"Despite having an open source strategy the South African government doesn't really understand how to benefit from OSS. This is according to Microsoft director of corporate standards, Jason Matusow." Stay tune for more FUD from Microsoft...

The other day we mentioned South Africa because of its decision to embrace OpenDocument format. Shortly afterwards we spotted Microsoft’s plan to pay a little visit to this country. Coincidence? Maybe.

Dwayne Bailey tells us that Translate.org.za was awarded the coveted Pan South African Language Board award for its contribution to multilingualism and nation building over the past decade. The award, ‘Multilingualism and Nation Building: eBusiness Institution of the Decade’, was awarded to the non-profit organisation for its long-running and ground breaking work in the area of multilingual software.

In the wake of the release of the South African government's Minimum Interoperability Standards (MIOS) for information systems document, Tectonic asked Microsoft SA's platform strategy manager, Paulo Ferreira how this would impact on the company and its drives to promote the Office Open XML (OOXML) format.

In Windhoek last week, the Ministerial Bureau of the fifth Pan African Conference of Ministers for Public or Civil Service met to review progress on the collective work of the various public service ministers. Among the themes covered was that of e-governance and free and open source software (FOSS).

Ubuntu founder and IT entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth tells Computing SA that picking open source software was not only good for South Africa but also important for the rest of the African continent.

Achievement Awards Group, a South African motivational organisation, has implemented Asterisk to upgrade the capability of its specialist call centre and to react quickly to the needs of clients.

Asterisk is an open source VOIP (voice over IP) PBX used to drive telephony systems. The call centre solution was set up by the group's IT partner, Clarotech Consulting.

South African computer technology distributor Sahara is offering notebooks with pre-installed Linux operating systems. The company added this open-source option to its product range earlier this year, but it is unclear how successful the move has been.