Open Malaysia

For the last two years, I have been working almost exclusively with Free Software. The last time I decided to have a looksee at the proprietary software, it was a MIND event which focused solely on Microsoft software. I was distinctly underwhelmed during the event because the speakers seemed to carry a strong anti Open Source agenda (which was an unfortunate irony as we later saw a speaker using Python extensively in his application). In any case, I thought it was high time to see the technology Microsoft has been developing recently. So, when I saw Jeff Ooi writing about a blogger's meet showcasing Microsoft software, I thought I'd register and see what the software giant was up to.

Sembang Tech Ed 2007 was held yesterday (Sunday) at Bangkok Jazz Bar in Chulan Square. I arrived on time but apparently there was a lack of parking, so a further 20 minutes was spent hunting for parking. No matter, I arrived slightly late with high expectations and discovered that the event was starting late anyway.

Oliver Scheer (Microsoft Developer Evangelist Germany) started off by speaking about Microsoft Silverlight. Well, actually he started off by saying "I can code, I can develop" in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice to emphasize his developer skillz. It was bizarre enough that I had a good chuckle over that. Anyway, he went on to give a demo of a Silverlight application which can be used to book airline tickets. This demo has been online for quite some time to highlight Silverlight purty-ness, so I wasn't really impressed (on a sidenote, this very same demo was again used in the TechEd 2007 keynote today morning). Is there any other impressive application of Silverlight that Microsoft can demo besides this one?

Oliver spoke about building a media player using Microsoft Expression. Essentially, he built a "self-contained" player for a specific video by using existing controls available in Microsoft Expressions. He mentioned that this player works on FireFox but gave no details as to the licensing of the plugin. I later spoke to him and he mentioned that this plugin only works on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, so those on other platforms (including open source platforms)- you guys are out of luck at this point in time. Well, you can dance under some Moonlight and make sacrifices to a Novell demi-god to officially support other platforms, but at this point in time at least, you're (fortunately or otherwise) out of luck.

Oliver made a specific reference to the fact that Silverlight only supports the Windows Media Video (WMV) and Windows Media Audio (WMA) codecs. This seemed to be awfully restrictive to me, particularly when one takes into account that WMV and WMA codecs are not officially licensed for use on an Open Source platform and more shockingly, the WMV codec has software patent issues which deny independent implementation by a third party. Microsoft has actually sent a cease-and-decease letter to an open source implementation of WMV, so you can imagine how restrictive the decision is to only support WMV and WMA. Oliver later told me that Silverlight also supports MP3 (which is also patent encumbered) and WAV files (which went out of style with bell bottom pants).

What about other codecs, I inquired? Oliver seemed to be flabbergasted at the thought of somebody using non-officially-sanctioned codecs and flatly stated that "in the interest of keeping the size of the runtime small, only these few codecs are installed". I decided to push my luck and ask him about streaming new codecs to the end user. Oliver told me that this is apparently impossible.

Hmmm. Woop-tee-doo.

Oliver mentioned that 40 languages are supported in Silverlight, mentioning Python and Ruby (presumably through the IronPython and IronRuby execution environments). However, despite interest from the floor on Python/Ruby support, there was no focus on using languages other then Microsoft XAML and Microsoft C#.

Color me cynical, but I've heard more marketing speak from technology vendors then I care too comment on. A classic problem that we have traditionally seen with the Microsoft stack is simply that components and frameworks tend to only officially support other parts of the Microsoft stack and those wishing to use it on other platforms have to figure out an implementation strategy on their own. In other words, true interoperatibility works only within the Microsoft stack: a definition that is oxymoronic in itself.

My impression of Silverlight is that it seems to be a souped up Flash player with a focus on building web applications. That in itself is fine, but as an observer from the floor noted, Flash is signficantly more mature at this point in time and is increasingly being used in the area of rich Internet applications. From that perspective, there is little new groundbreaking technology that Silverlight contributes at this point in time.

Next up, Rohan Thomas, a developer evangelist from Microsoft Malaysia, spoke on Microsoft Popfly. I had difficulty following his presentation because I had no idea what Microsoft Popfly was and only realized towards the end of Rohan's presentation that it is a hosted service by Microsoft to create mashups using Microsoft Silverlight. He showed how Microsoft Popfly supports drag and drop mashup creation and cooly informed us bloggers that the difference between Flash and Silverlight is that Silverlight renders on the client side. Whaaaaat ???

Ok, maybe the free flowing alcohol was getting to presenters too (quite understandable, if I may say so myself). Despite this gaffe, Rohan went on to show how webpages could be created through Popfly, which didn't work out too well because the Save button was hidden lower down in the page and the website didn't have scrollbar. Maybe the developers of Popfly were also enjoying free flowing alcohol in Redmond when designing this application? I didn't see anything particularly special about the webpage creator other then fancy look and feel.

In any case, I was getting mighty bored at this point in time and was contemplating leaving. I mean, mashups are cool and all but it's not exactly the next iPod, is it? Somebody in the audience had the same thought and pointed out that Yahoo Tubes and Google Mashups provide similar tools and asked why Microsoft's version was better. It was a fair comment, in my opinion. I mean, why use Popfly when there are great tools out there already, right? What separates Popfly from the rest?

Rohan answered that Popfly has Team Foundation Server running ("ooooooh"), that it's updated every two weeks ("aaaahhhhhh") and that Team Foundation Server is still in alpha and Popfly users are effectively alpha-testing it ("WTF?!!"). In other words, Rohan is saying that we should be using Popfly over Y! Tubes and Google Mashup only because Microsoft needs to be provided with free feedback on their alpha software? If this was an open source project, I'd have more sympathy to Rohan's answer but considering Popfly is as proprietary and closed as a pyloric sphincter is, I failed to see the reasoning behind Rohan's answer.

Chewy "Chewbacca" Chong (Microsoft Developer Evangelist Singapore) jumped in later and said that Popfly helped fuel much of the development in Y! Tubes and Google Mashups. Whether this is true or not is completely irrelevant. In an open industry, competition drives innovation. Just as Yahoo and Google's mashup tools forced Microsoft to enter this area, Microsoft's subsequent involvement certainly would have helped improve the general state of the mashups. That it inself is an indication of an innovative economy, not a sign of any benevolence on Microsoft's part. More directly to the point, however, is that this is certainly no reason for end users to use Popfly over Y! Tubes. Nobody from Microsoft really did satisfactorily provide an answer to why users should use Popfly over Yahoo's and Google's existing tools.

The second last presentation was by Chewy on Microsoft Home Server. His presentation focused on how easy it was to use Microsoft Home Server to control and backup machines within a home LAN. The technology itself, as Chewy admits, is not new. What Microsoft has done is to put a GUI front end to manage all the systems within the LAN. I think for those who are solely on a Microsoft Windows platform, the technology can possibly prove itself useful (if it works as advertised).

But what about the rest of us? Pffft. There is nonexistent support for non-Microsoft platforms so those on a Mac or Linux or even FreeBSD are out of luck (in my case, that counts as a triple whammy). The second problem I saw was that Chewy kept pimping the software as easy enough for his Mom to use. I'm not sure if his Mom works as a system administrator but from what I say, it's definitely not easy enough for the layperson. A closet geek maybe, but definitely not a layperson. To a real technologist, there was little being offered that could be appreciated because most of the functionality already exist in other forms. So, thanks Chewy, but I'll stick to my shell scripts and Samba mounts for now.

