This page contains links to all of the frequently asked questions (FAQ) sections found throughout the Foundation website, categorised according to subject. To see the FAQs in context, please consult the relevant sections of the site.
The Shuttleworth Foundation understands and appreciates the great need for bursaries in South Africa but carries a mandate that prevents it from providing for them. Instead, funding is focused on driving change, innovation and policy reform in the areas of education and technology.
No, the Foundation will only consider funding for non-profit initiatives. Entrepreneurs with proposed for-profit projects should visit the HBD Venture Capital website
This nature of funding falls outside of the scope of the Foundation's mandate. Inkululeko Technologies is a related organisation that can provide implementations of tuXlabs at schools and can be contacted on +27 21 959 9304.
The Cluetrain Manifesto taught us that markets are conversations. The same is true of making a better world. Open philanthropy must include constant engagement and conversation with partners, activists, policymakers and (god forbid) customers. Knowing what people think in real time with 75% accuracy (using cluetrain-style market research) is way better than finding out with 99% accuracy five years too late (using the rigorous and expensive evaluation processes that foundations love). This is especially true if people think what you are doing sucks, as you've still got time to fix it. Our aim is to do kind of listening in a very systematic way, and then to use what it is hearing and learning to steer the ship. Of course, this is probably the biggest challenge on our open philanthropy plate.
We believe in radical transparency. This means opening up not only your yearly books (we need to do this anyway), but also openly sharing your planning, learning and relationships as you go along. By the doing things like this, we hope to have partners who come with better ideas, offer improvements and even run with things on their own. That's what we want.
We believe that community should be a part of everything we do. Despite the rhetoric, most philanthropy and social investment happens in silos. The result is zero leverage, poor use of resources and slow progress. We believe that we should get down and dirty with communities working on education, innovation and access each step of the way. The open source world has lots to teach us about this.
Everything that the Foundation creates, funds or helps with should be open sourced. This means: under an open license; available in an open format; and accessible from a public web site, always. All of our consulting and grant contracts require this.
Open philanthropy uses transparency, participation, community and other open source principles to create a better world. Our aim is to run the Shuttleworth Foundation on these principles.
We pick people who are working in our focus areas and are at the top of their game. They are people who can highlight the issues at hand on podiums and in papers and help drive investment into the best possible showcase projects to drive policy change. These are not posts that one can apply for.
We have relationships with government at all levels. We rarely would have occasion to give money to them, we tend to work more to helping them achive their end game and invest in action based research to inform policy.
Each project is different. On the simplest of measures, success is when people start copying you – like the Freedom Toasters that are popping up on the continent and in North America and Europe. Others require more rigourous data evaluation. We current work with partners such as the HSRC and the Univeristy of Pretoria.
The Foundation is solely funded by Mark Shuttleworth. We receive an annual budget which we apportion to our various projects.
Wikipedia defines it as: Social Innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society. Over the years, the term has developed several overlapping meanings. It can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open source methods. Alternatively it can be used to describe innovations which have a social purpose - like microcredit or distance learning.
The concept can also be related to social entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship isn't always or even usually innovative, but it can be a means of innovation) and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance.
Social innovation can take place within government, within companies, or within the nonprofit sector (also known as the third sector), but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between the three sectors.
We believe that by effecting change within the education and technology areas we will be able to achieve the greatest results for every Rand invested.
Education and technology are the core areas that we believe individuals can use to best elevate themselves within society, and best empower themselves to contribute positively on themselves, their families, communities, and society as a whole.
Everything that the Foundation creates, funds or helps with should be open sourced. This means: under an open license; available in an open format; and accessible from a public web site, always. All of our consulting and grant contracts require this.
Everything that the Foundation creates, funds or helps with should be open sourced. This means: under an open license; available in an open format; and accessible from a public web site, always. All of our consulting and grant contracts require this.
We believe in radical transparency. This means opening up not only your yearly books (we need to do this anyways), but also openly sharing your planning, learning and relationships as you go along. By the doing things like this, we hope to have partners who come with better ideas, offer improvements and even run with things on their own. That's what we want.
We believe that community should be a part of everything we do. Despite the rhetoric, most philanthropy and social investment happens in silos. The result is zero leverage, poor use of resources and slow progress. We believe that we should get down and dirty with communities working on education, innovation and access each step of the way. The open source world has lots to teach us about this.
