Open Source Business Skills Taking Root

“Gone are the days when men were men and used to write their own device drivers” by Linus Torvalds. In my early days of appreciating Open Source Software, I used to take pride in such bravado statements considering that I was an emerging techie who was always fiddling with software. Few people in my environs knew what Linux was and any attempts to evangelise were always tainted with technical innuendo. This approach I later learnt only succeeded in chasing away would be converts. Its only when I took up some self help lessons in marketing and sales that I realised the core of any sales proposition is to sell the benefits. As opposed to telling someone how the Linux Operating System does not require rebooting and has been programmed very well, you instead talk about how it is Virus free!!!.

Initially, the biggest bone though came in convincing potential converts that they can get professional open source software support services 24x7 just like they did with their present systems. This was one of those reasons that led me onto my entrepreneurial journey that I do not regret a decade later.

The biggest challenge though that I have seen in the last decade has got to do mainly with the ability to do business using Open Source Software as a basis. There is all this hype about how RedHat, SuSe, MySQL among others have been able to make money off Opensource software. Unfortunately in Africa, the dynamics are way different from those in Europe and North America where all these success stories emanate. As a result of all this, when INWENT teamed up with the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa and OSISA to run a programme called ICT@INNOVATION aimed at addressing the shortage of business skills for Open Source entrepreneurs, I was elated.

On August 31st 2009, on a good Ugandan monday morning, I was invited to address the participants as the General Secretary of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, I could hardly hold back my tears of excitement. Not only did I appreciate how far we have come, I also quickly made a mental comparison of how we used to previously confine our Open Source discussions to evening drinking sprees in dimly lit dingy pubs and now here we were in a state of the art four star hotel with Open Source being the reason. The two weeks training has brought together participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

The most unique aspect about this training is that all the content was prepared by Africans with African experiences in mind. This was intentionally done to ensure that the skills and knowledge passed on does not become a white elephant for the participants. With many African countries having lots of similarities in terms of society setup and management, I believe a lot of fruit will come out of this training.

With other entities like COMESA, OSIWA and the UNECA already showing support for Open Source initiatives on the continent, what ICT@INNOVATION is doing is to plant a seed which will be watered by others.

With the increasing fight against software piracy, perhaps this is the most opportune moment for the Free Software movement to make its mark. In Uganda, the Linux User Group is very vibrant lately and plans are underway to celebrate the Software Freedom Day locally.