The final presentation was by Zeddy Iskandar (Academic Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Indonesia). Zeddy certainly had something impressive to demo: Microsoft Robotics Studio. Well, it was impressive to me anyways since I'm a true-blue geek with an electronics engineering background. I enjoyed the idea that one could program and build a robot and have it run within a virtual environment with true physics. Very cool, but unfortunately fully proprietary, which means one cannot contribute to its development and have the freedom to extend it where needed. It's strange the Robotics Studio would be proprietary when one would assume that the freedom to adapt the code to one's need would be a killer feature for the product. Hmm, I wonder if Open Source equivalents exist. Btw, Zeddy, if you're reading this - your sample code did not work in stopping the robot because you failed to explicitly include zeroing out movement in your final output.

That was that with the presentations. During the Q&A, a member from the floor asked about possible free tickets to TechEd 2007. A representative from Microsoft Malaysia (whose name I failed to capture) curtly informed those present that Microsoft, as a principle, does not offer complementary tickets to its business partners. Now, this is fair enough, except that its completely untrue. I know for a fact that several complementary tickets were offered for TechEd2007 to some companies. This answer (and the curt tone itself) turned me off quite a bit.

Anyway, there you go. That's what I saw and experienced. Microsoft certainly makes for a great host (food and free flowing beer!) but I had seriously expected more from the technology presented and from the quality of presentations. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Open Source events, where one listens to the actual developers and it is easily possible to get into the thick of things, ie to become a participant instead of a customer.

This is the stark difference I noticed between Open Source events and Microsoft events. The former is almost always informal, acceptive and has substantial technical details presented for all and sundry to learn from (and contribute). The latter seems to be "Hey, this is the latest version of a Microsoft product which has X,Y,Z features and sells at RM $$$". In other words, Microsoft events are geared towards making its audience Microsoft customers (as Chewy starkly admitted: "I've got a convert!") and Open Source events are geared towards making everybody a participant in improving the software for the common good of all. The long and short is, if what I saw was the best Microsoft had to offer today, one could certainly be forgiven for thinking that the greatest innovations are now coming from outside the land of Redmond.

My second observation is: where are the Microsoft hackers? You know ... the Raymond Chen's of the world. Where are they? I'm quite sure they exist but I've not met a single one, not even at today's at TechED conference.

When I was in FOSDEM this year, we had presentations directly from folk like HD Moore (security), Miguel de Icaza (GNOME, .NET etc), Andrew Morton (Linux kernel hacking), Jeremy Allison (Samba), Keith Packard (X.org) and many more. At AsiaOSS in Kuala Lumpur last year, we had Yukihiro Matsumoto of Ruby fame presenting. At FOSS.in last year, we had Malaysia's very own JayaKumar (who has contributed drivers to the Linux kernel), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP founder) and many others presenting. I distinctly remember my first international Open Source conference, LinuxConf Australia 2005 where Tridge (of Samba fame) presented. Tridge delved deep into the CIFS technology itself and it was  an incredible rush listening to him explain the design decisions made in Samba 4.

So, why are the equivalent Microsoft hackers sequestered away? All we have been meeting are developer evangelists who end up giving the same tired demos we have seen online. Hearing from the real developers  themselves really makes all the difference in the world.

Anyway, I'm tired. The night is nigh, and it's a good time to end this extremely long blog post. Upon spending some time grokking the reflection of the glass of amber liquid sitting in front of me now, I believe this blog post probably wins the most number of times the word "mashups" has been written ever in the history of OpenMalaysiaBlog.  Urgh., I am indeed feeling sick now.

ps: A note to Chewy: Prime numbers actually start from 2, not 1 :)

From Khairil Yusof:

Open University Malaysia Open Source Community in collaboration with Dreamsoft (M) Sdn Bhd and IOSN ASEAN 3 will be organising two weeks workshops on LPI in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from July 9th – 20th, 2007.

http://www.iosn.net/asean-3/countries/malaysia/events/linux-tot-malaysia

Introduction

A major barrier against adoption and deployment of Open Source Software is the lack of human resources with open source software skills. This introductory programme aims to address the problem by training trainers so that these trainers in turn will be able to train other trainers and
therefore a kick start for self sustaining of open source human capacity building.

OUM Open Source Community in collaboration with Dreamsoft (M) Sdn Bhd and UNDP will be organising two weeks workshops on LPI in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from July 9th – 20th, 2007.

This ten-days workshop provides the knowledge and skills for Linux system administrator. The workshop covers the LPI 101 and 102 objectives.

First off, let's face it, it's obvious that we won't be mentioning much else of what happened at the MTS2007 apart from the OSS bits. At least I won't anyway, because I'm just too jetlagged to process anything else. Secondly, I don't reckon we'll mention anything about taking a piss at Microsoft anymore after this, because you can only stretch a bodily function joke so far.

Onwards.

Sam Ramji, the Director of Platform Strategy and the lead for Microsoft's OSS Lab took to the stage in the morning to talk about what Microsoft is doing with regards to understanding and supporting OSS. It was ... interesting. Sam notes that there is a generational change within Microsoft today, since the new developers being hired are more likely to be exposed to OSS before being employed by Microsoft. This results in better acceptance overall within the company. He also mentions (during and after the talk) that this process of understanding and acceptance of OSS is an ongoing evolution and that Microsoft is today better disposed towards engaging with the community than before. He hopes and feels that the interaction between the two would only get better over time.

Sam talked about how his crew managed to pressure the product groups within the corporation to, among other things, optimise PHP for IIS 7.0 and to make Samba work properly with Vista. Echoing Bill Hilf's talk a day earlier, he noted that these things are done not so much to help the OSS community but for sound business reasons on the part of Microsoft. For example, he said that a large proportion of PHP applications were coded on Windows boxes which are then deployed on a LAMP platform. Therefore, from a revenue perspective, the Windows platform loses out. In the case of Samba, he guesstimated that there'd be some 50 million users accessing Linux-based NAS devices which wouldn't be able to do so anymore when they upgrade to Vista because there was some implementation changes in Vista which broke Samba connectivity. It's not an optimal reason from an OSS perspective, but I suppose it's reasonable enough from theirs.

We asked him about whether there were conflicts between his group and the various other product groups, and he said sure there were. But they're not the boss of him so he's going to do what he needs to do. For example, he invited some of the Mozilla team over which got on the IE team's tits, but he went ahead anyway.

Microsoft is schizo. But this is normal for any company with thousands of smart people employed. Which goes some way towards explaining why they'd have a team that's trying rather hard to both "interoperate" with OSS, as well as educate the rest of their shower about OSS yet at the same time have another bunch of people dissing OSS.

IBM spent $1,000,000,000 on Linux and yet do not have a native Notes port. Same difference. Superficially, at least.

Here are some random notes:

I think that in some cases Microsoft somehow views standards and interoperability as two rather distinct issues. Which is orthogonal to how most advocates of open standards would view it. From an open standards perspective, the standards begets interoperability and that's the end of that. For Microsoft, interoperability means making sure that their stuff works with other people's stuff, as long as a business case can be made. Occasionally, interoperability is an imperative, infusing them with the spirit of cooperation when they don't actually have a choice in the matter. They'd also be most comfortable using standards which they can control. But that's nothing odd. Other corporations look at it the same way too.

Bill Hilf, Sam and their team feels the pain whenever StevieB (which would be a good name for a member of a Boy Band) says something that riles up the OSS community, like threatening to sue countries for patent violation when using Linux, or that OSS is a cancer and un-American. Sam thinks that they've managed to get StevieB to show some love and understanding towards OSS -- where it also provides benefits for Microsoft.

I'm not sure that the disabled access doors at the Microsoft Conference Center behaves the way that it's supposed to behave. When you press the disabled access button, the outer door swings open but the inner door doesn't. I kept trying it throughout yesterday and today, enough to annoy Dinesh. Seems like itsatrap! Made a video of it, which you can find on YouTube here: The Handicapped Doors.

There are some other things which Dinesh and I discussed that I think should be said, but I'm just too jetlagged now to remember them. So we'll keep those for later.

