The Open Definition makes precise the meaning of “open” with respect to knowledge, promoting a robust commons in which anyone may participate, and interoperability is maximized.
The OpenChain Project builds trust in open source by making open source license compliance simpler and more consistent. The OpenChain Specification defines a core set of requirements every quality compliance program must satisfy. The OpenChain Curriculum provides the educational foundation for open source processes and solutions, whilst meeting a key requirement of the OpenChain Specification. OpenChain Conformance allows organizations to display their adherence to these requirements. The result is that open source license compliance becomes more predictable, understandable and efficient for participants of the software supply chain.
There are pro's and con's for both proprietary and open source software. It is a question of the right tool for the job. Open source is not necessarily free! I see great opportunities for levelling the playing fields in the South African IT industry, and believe that open source will enable small IT companies in South Africa to provide win-win solutions. Below are some of the key links I track regarding open source software.
I. Mierswa, M. Wurst, R. Klinkenberg, M. Scholz, и T. Euler. KDD '06: Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, стр. 935--940. New York, NY, USA, ACM, (2006)