It’s been just over a week since I told anyone about OpenZA and already we have around 20 members. I haven’t actively marketed the site publicly yet because it is still undergoing development but it is clearly time to make public some of the plans and thoughts behind it.

First, welcome to everyone. Not all of you I have met face to face but most of you I know, either through online communities, personal emails or events.  Either way, it’s great to have you here.

Intentions
I have been involved in the free and open source software movement in SA for more years than I care to count, mainly as the publisher of Tectonic.co.za but also in various other roles. During this time I have seen the role that community can play in bringing about open source change in South Africa and the world. So much of the FOSS progress we see in South Africa has been because of individuals joining forces and working together and standing up for FOSS at every opportunity.

Foss in South Africa, and around the world, has a long history of community that develops through things such as  mailing lists, user groups and installfests. These are important elements of the free software community in South Africa and while I have no intention of replacing them with OpenZA, I felt that it was time to add a new component to the FOSS community locally.

Creating OpenZA was inspired, in part, by the good work Karl Fischer has done over at Floss.pro (sign up now if you haven’t already). His initiative in taking new tools and using them to build commmunity is exactly the kind of thinking that underpins OpenZA. I don’t expect OpenZA to undermine Floss.pro or the many usergroups and mailing lists in South Africa and Africa. Instead, I hope that just as Facebook has rekindled old relationships, and developed new ones, OpenZA will do something similar for the FOSS community.

Just over a week ago I told a handful of people about OpenZA and invited them to join and test it out. The intention was to put in some work ironing out bugs before announcing it in public. At the same time I didn’t want OpenZA to be exclusive, so the fact that word has begun to spread is a good thing. It’s a little quicker than I planned but nonetheless good. In particular it has pushed me to make some decisions quickly.

To explain better it’s probably best I address some of the bugs/issues raised with me in the past couple of days:

What’s with Twitter?
OpenZA has a Twitter integration tool available but a conflict with the Floss.pro tool was causing some problems so I have disabled it for now. I certainly want to add it back in again soon but until I can sort out the problems it will have to stay out.

Floss.pro integration?
Integration with Floss.pro is something I am very, very keen on. But right now the twitter/floss.pro conflict is an issue.

What are those “dents” in my (hay)wire?
If you added your Twitter details to your profile you may well have see the crazy proliferation of “dents” in your wire. This was a symptom of the Twitter/Floss.pro illness above.

Do I have to be Alastair’s friend?
No. In the initial setup I made everyone my automatic “friend”. It was because I had invited just a handful of people I knew to test out the system and I wanted to keep in touch. I have now disabled this so that you have the choice of being my friend. If you were added as my friend on signup and would prefer not to be then let me know. Happily I’ll un-friend you

Do I have to be a member of the OpenZA group?
For exactly the same reasons mention above this was in place and is no more. Again, canceling membership is your choice though I do recommend that you join at least the OpenZA or Newsletter groups to keep in touch.

The forums were there, now …?
Group forums were being tested and proved to be too unstable at this point. For now it is preferable to Wire-post comments to each group. Comments posted to forums are now in waiting.

Why so many emails on signup?
New users shouldn’t get an excessive number of emails during signup. Standard emails include an initial signup confirmation email, a password email and a welcome message with additional details. OpenZA needs to communicate essential information somehow so a bare minimum of emails are required. If you feel  this is excessive please message me or email me: community@openza.co.za

How do I report bugs?
For now the best approach is to list them on the Wire in OpenZA-bugs.

Some considerations: OpenZa is built on BuddyPress, a brand new release from the developers of Wordpress. To some degree OpenZA is limited by the capabilities of BuddyPress, which has a number of limitations.  Nevertheless,we will continue to try and make OpenZA the best communtity in SA. we believe BuddyPress has huge potential and