Oh, and on the ODF/OOXML thing, it'll have to wait a bit. Sam said that we've misunderstood the issue. Or that we're misunderstood. I'm not sure. Same difference.

I took a piss at Microsoft.

No, really. I took a piss at the Microsoft Convention Centre in Redmond, WA.

As you would already know, Yusseri and I were invited to attend this annual, exclusive event at Microsoft Corp. It's cold out, 10°C daytime and 2°C nighttime. They feed you with lots of expresso, latte, mocha and a fridgeful of soda. I really had to take a piss.

We got in yesterday afternoon, after 24 hours in the air and in transit via Singapore and Tokyo. As luck would have it, US Customs and Border Patrol in Seattle has to reward me with a random check. They were interested in the HackInTheBox sticker I had on my notebook though, but the whole check was a mere formality.  Boy, am I glad though they don't do checkups like they do in Wuhan, China as the pic on the right shows.

I still had to take a piss after that though, 16 hours on an aircraft and all that.

Day Zero, which is what yesterday is, was quite uneventful if you can discount a deep discussion of what last city visited meant on our Customs forms and having the Hummer H3 we are driving being broken into and our stereo nearly getting jacked. Pretty uneventful. Oh yeah, I also bought an IPod at the Apple Store and took a close up view of the newly launched Apple TV media device.

Up and early in the morning for the 7.30am shuttle to the Microsoft campus, the coffee they poured down our very willing throats was abundant, resulting in aforementioned piss.

Ditesh's email of the scanned in article in Monday's Tech&U on the ODF thingy had me quoted as well. And lo and behold, keynoting the morning's session was Bill Hilf, who was also quoted in the same article. Bill's the General Manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft.

Bill is a former OSS dude who worked on Apache, and today heads Microsoft's platform strategy. Microsoft's Linux Labs started off being a lonely Dell tower sitting under Bill's desk. His message was one of community and collaboration, and how Microsoft is learning to play nice with us open source type folk while still maintaining they're software licensing based business model. Make no mistake about it though, Microsoft is in it for profit, Bill stressed.

What got really interesting was when Yusseri raised the issue of OOXML and why didn't Microsoft just work on ODF in collaboration instead of creating a new, bloated standard. Bill's answer was quite surprising, as he clarified that the file format (OOXML) was a part of the software and that OOXML and the software (MS Office) are quite inseparable. Ergo, OOXML is an integral and inseparable part of MS Office. That's why they could not adopt ODF as the file format for subsequent versions of MS Office.

I don't really know if Bill realises this, but he's just illuminated that this whole OOXML, ECMA and ISO standards play is not about standards nor about Microsoft vs IBM but about legitimizing as a standard a specific technology from a single company developed in isolation from the general technology and user community worldwide.

It was an eye opener, and in my opinion, quite damning to Microsoft. Are they really trying to push through their software, in the form of the inseparable OOXML/MS Office as an international standard ? Is this all about ensuring that future generations of MS Office have a purpose on the planet in the face of competition from other office suites like OpenOffice.Org ?

Perhaps these questions should be asked at the ECMA, ISO and at the level of National Standards Bodies as well.

We'll be sitting with Sam Ramji and Bill in a couple of days to go over this issue in much more detail, given the time constraints at the summit proper.

Kevin Schofield's presentation on what Microsoft Research is doing was interesting, from a geeky perspective. Showing prototypes of image processing technology, visual recognition software as well as working prototypes of new ground broken in the Human-Computer Interface as a leadup to truly pervasive computing was illuminating. While I have seen different implementations of these before at the MIT Media Lab, one does trust that Microsoft will be bringing some of these to the average user in the years to come.

It's nice to be here at Redmond, if anything, to get frank discussions going with the folk behind the stuff Microsoft creates without having to cut through the veils and mazes thrown up by the marketroids. I am looking forward to that discussion with Bill and Sam, as well as meeting up with an old misguided buddy, Tan Loke Uei, who's now based in Redmond.

More on the summit in the days to come, but I need to go take a piss again.

Tomorrow evening, Dinesh and I will be on our way to America to attend the Microsoft Technology Summit 2007. We were initially rather bemused when we received the invitation and I kept asking the Microsoft Malaysia dude whether he was really sure he'd invited the right people. He said that he was sure, "no regrets". I was initially reluctant to go, since the thought of 20 hours on the plane sitting next to Dinesh, in coach class wasn't exactly my idea of a good time. Because I'm fat and he's fidgety. Anyhow, after some haggling with the local Microsoft guy, we decided to accept the invitation.

The "no regrets" part piqued me, though. So I decided to dig around a bit on Google. The search results returns this. Ah, so. It turns out that this MTS thing has been held since 2005 in various places and only a small number of people get invited. And the people who get invited are mainly developers who don't normally use Microsoft technology, plus a few thick-headed open source type guys. It didn't say so at the invitation email though, the first paragraph of which says:

The developer group at Microsoft is hosting an exclusive, invitation-only Technology Summit for a small group of 50 or so technologists.  The purpose of the Summit is to discuss today’s technology challenges and solutions as well as learn more about and discuss Microsoft’s future direction.  You will have an opportunity to be part of an exclusive group of technologists to learn about Microsoft’s core technologies from the product and research teams, and be able to provide feedback to the owners of these technology efforts at Microsoft.

I must say though, looking at the blurb above ... I'm still not sure that they didn't pick on the wrong dudes. Anyhow, since we've been informed that this is not an NDA event, we're free to blog about it, take photos, etc. I'm also assuming that we can post the Agenda of the summit, which I've put here: The Microsoft Technology Summit 2007 Agenda. It does look ... interesting, I must say.

Anyhoot, we're going. We'll take some pictures of the wildlife there and maybe make a blog post or two (probably after the event, though, 'cos it looks packed). For what it's worth, I'm looking forward to asking Microsoft's developers what they really think about interoperability and whether the mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy, double-speak disease which seems to have infected their marketdroids embarrass them or not. But, just in case, I'll make sure that all the chairs are bolted to the floor first. ;)

Pic: 15 kg, 2 boxes, 6039 pages of OOXML specs

Much excitement has gone on since I wrote Do we need two ISO standards for document format? - Part 2 in December 2006.

Ecma submitted the Ecma-approved Microsoft Office OpenXML (OOXML)  standard to ISO for "fast track" standardization. By 5 Feb 2007 after a 30-day review before the real fast track 5 months balloting by countries, National Bodies had the opportunity to submit to ISO any contradictions.

Malaysia spoke up! Malaysia was one of 20 countries who sent comments of contradiction to ISO. Technically, out of the 20, that's 17 P Countries out of 30 -- and that's a big percentage. So the math says, "If 11 P-Countries vote against OOXML during the 5-month ballot, then OOXML will fail."

We wait for Ecma to respond to ISO by 28 Feb 2007, after which we will publicly see all the 20 countries' comments and  Ecma's response.

On 7 February 2007, Dr. Nah Soo Hoe and I spoke at CICC's Asia OSS Workshop in Kuala Lumpur in the session on "Open protocols, Standards and Content & Open document Format (ODF)". Dr. Nah presented on open standards (click here for pdf) and I took on ODF (click here for pdf). We generated some excitement in the audience by relating the past month's events related to the OOXML contradictions.

A participant from Singapore asked how we see the future of multiple standards -- I responded with a dream, a wish that OOXML will merge or harmonize with ODF, just like the Chinese UOF standard is.

In the meantime, don't print the Ecma OOXML pages! Ecma has changed them, and may still keep on changing them, so I'm stuck with 15 kg of wrong page numbers and changed contents!

Anyone going? LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit will be in New York on 14 to 15 February 2007. The conference will focus on the financial, retail, media, public and healthcare industries and will examine topics including security, virtualization, interoperability and Linux on the desktop.

