Malawian Software you can freely 'adopt'

Madonna has been making headlines with her adoption of David "Baby David" Banda. What a lot of people found surprising were the hassles Madonna went through even when some of them were made easier for her.

Fortunately, in the software world, with special thanks to free and open source software licences and the Internet, it is hassle-free to get software developed from Malawi. Within seconds, you can have an application downloaded and running on your computer. No human rights organisations going to court to stop you, no passport requirements and no mind-changing father or developer to bother you!

But how does that relate to adopting the software? Well you if you want to be the parent of the software, you are free to modify source code and create your own version of the software as long as you give credit to "biological" parent, aka initial developer, of the software. If you intend to re-distribute your adopted program, it has to be done using a compatible license.

So, here is a list of software you can download right now that I'm aware of:

1. jBawo
jBawo 1.0 is a java program which allows single-user (against the computer) or dual-user playing of bawo via an internet browser or personal computer with Java installed.
bawo is the Malawian version of an ancient Afrikan board game based around a simple counting apparatus. bawo (Malawi), bao (Tanzania) and omweso (Uganda) belong to the globally prevalent (spread by the Afrikan diaspora) mankala group of "count and capture" board games, the more complex (four-rank) of which are played in Bantu Afrika. bawo was played in some form in Kamit, "the land of blacks", ancient Egypt, and has even retained this name.
Project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bawo
Download jBawo 0.1now


2. Mail ConfiGuru
Mail ConfiGuru is a standalone cross-platform tool and library that displays the configuration of email clients available to the currently logged-in user. It provides one interface to settings of all supported email clients.
Currently supported applications include Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Mail (SeaMonkey), MS Outlook and MS Outlook Express, KMail and Ximian Evolution
Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/configuru/
Download Mail ConfiGuru 0.1 Windows or Linux version now.


3. SearchWith extension for Firefox, Flock and Thunderbird
SearchWith extension allows you to search selected with various search services. It adds a "Search With" sub menu on the context menu (right-click menu) with a configurable list of search services that can be used to search the highlighted text.
Mozilla Addons page: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2194/
Download SearchWith 0.2 now


4. Touchscreen Toolkit (Converts web pages to touchscreen optimized applications)
   The Touchscreen Toolkit takes web page forms and converts them into a wizard like touchscreen user interface. This means that buttons are finger sized, text is larger, and no keyboard is required to enter any data.
   
Project page: http://code.google.com/p/touchscreentoolkit/
Download Touchscreen Toolkit now

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