successful, and a national roll-out is in the planning stage. Both Prisons are registered as ICDL Examination Centres, apart from being the only prisons in the world offering International End User ICT Certification – the offenders achieved 100% pass rate for the OpenICDL Certification. Inkululeko is also intruding the Ingots Certification Program suited for both juvenile and adult offenders.

    Minister Balfour Budget Speech 2006: ” “…the Shuttleworth Foundation who have generously agreed to partner with us in the development of Information Technology skilling among in-mates…..Tomorrow, Wednesday, 24 May (2006) I will be launching the first phase of this IT skills revolution pilot project for offenders, at Pollsmoor. The launch of this Open Source Learning Centres will result in the introduction of E-learning options to offenders and their general capacity in IT and computer skills. The second phase of this pilot project will be announced in due course”

    Related Links:

    Hawkstone iSolutions iLAB EduSuite

    ilabxp

    Inkululeko was requested by iSolutions to develop a purpused built educational server, client desktop and management environment for schools.  The solution consist of a single server environment which oprates as an application, terminal services, virtualisation, user management and authentication, network management, web, mail, chat, print and Internet gateway server…yes all-in-one.

    The entire solution is based on the popular linux distribution, Ubuntu, customised with a complete iLAB look-and-feel. The iLab distribution offers a basket of productivity, web, media ad educational applications with the webserver component hosting close a 1 terrabyte of educational curriculum content provisioned offline.
    The platform through the iLAB manager allows for a single point of user and network management with a host of reporting and statistical features. The end user then further benefits from a single webbased platform for e-mail and chatting either through the intranet or outside world(pending connectivity).  A key component in the entire user experience is a single sign-on through the use of biometric technology (fingerprint) integrated into the steel ruggedised integrated computing network. Through the virtualisation technology users seamlessly on a single desktop can access both Linux and Microsoft Windows with applications with a click of a button. For more information or a demonstration e-mail us at ilab@inkululeko.co.za

    iLAB

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