The detailed Conference Program looks packed, but I thought I'd highlight my company's hosting of the IBM Linux and Open Source Forum 2007  on Wednesday afternoon, 14 February 2007. You can register for the overall event here and the IBM Forum here.

Excerpt from IBM invitation:

Linux and Open Source. How can they benefit you? Join us at the IBM Linux and Open Source Forum and find out. IBM customers will show you how they integrated Linux and Open Source to achieve new levels of flexibility, efficiency, and innovation. IBM executives will review industry trends, IBM’s strategy, and the offerings to help you to achieve success, too. Linux and Open Source, a must in today’s demanding business environment.

The agenda of the IBM Linux and Open Source Forum is as follows:

The Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Initiative with its Master Plan is moving along fine, as one would expect. A few days ago, the  Public Sector ICT community discussed the Master Plan progress,  shared case studies and found out the latest updates and trends, this time focusing on one aspect of open source software (OSS) implementation -- the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite.

MAMPU, the Malaysian Government central agency responsible for ICT policies and guidelines for the Malaysian Public Sector did a great job in conducting the Successful Deployment Of OpenOffice In The Public Sector Seminar  on 8 December 2006 at Nikko Hotel, Kuala Lumpur with over 300 Public Sector (mostly from the ICT community) participants from all over the country.

Supporters of the event, like me were also invited to attend.  On another day, I will update this blog post with my commentaries on the presentations and discussions, but I thought it is timely to provide the list of the presentations and their links first:

Image: Moderator of the MOSSA Roundtable  - Y.Bhg. Dato’ Lee Ow Kim, Chairman of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) ICT and Multimedia Committee

MOSSA (Malaysia Open Source Software Alliance) just issued a Press Release, "MOSSA Roundtable 07 December 2006" found here.

Excerpt:

"...the overwhelming consensus arising from the roundtable (consisting of leaders of the open source community, the United Nations Development Programme, and leading software vendors) was that open standards is a key ingredient in the neutral choice between either open source or proprietary software.

“This roundtable is critical in terms of ensuring that the OSS and all activities around it is not misunderstood. It is clear that the participants are for software neutrality, and a higher degree of competitiveness to enhance the overall industry, and put forth better and more cost-economical solutions for customers. It is the seed that inspires a soon-to-be-crafted customer charter, which will inevitably enhance the marketability of OSS products and hopefully map Malaysia in the global arena,” said Dato’ Lee."

On Thursday, 7 December 2006, a Round Table discussion was conducted by MOSSA (Malaysia Open Source Software Alliance) at the office of the New Straits Times newspaper in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. MOSSA consists of ICT solution developers and providers, associations, groups, users and individuals. The Round Table discussed an announcement by the Malaysian Government on software neutrality.

The Dynamic Coalition On Open Standards (DCOS) is being formed. Several excerpts from this article at Computer Review On Line:-

"Sun Microsystems Inc and like-minded organizations will promote the use of open standards, including the OpenDocument Format much feared by Microsoft Corp, at the Internet Governance Forum summit this week in Athens, Greece."

"This DCOS, which is not believed to yet have any kind of formal IGF or intergovernmental endorsement, will present two papers for discussion at a workshop in Athens on Thursday.

The papers, available for viewing now at cptech.org, argue that adopting open standards is useful to spur adoption of the internet in developing countries, and that open standards are currently "in jeopardy" due to vendors plugging proprietary interfaces.

The social value of interfaces has increased; so has their business value," the paper says. Software patents and proprietary APIs "are now being used to manipulate the direction of the network effect and to thwart widespread interoperability of computer programs" and this, the paper says, "will be particularly harmful to developing countries."

Another paper to be discussed deals specifically with government procurement practices. It addresses government as tech buyer, tech policymaker and tech producer, and in each context urges governments to support open standards.

Governments should "ban procurement policies from requiring compatibility with proprietary technologies or proprietary ICT standards" and "ban procurement policies from specifying particular brands, manufacturers, or products", the paper says.

"'Openness' is best judged by the number of competing, fully substitutable implementations of the standard," the paper suggests."

"The DCOS coalition may have one influential ally in the form of Vint Cerf, the co-inventor of TCP/IP, Google vice president and chairman of ICANN. While he does not appear to be directly involved in Thursday's workshop, he advocated similar beliefs during prepared remarks at the IGF opening ceremony in Athens yesterday.

"Digital documents often need to be interpreted by special software packages to be rendered in understandable form," he said, according to an IGF transcript. "Steps are needed to assure that the information we accumulate today will be usable not merely decades but centuries and even millennia into the future."

Mansur

As we approach the weekend and the coming week which many Malaysians will take a one-week holiday, on behalf of the bloggers at Open Malaysia blog, here's wishing all a Happy Deepavali (Saturday, 21 October 2006) and Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri (Tuesday, 24 October 2006)!!!

The wish is especially for all Malaysians who celebrate all festivals of all races in the country by hosting each other at our Open House, and it also goes to all our worldwide readers who celebrate these two festivals.

In the spirit of Hari Raya, here's also humbly asking for forgiveness, maaf zahir dan batin, from us bloggers here.

So the market talk of the last two weeks was true. Google bought YouTube, for a staggering US$1.65 billion. That's putting a price of US$16.50 on every single one of YouTube's 100 million daily hits. Say that again, US$16.50 (RM61) for every daily hit on YouTube.

    

Now, for most of us in Malaysia, we get our movie supply from Uncle Ho's minions. And Uncle Ho only charges a mere US$2.70 (RM10) for his copyright infringed fare. DVDs on Amazon DVD go for anything from US$20 to US$35 for the legit stuff.

Paying US$16.50 for each daily hit does seem like a lot, especially so since many believe that YouTube isn't making a profit at all. It's led to many people saying, "Why didn't I think of that ?".

Which begs the question, what does Google intend to do with YouTube ? Sure, there's the obvious assumption that it'll power Google Video and that Google will intend to extend it's advertising options to include well-placed ads on YouTube's website. Whether they'll take the next step and insert pre and post video advertising remains to be seen, but this can't be ruled out either.

But what exactly drove Google to value YouTube at US$16.50 per hit, when building the same infrastructure would have cost a whole lot less given Google's engineering expertise and ability to hire top notch talent ?

Stickiness, and the promise of a future video channel to consumers, bypassing the legacy and incumbent cable, satellite and terrestrial TV operators. Google bought into the largest IPTV provider in the market, and has set its sights firmly on the next generation network. Remember, this comes not too long after eBay acquired Skype for another monstrous amount. While Skype would provide a communications channel which would augment eBay's e-commerce business, Google's emphasis is on information delivery channels.

Their flagship search engine has already made itself as the defacto delivery channel for web documents. YouTube will do the same to Google for video, and this would potentially herald the age of GoogleTV.

Google has long intended to be the single point of contact for all things Internet, with every one of their moves, acquisitions and offerings focussed into an arrowhead for this one goal. Google wants you to go to Google for everything, even if they're not the ones providing the actual final product. They want you to consult them for these things, so they can tell you where to go and who to buy from.

They want to be your trusted friend on the Internet, bringing you everything and in the process making it harder for others to break this chain. Do No Evil, indeed.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Photo: Steve Wilkins, Director ISV & Developer Relations, IBM Asia Pacific, Voon Seng Chuan, Managing Director, IBM Malaysia and Rashmy Chatterjee, Director IBM Software Group ASEAN/South Asia officially launching the IIC

Voon Seng Chuan, Managing Director of IBM Malaysia during his welcome speech at the official launch of the IBM Innovation Center (IIC) for Business Partners yesterday emphasized that innovation (unlike invention) is more often done collaboratively with others than done alone, and IBM has chosen not to be in the business of developing software applications -- thus the IBM Innovation Center for Business Partners allows for such open innovation, to create and enhance solutions of joint clients of IBM and IBM's partners.

