Open Malaysia

Open Source

The open source movement started to be strong in Malaysia at the turn of the century and several of us evangelized its benefits for the country. We were happy that by 2004, the Public Sector Open Source Initiative was launched.

By 2006, MAMPU reported at the 7th Asia Open Source Software Symposium the status of the implemetation of the initiative: out of the 122 Government agencies surveyed,

• 74% have implemented open source software
• within this 74%, 75% were done with inhouse expertise

Reasons cited for OSS implementation:

• cost savings 75%
• abundance of software choice 63%
• security 61%

This has cut their:

• software licensing costs by 88%
• development and consultancy costs by 58%
• software support costs by 7%

In a recent 5-page Gartner report dated 10 May 2006 (go to http://www.gartner.com/ -- then search g00139355) called "Case Study: Malaysia Shows What Being Strategic on Open Source Means", the abstract reads:

"The Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Master Plan provides a comprehensive, yet challenging strategy to embrace open source across the entire public sector."

I do not have permission to share the entirety of this Gartner report, but suffice is to say that the Malaysia open source experience is commended as a good case study for other Governments to look at -- similar to above implementation status results are listed and lessons and challenges are noted.

So Malaysia has done well in open source and yes, there are challenges. But as the Government further accelerates into the mid-term and long-term of the OSS Master Plan, there will be and there should be no let up.

Open standards

While these were going on, open standards began to grab more of our attention. There are many open standards, but in the last two years the truly open standard, ODF (OpenDocument Format) has taken centre stage especially due to two events: 1) Massachusetts mandating by 2007 to create and save documents in ODF and 2) ISO approving ODF as an international standard, ISO/IEC 26300.

Malaysia values standards in ICT. In the Government, we note that MyGIF and MyGIFOSS as efforts to guide the best ways to achieve interoperability.

With the exciting developments in open standards, it's time that Malaysia takes a stronger position to adopt open standards, especially ODF. I don't say this to "pour cold water" on the open source software initiative. As I said above, there should be no let up in accelerating the OSS Master Plan in the mid- and long-term. As the same time, there are many compelling reasons and benefits for adopting open standards, and these my fellow bloggers and I will discuss in subsequent posts.

But one of the most compelling reasons is that eventually users will need to work with office applications in XML format (both ODF and Microsoft's "Open XML" coming office application are XML format), so it's the right time to move to the XML format that is truly open.

A more recent Gartner report dated 12 May 2006 (this one is public and is a must read: click here for the report) has this recommendation to users:

"Recognize that you eventually will be saving your office product data in an XML-based format. Users that need ODF support today or need to comply with ISO standards should explore applications that support ODF. These applications may be cheaper to acquire, and enable different functionality, but the migration will not be inexpensive and will involve compatibility issues when exchanging documents with Microsoft Office users. If you need compatibility with Microsoft Office formats or cannot justify a migration, lobby Microsoft to support ODF and look for plug-ins that allow you to open and save ODF files from within Microsoft applications."

Summary and conclusion

Malaysia's leadership in open source software initiative should be continued and accelerated. At the same time, interoperability should be mandated by preferring open standards when they exist and apply, and by adhering to the characteristics and goal of openness. ODF is a truly open standard and it is timely for Malaysia to have a roadmap for its widespread adoption.