A seminar held last week to celebrate Software Freedom Day, saw presenters demonstrating active working solutions using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), including for Geographic Infor-mation Systems (GIS).
FOSS refers to software which is widely available using licences which allow free redistribution, reuse and modifications, unlike some commercially available applications. Most of the software is available free of cost and includes a range of applications like Libre Office for word processing and other productivity uses, the Linux operating system, VLC media player, and others. The use of FOSS avoids copyright infringements. According to a press release from the facilitators, governments around the world have adopted FOSS and recently, the Italian Ministry of Defence announced it was moving to use LibreOffice.
The release said Donielle Dundas, a lecturer at the University of Guyana Berbice Campus, believes that FOSS is a solution to the problem of limited IT resources in schools since the cost of licences is removed. She conducted a research project with Lenandlar Singh on