The press release for the launch is here.

The Star covered the launch as follows: IBM makes Malaysia Asean hub
Excerpts:

"IBM chose Malaysia due to the country's strong developer base and the excellent IT infrastructure and facilities here," he said after the opening of Kuala Lumpur ICC [should be IIC] yesterday.

Voon said the setting up of the ICC [should be IIC] in Malaysia to serve the Asean region was testimony to IBM’s commitment to support and collaborate with its business partners to generate more innovative solutions for their customers.

Sited at IBM Malaysia’s new office in Bandar Utama, the ICC [should be IIC] will provide the tools and hands-on support that will help IBM business partners to build, port and test their solutions and industrial applications on IBM hardware and software platforms.

It will also help IBM's business partners cut their development costs, shorten their sales cycle, leverage on innovation to compete and get their applications to market faster.

IBM also provides hands-on workshops and technical seminars to help developers update their technical skills on key IBM technologies.

On top of the workshops and seminars, the ICC [should be IIC] will also provide assistance on prototype and proof-of-concept development, porting and testing services, validation, integration testing, performance and scalability testing, technical support and secure remote virtual private network (VPN)...

...The Kuala Lumpur ICC [should be IIC] is one of IBM’s 32 ICCs [should be IICs] worldwide and the sixth in the Asia-Pacific after Seoul, Tokyo, Bangalore, Shanghai and Sydney.

The software platforms provided at the center includes Linux, the most exciting open source operating system that has been gaining acceptance by the the marketplace, including in Malaysia.  There is also emphasis on SOA (service oriented architecture) in the development of solutions by ISVs (independent software vendors) signing up at the IIC.

An earlier coverage of IBM Innovation Centers worldwide was by CIO Magazine:
IBM to Open Innovation Centers to Startups, VCs
Excerpt:

IBM can give startups free advice on how best to approach markets outside their home countries, for instance, how a company in China can sell its offerings in the U.S., Clark said. Startups also can talk to IBM’s technical architects either face-to-face in the centers or remotely from their phones or computers to take advantage of their specific areas of expertise.

Thus, another role of the IIC is to help partners go to market, locally and globally.

Other news coverage on the launch:

The Edge Daily: IBM opens first Asean Innovation Centre in KL
Excerpt:

The RM10 million investment included skilled resource, equipment, state-of-the-art facilities and networking

Business Times, The New Straits Times: IBM Innovation Center launched in KL
Excerpt:

IBM also provides business partners with resources to help them accelerate the development of open standards-based and small and medium business-focused solutions.

This is slightly delayed as I have been busy but as is said, better late then never, eh? Well, MNCC announced the winners of the 2006 Open Source Award, as follows:

The winning Open Source Software for 2006 is ‘Forensic Investigations  & Recovery Systems (FIRST) LIVE CD 1.2.0’ developed by a team from MIMOS Cyberspace Security Lab and led by Mr. Azril Azam Abdul Rahim. The software is a complete system built on top of a collection of open source software solutions that has been posted onto a bootable CDROM. FIRST aims to provide the ideal system environment to handle security, incident response and computer forensics. The software compares favorably with other competing products and unofficially holds the record for the smallest distribution, fastest boot-up sequence and lowest minimum memory requirements.

Merdeka weekend was spent at Perhentian Islands, billed as the most beautiful islands in Malaysia. The islands have a rustic charm and makes for an excellent weekend getaway. The corals were magnificent; the snorkelling among the colorful fishes was akin to being in a National Geographic special - there were so many of them swimming all around us!

There was turtle chasing (don't worry: the turtles were tame turtles and very used to tourists) and lets-spot-the-reef-shark-adventure which became slightly too scary when one was actually spotted (although we are assured that their palate doesn't include the occassional homo sapiens). Oh, in the light of the tragic and unexpected passing of Steve Irwin, I must say that it must have been sheer good luck that I resisted the temptation of wrestling with a sting ray I spotted!

Well, enough with the words for now, let the pictures speak more eloquently (click on the image to view it in all its glory):

At LinuxWorld San Francisco on 15 August 2006, IBM annouced new initiatives for open source beyond Linux support.

IBM press release: IBM unveils development roadmap and business strategy for open source beyond Linux

Excerpt:
"IBM unveiled eight key open source initiatives beyond Linux, aimed at accelerating the adoption of open standards and extending existing product lines to reach new customers.  IBM also announced new work with the open source community to improve the development of general Linux kernel functionality, expanding its Linux focus around virtualization, Cell processor technologies, and security."

Links to news coverage on the announcement as below.

• ZDNet: IBM's open source expansion could speed up IT commoditization
  Excerpt:
  "This is an aggressive move by IBM which could speed up the commoditization of the IT sector and benefit its massive IT services business groups. But IBM  has a lot of proprietary technologies that are in the path of the open-source steamroller, and the trick will be to figure out which ones to develop further and which ones to leave behind."
• CRN: IBM Plans Big Push Beyond Linux Into Open Source
  Excerpt:
  "The company will push the Eclipse Rich Client Platform for hosting cross platform applications, Eclipse frameworks for development, Web application servers based on Geronimo, open source database Apache Derby and license-free IBM DB2 Express-C, the Aperi open source management project, open hardware organizations, Open Grid Services Architecture and Globus Alliance."
• VARBusiness: Linuxworld: New Opportunities For VARs In Open Source
  Excerpt:
  "Big Blue officials also announced its participation in new open-source projects designed to improve Linux kernel functionality and to expand its Linux focus around virtualization, cell-processor technologies and security. Looking beyond Linux, IBM's software, hardware and services organizations are using open-source business models to target opportunities in client-side middleware, development tools, Web application servers, data servers, systems management, open hardware architectures, grid computing, and IBM Research, business consulting and technology services."

Continuing from my previous post (part 1) on the MOSTI-IBM seminar on 15 August 2006 on Innovative Government Insights...

The three speakers, Krishna Giri, John Moran and Todd Ramsey delved into why innovation is important for the Government, what areas there needs to be innovation (including the two roles of Government in innovation) and how to be innovative.

Krishna presented the Global CEO Study 2006 but focused from the viewpoint of Public Sector, as the study did also interview Public Sector leaders. Three key themes emerged from the study:

1. Enhance existing capabilities and develop new business models
2. Collaborate and drive innovation
3. Integrate business and technology

Business models

Not only did the overall study find that business models matter, it matters even more for Public Sector (slide 9). The trend is that Governments are continually finding ways of operating differently. Outsourcing/shared services is one obvious choice Krishna mentioned. Other market-based examples listed by Krishna included competitive sourcing, public-private sector partnerships, competitive grants and auctions.

My comment is that the Malaysian Government, too, have explored several models, e.g. BOO (build, operate, own), but I recommend further reading of the source cited by Krishna, i.e. Six Trends Transforming Government:

• Trend 1. Changing rules
• Trend 2. Using performance management
• Trend 3. Providing competition, choice and incentives
• Trend 4. Performing on demand
• Trend 5. Engaging citizens
• Trend 6. Using networks and partnerships

Merdeka is right around the corner, and talks of freedom are in the air.  For those of you that do not know, Merdeka means "Independence" and Malaysia's indepedence from its British colonialists on 31st August 1957.

For those of you who have been keeping track of this blog, then you might have heard of my booth at PCFair promoting Free and Open Source Software.  The event was a complete success and this is an important step towards software freedom.  As I don't want to repeat myself you can just read my blog post.  On an interesting note, from the various people I spoke to during the PCFair, there appears to be a greater adoption of OpenOffice in Malaysia that I have not heard of.  Even one of the visitors to our booth indicated that "It is pretty common now adays" which really startled me off.