The Cluetrain Manifesto taught us that markets are conversations. The same is true of making a better world. Open philanthropy must include constant engagement and conversation with partners, activists, policymakers and (god forbid) customers. Knowing what people think in real time with 75% accuracy (using cluetrain-style market research) is way better than finding out with 99% accuracy five years too late (using the rigorous and expensive evaluation processes that foundations love). This is especially true if people think what you are doing sucks, as you've still got time to fix it. Our aim is to do kind of listening in a very systematic way, and then to use what it is hearing and learning to steer the ship. Of course, this is probably the biggest challenge on our open philanthropy plate.
The foundation of critical thinking is understanding how claims are supported or opposed by evidence, i.e. how information is relevant to whether a claim is true or false. Any particular piece of evidence can be cast in the form of a reason for, or objection to, some claim. So at the most basic level, the general principles and procedures you need to be a critical thinker are the ones governing reasoning and argument.
An easy to learn graphical programming language tailored to education software development.
Yes - although it is stronger on the concept of objects and more readily usable for modelling.
How does this link with the lab sessions. This is still evolving - although our aim is to develop content that is usable to have significant time outside the lab environment as a core part of the Kusasa program.
Yes, everything we develop will be under a creative commons license. With regard to translation - our content will be produced only in English but with ease of translation in mind.
All the pilot schools will be in Cape Town.
This project is a partnership between ourselves, the DoE and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). The DoE has provided tremendous assistance and expertise in helping get this project off the ground. So the short answer is yes, they are involved.
No. We want to see what effect increasing the time spent on Maths and English has on other learning areas. We're looking for the links rather than just helping learners achieve better Maths and English test results.
This project does not look at the efficacy of mother tongue instruction. It looks at the current system of instruction and probes the linkages in performance between subjects.
Mother tongue education is the idea that a learner is taught the fundamental concepts of a topic in their first language. Once they learn these concepts they can theoretically reapply them to an English curriculum. The idea being that children absorb concepts easily in their own familiar languages and can gain a fundamental understanding of them. But in a second language they simply become words that are learnt, but not absorbed.
Research in five African countries comparing the socio-economic impacts of Copyright regulation.
The ACCR will be caried out in five African countries including South Africa by local researchers. Leading international researchers from India and Canada will assist in the project. The research is managed through the LINK Center at the School of Public and Development Management at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Once all the agreements have been signed the project will take approximately two and half years.
This research focuses on case studies of the socio-economic effects of copyright regulation. Conditions in five African countries will be compared, and a methodology developed to extend the research to more African countries.
The Department of Science and Technology is seeking to ensure that publicly financed research has a socio-economic impact. That's an important priority. The Department circulated a draft Bill that seeks to achieve socio economic impact of research by patenting whatever could be patented.
We think that there are important ways of encouraging in socio-economic impact especially novation which aren't in the Bill, so we responded to the Departments invitation to comment.
Everyone who carries out research at a science council or a university, that includes all students studying at South African universities.
The draft Bill stated that everything published in a South African university would have to be screened to see if there was anything which which could be patented. Anything a university chooses not to patent would be considered for patenting by a central government office.
Invention happens when someone comes up with a novel technology, creating something that hasn't been one before. Innovation is when a new technology or something else novel, changes society, such as when a new product generates a new market. The objective of researchers is understanding, the objective of entrepreneurs is innovation.
We made submissions to the Department of Science and Technology by the deadline, 20 August 2007.
The Department of Science and Technology will consider all the submissions made to it it, and decide what to do.
OOXML is an XML based document format devised by Microsoft. OOXML was placed on the International Standards Organisation (ISO) fast track process for adoption as an open document format.
Yes, ISO has already adopted ODF (Open Document Format) as an open document format.
An XML based file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents including books, reports, spreadsheets and presentations, that is open. A standard such as this is considered open when it si vendore neutral, open standard specification, free from any legal restrictions.
An ISO committee is voting whether OOXML should be adopted as an ISO standard, in addition to the existing ISO standard. The South African Bureau of Standards is the South African participant in ISO. The South African representative must decide whether to vote for or against the standard or abstain. The technical sub-committee was tasked with advising what South Africa should do.
An open document format standard means that every set of document software can open and modify the documents without formatting problems. Right now if you use some word processing programs, Microsoft Word, for instance you can't read documents made by other programs.
