01 June 2006 - The Go Open Source campaign, an open source awareness campaign which launched in May 2004, has completed it's two year run and officially concluded at the end of May 2006. The campaign was launched by Mark Shuttleworth on behalf of Canonical, the CSIR Meraka Institute, HP, and The Shuttleworth Foundation.

While the conclusion of the campaign is undoubtedly a sad moment for those involved, many of the projects Go Open Source spawned will continue and over the coming year be transformed into self-sustaining entities.

"We believe that what we have achieved in such a short space of time is truly commendable," says Hilton Theunissen, project manager at The Shuttleworth Foundation. "After two years of excited and passionate investment, we can comfortably say that the campaign has intrinsically changed the lives of thousands of individuals, countless companies and government departments."

Theunissen says the first project launched by the campaign was to freely provide CDs containing the most popular open source software programs to anyone who submitted a requested via the website or toll-free number. The CDs were also distributed at shows and events across the country.

"During the last two years Go Open Source distributed over 200 000 CD's to everyone ranging from home users, to companies and government departments," Theunissen enthuses.

In August 2004 the campaign jointly launched it's two biggest projects: the Go_Open television series and the Geek Freedom League.

"Go_Open was a 13 part television series dedicated to free and open source software which ran on SABC 2. Hosted by local comedian John Vlismas, the show introduced the concept of open source to non-technical South Africans and is in the process of being syndicated to other African countries," Theunissen says.

"In the spirit of open source, the entire series has been released under a creative commons license and is freely available for download from the Internet," he adds.

Looking at the campaign's second large-scale project, Shuttleworth says the Geek Freedom League was formed as a society for open source enthusiasts wanting to drive the open source message to the masses.

A true community project, the Freedom League has, to date, signed up nearly 5000 members across the country who promote the use of open source software and assist newcomers to migrate off their current proprietary systems.

"The phenomenal success of the Freedom League has ensured that it will continue long after the Go Open Source campaign has come to an end," he affirms.

In July 2005 the campaign turned its focus to the promotion of free and open source software in Government, since wider adoption of FOSS by Government would have widespread positive effects. This was done by contributing to the organisation of the Go Open Source conference, which attracted all the major stakeholders from the span of departments in all spheres of government.

"The immediate outcome was a declaration on government's open source policy, including a strategy for Government's adoption of open source over the next 2-5 years. The momentum the conference generated led to a series of cluster-based working groups which will continue to champion free and open source software and open content for the future.

"The conference and workshops greatly increased the awareness and understanding within various government stakeholders and we expect to see the Cabinet acknowledge the policy and a report back to be included at the Presidents International Advisory Committee (PIAC) in September 2006." Theunissen reports.

The final project launched by the campaign was the Channel Partner Program with the primary aims of increasing the number of skilled Linux and open source engineers and promoting SME technology companies to offer Linux and open source solutions.

"Although the program did manage to conduct a number of workshops and successfully complete the training of the first batch of engineers, all of the objectives were not reached within the time frame of the Go Open Source campaign. Similarly, the full openICDL material conversion will be completed during the remainder of this year but not under the Go Open Source banner," he says.

Looking forward, Theunissen says that the Go Open Source website, which has been running since day one as a portal for the various projects and open source in general, will continue to be available for the foreseeable future.

"The website generated almost a million hits in the two years and will now become the repository for the Go_Open television show, the GOSSIP database of open source solution providers, the Government workshop documentation, the OpenICDL training materials, and the Geek Freedom League," he adds.

In conclusion, Mark Shuttleworth, campaign founder says, "The Go Open Source campaign has inspired many in South Africa, and it has also set the benchmark for other countries in leading the adoption of free and open source software domestically. The free software movement continues to gather momentum, both in the most advanced software economies and in emerging markets such as China and Brazil. We hope our work has gone some distance in helping South Africa to establish itself as a world leader in free and open source technology."