Similarly in the upcoming month on Saturday 16th September 2006, is Software Freedom Day (SFD).  Though I don't have anything planned, this was celebrated last year by our advocacy efforts in Low Yat Plaza.

Tomorrow night would also mark my anniversary in taking over the MyOSS Meetups a year ago.

Freedom for me is on full throttle (well maybe not) and after the PCFair, I feel revitalized into making the Free and Open Source Community in Malaysia stronger.

MOSTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation) and IBM Malaysia yesterday organized a half-day seminar on Innovative Government Insights, exploring the what's, why's and how's of innovation in the Public Sector, with the audience being mostly government officials and some members of academia.

In a previous post, remember I described my 9 August 2006 presentation (size 3MB) that included in it the Global CEO Study 2006? I emphasized the message from the study report that enterprises need to improve collaboration (internally, and increasingly externally) to innovate. I further linked open collaboration and open innovation to collaborative technologies as enablers. Those were my preamble to justify presenting collaborative technologies like open standards and SOA (service oriented architecture) as foundation to innovation. And of course in my presentation I went on to promote ODF (OpenDocument Format) as a key open standard to adopt now!

The Global CEO Study 2006 was featured by the first two of the three speakers in yesterday's MOSTI-IBM event, but before I describe all three presentations, let me first highlight the key messages in the opening speeches by Voon Seng Chuan, Managing Director, IBM Malaysia and Dato' Hanan Alang Endut, Secretary General, MOSTI.

Congratulations, Aizat, for your leadership to pull off planning and doing the FOSS exhibition at the PIKOM PC Fair in Kuala Lumpur last weekend. You had less than a month and you did it. Great job!

Congratulations to all the volunteers and supporters, too!

Aizat's posts on the event: http://aizatto.com/blog/index.php?cat=43

Excerpt:

What were the goals?

* Advocating and promoting the benefits of FOSS
* Helping interested parties to use FOSS
* Finding pockets of FOSS users and bringing them together to strengthen the community

Glad the team achieved the goals and all the best for future events!

Khairil's post on the event: http://www.iosn.net/Members/kaeru/blog/blogentry.2006-08-13.2130110069

MNCC (Malaysian National Computer Confederation), CICC (Center of the International Cooperation for Computerization) and OUM (Open University Malaysia) are organizing a 5-day open source software (OSS) training in September 2006. Following are the details for the program:

Date: 18 to 22 September 2006 (5 days)
Time: 9:00 am to 5:30 pm
Venue: Bangunan Angkasa Raya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

To register, please download and fill in the registration form and email to admin-at-mncc-dot-po-dot-my with email titled "Registration AOSS 2006, KL": Download AOSS_Registration_form_20060810_NP_V1_0.odt (27.2K)

Yesterday, I spoke at an event organized by my alma mater, UiTM (Universiti Teknologi MARA) -- the International Conference on Business IT 2006 (BIZIT '06): Collaborating with ICT Innovations for Business Survival at Crown Princess Hotel, Kuala Lumpur.

I presented on Innovation and Open Collaboration in ICT -- The Way Forward (size 3MB). Not a very original topic, is it, since Roslyn Docktor did present the same topic in May at another event, except that she had it as Innovation and Open Collaboration in ICT -- The Way Forward for Malaysia? Ah well, I thought it's a good topic that fits yesterday's event, so I used it again! So yes, much of what Roslyn presented I re-used for my presentation yesterday, plus also re-using the slides from the MNCC Evening Talk on ODF on 29 June 2006 and the Telehealth and E-Government Flagship Seminar on 10 July 2006.

Having been given 1 hour 15 minutes for my presentation, I had prepared a long presentation, only to find when I arrived that the organizers had changed the agenda for my presentation to be 45 minutes instead. I wish they'd told me beforehand, because I found myself having to rush through the last few slides!

In yesterday's presentation, I included a section to step back looking into open innovation and open collaboration, as a preamble before justifying the need for openness through open standards, SOA (service oriented architecture) and ODF (OpenDocument Format). How I presented the trend for open innovation and collaboration was to relate the findings of the Global CEO Study 2006 that IBM had conducted.

The study is clear on the message of how important it is for organizations to innovate by collaborating with others outside the organization, and how CIOs should then create a flexible  IT infrastructure for collaboration -- thus as a lead-in for the next part of my presentation: i.e. achieving that flexibility by using open standards and service oriented architecure.

Photo: Patrick Gannon

About a month ago on 20 June 2006, I met up with Patrick Gannon, President and CEO of OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) who was here in Malaysia as one of the participants in the inaugaral meeting of the United Nations' GAID, pronounced "guide" (GAID is "Global Alliance for ICT and Development"), at Putrajaya Marriot.

OASIS is of course the standards development organization that develops ODF, amongst other e-business standards. OASIS succeded in submitting ODF to ISO (International Organization for Standards) that resulted in ODF becoming the international standard ISO/IEC 26300.

I had not known that Patrick Gannon was going to be in town, so it was by chance that I met him. I was in the event's breakout workshop on healthcare (well, the full title of the workshop was "Common multi-stakeholder frameworks for developing effective policies and sustainable partnerships for mainstreaming ICT in Health"). One of the speakers, Dr. Amiruddin Hisan, Deputy Director, Telehealth Unit, Ministry of Health Malaysia presented on the Malaysian experience in transforming healthcare using ICT. During the Q&A session after the presentation, Patrick went to the microphone, acknowledged the presentation's statement on the challenge of integration and interoperability and pointed out the importance and role of standards to overcome that challenge. Anyway, I went to inroduce myself to Patrick as soon as he sat down.

(As it turned out, I was to meet and work with Dr. Amiruddin Hisan at the Flagship seminar on 10-11 July 2006. In fact, Dr. Amiruddin became the spokesperson who presented the output of the Flagship seminar's breakout workshop that I moderated, and indeed our workshop group and the other two groups all had one of their recommendations to be standards, so as to achieve integration and interoperability.)

Discussing with Patrick Gannon that day last month, one of the things I learnt from him was that within OASIS, other than the main ODF Technical Committee which develops and maintains the ODF standard, there also exists an "ODF Adoption Technical Committee". The charter of this committee is found here,  and an excerpt from it is:

As mentioned in Part 1, I had the opportunity to listen to Mr Deepak Pillai from haryantideepak Advocates & Solicitors. His talk was insightful, and encouraging in that there are other people besides Free and Open Source folk who understand the threats Software Patents may inflict on the local Software Development community.

His talk was simply entitled "Intellectual Property - Know your rights." He demonstrated his experience in this field, because the first thing he did was to explain what the ambiguous IP term meant.

"A category of intangible rights protecting commercially valuable products of the human intellect"

He then explained the differences between Trademarks, Copyright, Patents, Industrial Design and Trade Secrets. He then went on to an overview of a companies need to have Intellectual Asset Management for protection, additional revenue and cost savings. He was talking about managing standard IP, not to become a patent troll.

Regarding Software Patents, although patents are now granted very easily in the US, the European Union has recently reject software patenting. Also in Malaysia, he comments, Software Patents per se are not available.

He notes that Software patents are seen as an inhibitor of the production of  both FOSS and proprietary Software Development in Malaysia. Reason being is that it puts developers and users at risk of patent infringement suits. It also requries developers to conduct searches to be aware of existing patents before proceeding with development work. This is wasteful in both monetary, manpower and time resources. The USPTO system of granting software is open to abuse as registration is easily acquired and a challenge requires substantial financial capacity which not many start-ups have the deep pockets.

