A million dollar Open Source study
The European Union yesterday announced that it will invest US$1 million in a study to find the best open source tools for use in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The grant of €703 000 was awarded to a consortium of 11 members, including Canonical, backers of Ubuntu Linix, and the University of the Western Cape.
The aim of the research is to explore the use of free and open source software (FLOSS) as a development tool in these regions.
Dubbed FLOSSInclude and funded by the EU, the two-year project will be carried out by a project team of research institutes, government agencies, private companies and non-governmental organisations in Argentina, Cambodia, China, Ghana, India, South Africa, Spain, UK and the Netherlands.
The aim is to investigate the technical, business and socio-political environment needed for the growth of FLOSS use in the target regions.
The members of the FLOSSInclude consortium are:
- United Nations University’s Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands (http://www.ccg.merit.unu.edu/)
- Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain (http://www.urjc.es/)
- Fundación para el Desarrollo de la Ciencia y Tecnología en Extremadura, Spain (http://www.fundecyt.es)
- Canonical, UK (http://canonical.com/)
- Fundación Via Libre, Argentina (http://www.vialibre.org.ar/)
- University of Western Cape, South Africa (http://www.uwc.ac.za)
- Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in ICT, Ghana (http://www.aiti-kace.com.gh/)
- IT for Change, India (http://www.itforchange.net/)
- Sarai, India (http://www.sarai.net/)
- Open Institute / KhmerOS, Cambodia (http://www.khmeros.info/)
- China Education and Research Network (CERNET), China (http://www.cernet.edu.cn/)
