Open Malaysia

Innovation happens in many ways.

It happens when we're engaged on the throne and the eureka! idea hits us. It happens when we hit a stumbling block, and a new solution to the problem is discovered through thought and error. It happens when you gather a group of open source hackers together for four days, and give them the freedom to rip something apart and put it together again.

That's exactly what happenned for four days last week in Pisa, Italy. It was AstriDevCon Europe 2006. 96 hours of hacking on the source code of Asterisk, the open source PBX and engineering the architecture for the 1.6 release of the software. The open flow of ideas, of immediate coding spurts followed by innecessant chatter on subversion commit conflicts, this is what innovation in the new economy is all about.

It's a mixture of collaboration, open discussion, open standards and sharing which results in innovation today. The mantle of innovation is no longer carried by the cathedrals which hid it behind layers of protocol, secrecy and control. Innovation is the very act of advancing our science to the next step, and in doing so, advances the capabilities of our species. Sharing our ideas is the very act of enhancing innovation in the new economy, not hiding it behind layers of laywers and legalese.

By being a party to this cultural and economic upheaval of openness, we enable ourselves to determine our future and our existence. Openness cultivates the sharing of information and knowledge, instead of encouraging them to be locked within the cathedrals of old. Sharing can only happen when we are open, for a common language and a common format we need to adopt.

Openness, collaboration, open source, innovation, open standards. Understand them well, for polluted their meanings have been by those misled into getting the wrong facts.

With a new standard adopted by the ISO, ODF, our daily output of documents, spreadsheets and presentations can now be shared by all, the information is free to flow from mind to mind. No longer will we be tied to proprietary standards which change in every software release. Any software can now read and write ODF, freedom of choice is provided for.

Open the gates of knowledge...