His views on Software Patents became apparent when he described a thought experiment; if Malaysia were to attempt to try to win the IP war using Software Patents to balance the tech deficit, he predicted it would be a losing battle. Actually, a total wipeout: it would be like playing a game of rugby against 7ft giants when you are just 1ft, against an incline of 45  degrees! The reason being, IBM alone patents over 3000 applications a year, as such has a warchest of over 30,000 (spanning 10 years of accumulation) plus the HPs, Microsoft and Suns of the West, a developing country would only be able to apply for 300 max if they are lucky, would just get crushed.

In the 2004 Asian Government Leaders' Forum,  Steve Ballmer threatened to mitigate against competitors where Microsoft holds patents, and Linux could be a candidate as the kernel already violates 228 patents. More importantly he reportedly said:

"Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organisation), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property"

So whether or not Malaysian Patent Law allows Software Patents would be moot if Malaysia proceeds with the US-FTA in its entirety regarding Intellectual Property. Large foreign software companies will be able to descend on local software houses via the backdoor and lock us out of our own markets.

With this, he highlighted:

• Are Software Patents in the interest of Software development in Malaysia?
• Are Software Patents in the interest of Malaysia?
• Possible introduction of requiremnts to recognise software patents via Free Trade Agreements.

These warnings are clear and we need to be vigilant in the upcoming development of the US-FTA.

In the Q&A, Hong Yee asked regarding the progress of the talks with the US FTA, and if  Software Patents are included.  Ng Wan Peng from MDeC attempted to answer but really could not as she is not included in the talks. Deepak also is not involved but encouraged people to learn about these issues and raise these to the relevant people who are involved with the talks.

However he added that Software Patents are not the cause of the problems facing the software industry now... its the ease in which the USTPO is awarding patents to the applicants. A regular mechanical patent requires detailed schematics and actual operational machines before it can be awarded to the applicant. However Software Patents just requires a 'concept' to be documented. No actual implementation in code is necessary! This provides huge leeway in terms of approval criteria and subsequently interpretation in enforcement. To me, it highlights the huge difference between Hardware (Traditional) Patents and Software Patents. One being undeniably useful, and the other redundant. 

I asked "Why do we need Software Patents to protect software? Does Copyright Law provide sufficient protection?" Deepak immediately answered "Yes, current Copyright Law is sufficient in protecting Software Intellectual Property." This is obvious too, as we do not see rampant piracy nor disregarding in IP in countries like Europe or UK which do not need Software Patents to further protect software.

A chap from Bernama then asked "If Software Patents are not in law then how will the BSA enforce their rights?" Obviously he was not paying attention... Another asked about indemnification, but I thought it was irrelevant to the talk.

Anyway, it was a really informative session, Mr Deepak really knows his stuff and it would be a great service to the community if he could speak again especially to influential people and laymen alike. He is articulate, knowledgeable and effable; our very own Eben Moglen!

yk.

I had the opportunity to attend the PIKOM Conference: Reinvent Business Strategies Through Technology held in the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (13-14th July 2006). Unfortunately I could only attend the second half of the second day, which was a shame as there were quite a few talks I wanted to hear.

However I did manage to catch a couple of very good talks. The first is by Ng Wan Peng from MDeC and the other by Deepak Pillai from haryatideepak law firm.

Ng Wan Peng talked about "Policy considerations in the patentability of computer implemented business methods." She stressed very clearly that what she was about to present was the findings of a study MDeC commissioned in 2005 and may not necessary be the position MDeC holds officially. In the presentation, she outlined the reasons for the MSC, and one of them is that it promises to be a leader in Intellectual Property (IP) and cyber laws.

Current Malaysian laws are silent on the status of Software Patents, in that it is probably allowed if the patent demonstrates novel, innovative and useful qualities. With that, a well drafted application for software patents would probably be granted. However it is very clear that Business Methods are NOT patentable.

She notes that the nature of the Software Industry is sequential, in that developments progresses cummulatively, there is high obsolescence in that it moves much faster than other industries and it depends on innovation and high knowledge 'spill-over'.

A survey done in the UK in 2001 showed that for Nations which have strengthened their Patent Laws indicate that there is no correlation with increased innovation. It also mentions that Patents does not reward nor encourage innovation. Neither has there been a spike in 'innovations' in the US when they altered their Patent Laws in 1994 to allow for Software Patents. Innovation continued at their respective rates as before the change.

The MDeC report also noted that in the Malaysian Software Development environment, we are still a net importer of technology. It asked these questions,

Will Software Patents help:

• increase Foreign Direct Interests?
• reduce the deficit in Technology balance of payments?
• reduce transactional and social costs?

For all three queries, the answer was a resounding 'No'.  A strong legal framework is an important but relatively small criteria in selecting a country for investments. The other criteria comes from able workforce, stable government, language and cultural preferences and other major economic reasons. IP protection is important, but not as important as the rest.
The Balance of Payments will definitely swing not to the favour of Malaysia as her citizens will now have to respect Software Patents of other nations. Similarly we will have to pay for these 'services' which guarantee a monopoly position over our home-grown technology which means shutting down of our local service providers; wasted opportunity costs for us now, as we are deprived of alternatives of more efficent solutions. It also means a wider digital divide where poorer citizens and government bodies cannot afford the licenses fees and will have to do without computerization.

To conclude, MDeC's position on Software Patents are:

• Retain status quo: Software Patents are possible on stringent criteria: if it shows innovation and novel ideas
• Business Methods are clearly not Patentable
• and a review of position in 3 years time ...

So the talk was both good and dissapointing at the same time. Good because it gives the impression that the people at MDeC do understand the problems of software patents and its detrimental impact on the local software industry. Dissapointing because they have not taken a clearer and harder stance against Software Patents like other goverments namely the United Kingdom, India and the European Union. A weak stance by the main technology body of Malaysia (MDeC) severely weakens the Malaysian position as the Ministry of Trade walks into the negotiation room on the US-FTA when it comes to the "Intellectual Property" concerns.

yk.

Flagships and signposts -- oxymoronic, isn't it? Sea ships or star ships don't find signposts along the way!

Anyway, the flagships I refer to here are the MSC Malaysia Flagship Applications that were started almost as long ago as when MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) was first conceived (that's 10 years ago). Signposts that I mean here are significant events that signal disruptive or dramatic change in technology evolution in the future.

MDeC (Multimedia Development Corporation) invited me to their Telehealth and E-Government Flagship Seminar  yesterday and today. Yesterday I was a Panel Speaker. Today I was the moderator for one of the three breakout workshop sessions.

The panel I was on was Panel 1 - Lessons Learnt From Flagships and the topic given to me was Technology Implementation (my presentation is here: .odp or .pdf). You can bet that I did not fail to include the "open" message in my presentation! I re-used many of the slides from the Evening Talk on ODF, except this time I made only a passing mention of ODF to illustrate open standards. But the passing mention was significant -- I said that the 2005 event of Massachusetts adopting ODF is a sure signpost that heralds the pervasiveness of "open" in the future. In less than a year after the Massachusetts decision, Mircrosoft announced its OpenXML format, more governments (like Denmark and Belgium) declared adoption of open standards or ODF, and Microsoft sprang another surprise last week to announce "support" for an ODF translator being develped in an open source environment.

In the presentation, I also introduced SOA (service oriented architecture). My full message on "open" was that  flagship applications can achieve integration and interoperability by adopting an open architecture (SOA) based on open standards. I also echoed the idea from fellow blogger, Dinesh that modules of flagship applications may even be developed using open source approach - especially because flagships are funded by taxpayers' money (our money) so the community should be given the opportunity in the deveopment.