A single open document format means that you would not have a situation where you can't read a document someone else sent to you. It means that you would never have to buy a software program to understand a government document.
Even if a document is licensed so that it is legal to copy, and re-use the document, if it is in a proprietory format it is not really free, because people have to pay money to buy the program to access the document.
The sub-committee voted 13-4 to advise that the proposed standard should be rejected.
On 2 September the South African representative voted against acceptance of OOXML as a standard. The proposed standard failed to get enough votes for approval on the fast track process.
There are a number of technical problems with OOXML, together they indicate that the specification needs a lot of work before it can appropriately be considered by bodies such as ISO, these included undue reliance on legacy proprietory formats, failure to fully internationalise the standard, questions about integration.
During February the voting on the proposed standard, which took place in September 2007, will be subject to a ballot resolution meeting in which the vote could be changed, and the standard accepted in the fast track process.
If the proposed standard still does not gain acceptance in the fast track procedure it may be considered again under a longer ISO procedure.
A single global open document standard will make using technology cheaper and easier for everyone, and will help ensure access to knowledge in developing countries. That's because the current standard, ODF, is used by open source projects which provide free, open source software which is rapidly being adopted by the developing world.
A single standard increases access to knowledge. Incompatible global standards reduces access to knowledge.
A section by section review of the provisions of the South African Copyright Act 1978 with particular focus on sections which impact access to knowledge, especially access to learning materials.
The review is open because its conducted using a media wiki. Anyone can comment on a section by using the “discuss” tab. Its also open because its object is to encourage open discussion about openning knowledge.
Anyone can comment on the wiki using the discuss feature. The review aims especially to solicit the views of those who aren't often heard on copyright; librarians, educationalists and learners, the sensorily disabled, software coders and new media paractitioners.
To find out how copyright law affects people, how it is understood in different communities, and what sections people struggle with most.
The Open Copyright Review is being conducted by the Foundation, together with the Trade Law Centre of South Africa (tralac) with support from the Open Society Institute, and assistance from a number of academics and intellectual property experts.
Pearson plc bought Harcourt Education International from Elsivier in an international deal. Pearson owns a South African publishing company, Maskew Miller Longman, and Harcourt owns a South African publisher, Heinemann. Control of both publishers passes to Pearson and that is regarded as a merger in law.
There are only five large textbook publishers in South Africa, Maskew Miller Longman is the largest. Intergration of Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann would create a giant publisher much bigger than the other publishers, and that would be bad for competion. Lack of competition means 'one size fits all' type textbooks.
The result of concentration is reduced competition, fewer titles, less diversity, and often higher prices. Diversity, local content, appropriate content, translation into South African languages are all very important for textbooks. Textbooks are important in forming a child's worldview. For many South African children textbooks are the only books they'll ever see.
The Competition Commission allowed the merger to go ahead but ruled that Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann may not integrate without going back to the Competition Commission for permission. So diversity was preserved, at least for now.
The textbook publishing market is still too concentrated. The printing houses are controlled by large publishers. Many South African school children don't have textbooks and just as many don't have textbooks best suited to them. These are ongoing problems which the Foundation is partnering with others to solve.
Connexions hosts open educational resources and could host your work. Connexions uses a Creative Commons Attribution licence.
You can learn how to apply an open copyright licence to your work at Creative Commons which not only describes how to licence work but enables you to generate a licence for your work.
Telecommunications Action Group.
We believe consumer activism has a big role to play in the de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in South Africa. We made a donation to TAG so that they could continue their campaign and raise consumer awareness of the issue.
None whatsoever. We made a donation, and as part of the terms of that donation all we require is a breakdown of what they spent the money on.
We felt that TAG did a really good job of combining their niche online activities with mainstream media. Some of the other online forums are just that, places for frustrated consumers to vent.
TAG took that further by exposing the issue to a broader audience in the form of an advert in the Mail & Guardian. We wanted to support the initiative they took, and allow them to produce more exciting campaigns.
Our donation was for covering operational costs. If TAG has another pledge drive for a specific campaign, then we would pledge separately, regardless of our donation.
Not through this project. We will connect the schools and then provide content via servers on the network. Providing an uplink to the Internet is too costly and largely unsustainable at this stage.
Mostly Maths and Science content. There will also be a focus on training the teachers on how to use the resource effectively.
We're using normal, over the counter wireless networking equipment.