It was heartening to hear the presentations from all three workshop groups having one of their recommendations being standards to be a must in the way forward for the flagships. The group I moderated explicitly recommended the SOA approach -- the participant who was championing this came from a state government and he emphasized the need for such an open architecture so that the applications that his state develops can connect/integrate/interoperate with the federal government flagship applications. The third group recommended something even more ambitious, i.e. to create what he called an interconnection layer (again based on open architecture and open standards) to integrate government flasgship applications with private sector applications -- not just for banking transactions but also for suppliers' and other external organizations' applications.

By the way, the concept of signposts to predict future technology came from the first part of my presentation (here: .odp or .pdf). If we can predict future technology (and I offered a methodology), we have better chance of adapting flagship applications ahead of future technology disruptions.

Welcome, Microsoft to ODF? Naahh...

In my last week's Evening Talk on ODF, on my slide (slide 18) on What ODF is Not?, last on my list was "It is not being adopted by Microsoft (yet)." So this evening when I saw Microsoft's press release on them sponsoring a project for a translator for their OpenXML to ODF, I first thought my word "yet" was short-lived. But then, it's clear that Microsoft is not providing native support for ODF.

"Ada udang di sebalik batu?" (Is there a hidden agenda?) Early commentaries include:

• Bob Sutor -- Microsoft press release about ODF: it's a start, but quit the FUD
• Andy Updergrove -- Microsoft Falls Back Again: Announces ODF Plugin Project
• Groklaw -- MS: OK. OK, we'll build an ODF killer. Er, we mean translator

Well, Microsoft, you're still far off. The Malaysian Government, businesses and society will still want to embrace the ODF standard and all applications with native and deep implementation of ODF for its many benefits and reasons, some of the most important ones being the following:

1. COST -- Licensing fees are lower or none on pure ODF-based software.  Why should customers pay extra to access their own information, or have trouble switching to another document software vendor in the future?  Saving a file as ODF would still mean that customers are paying a premium.
2. INTEROPERABILITY -- ODF is more than just a file format.  Native support means that documents become infinitely more powerful and versatile.  Because of support for pure XML, they now become more Web-friendly.  They allow for mash-ups that blend Internet-based business software and documents to work better with traditional desktop applications.  The future of word processing, spreadsheets and presentations is that ODF will allow these functions to be blended into all business applications.
3. INNOVATION -- ODF is about innovation that wouldn't necessarily wouldn't emerge from one company with little incentive to think imaginatively about the way people really work.  It will enable new features, such as the ability for non-techical laypeople to do live, group-editing of documents on both their desktops and Web, simultaneously.  It enables charts and graphs in files on one's desktop to automatically update themselves when current information appears on a Web site.  It allows smarter and faster searches for information.  It enables access to information on any device, to information created on the Web.
4. ACCESS AND CONTROL -- A native ODF file will have formatting nuances that a converted document or spreadsheet will probably lose or garble somewhat.

Naah... Microsoft's move doesn't make the mark. And I am not confident to add the word "yet" now.

Hasan Saidin gave an MNCC evening talk on ODF last Thursday (29th June 2006). I will not cover the talk in great depth as I only took down notes for material that interested me. Hasan illustrated Bob Sutor's continuum definition of open standards, covering common aspects of standards:

• A community driven standards development methodology. This results in no vendor driven agenda and very importantly, no veto by any single member.
• Maintenance of the standard is democratic as no vendor driven agenda dominates the maintenance procedures.
• The acquisition of the standard is at no cost and where possible, available online. Hasan mentioned RAND as a common licensing strategy for standards.
• Implementation is to be royalty free.
• That the standard can be mined for its good ideas for the development of other standards.

He also stated his recommendation for open standards, "mandate interoperatibility by preferring open standards where they exist". He mentioned that governments have document "pain points". Imagine:

• governments forcing its citizens to buy word processors from specific vendors so that they can interact with the government electronically. The e-filing system in Malaysia is possibly the most egrigous example of this.
• that historical documents are no longer readable
• that in times of emergencies, govt agencies cannot communicate efficiently because of use of different word processors and non-standard formats.

Hasan then illustrated the OpenDocument Format succintly as follows:

• Developed by OASIS, certified by ISO as ISO/IEC 26300
• ODF is XML based
• Meets common test for openness
• Default format for OpenOffice, KOffice, IBM Workplace
• Open standard adopted by many vendors
• Option that gives the most choice for interoperatibiltiy and future-proofing information
• Non vendor driven
• Not a forced commitment to proprietary or FOSS development methodologies
• Not a limitation of choice of applications to create and process information
• and most importantly, not adopted by Microsoft ("not adopted" is a very diplomatic term, IMHO)

Hasan further illustrated government initiatives worldwide (the U.S. state of Massachusetts, Belgium etc) in standardizing their document formats on ODF to avoid the problems mentioned above. Overall, it was a good overview of ODF and the background political processes involved (given the substantial economic stake of various institutions involved).

IMHO, the question and answer session illustrated a lack of awareness of ODF, even among the FOSS community. Questions, comments revolved:

• the need for browser plugins for ODF. Such plugins already exist, in various stages of development.
• the ability to use it in day to day in large scale enterprise use. As in any migration strategy, training plays a key role.
• pushing for awareness in academic environments. There is resistance from many academics in Malaysia due to re-training costs, efforts and not wanting to sour existing relationships with corporate sponsors.

Feedback and comments are appreciated.

This is long overdue report of Asia Commons, Day 3. Day 3 was a continuation of the Open Space presentations.  I participated in the an open space regarding alternatives to the current intellectual rights regime. The participants suggested exploring an alternative epistemological to intellectual rights. In part, the participants justified this by outlining the current abuse of intellectual rights. I don't see this as a sufficiently strong reason as the changes that led to current intellectual rights regime are fairly recent and it did seem that the older regime worked much better. While the session was intellectually interesting, I personally don't see an alternative view of intellectual rights being adopted widely anytime soon due to the current vested interests (and, of course, one should never discount Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in describing human psychological  drives, in this case, as it applies to knowledge creation in the Commons).

I had a presentation on free trade agreements. We started off with a discussion of copyright criminalization issues in India and Malaysia. However, Vijayalakshmi requested for a background on the FTA's and its dynamics for which Peter obliged by giving a good background on the FTA's: the US is signing FTA's with countries as they could not exercise sufficient leverage at WTO. IFAC is the main lobbying body in the US. IFAC, while representing a large body of other organizations, is a tightly focused group which promotes the interests of 21 main private sector entities. Peter also mentioned that besides the intellectual rights chapter in the FTA, the dispute resolution chapter is particularly important.

Primarily, the FTA's exist to set a higher standard which is primarily aimed to protect the US market, and that with each agreement signed, the intention is to continually increase the standard of "protection" afforded to US based companies. In particular, there are specific objectives set for certain countries. Peter brought up the example of the US trade negotiators aiming to abolish the Australian pharmateutical regulations which were more liberal and fair compared to US based regulations. Finally, he noted that the FTA is aimed to bring more income into the US via royalties.

As a counter to IFAC in the US, some public interest groups and individuals are taking action. Lobbying has been successful in certain circumstances but there is no group with the lobbying power of the IFAC. It was suggested that companies in the US whose interests do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the FTA start lobbying actions of their own. Litigation in the US was suggested as a method to remove some aspects of the FTA provisions, but the efficacy of doing this remains unclear.

As the intention is to sign a FTA with Korea, patcha brought us up to date with regards to developments back home. He mentioned that there was concern on the intellectual rights chapter as well as resistance from civil society bodies, that ISP's and ICT companies are concerned by organizing forums and analysis. He also mentioned that the digital libraries in Korea are under pressure by the US to be shut down, and the government position with regards to the FTA are kept under wraps.

The discussion shifted to the fast track authority until mid 2007 that the current US administration has received from the US Congress. Peter mentioned that by slowing down the negotitations such that it exceeds the fast track authority of the current administration, it would be possible to gain greater leverage of the situation as there is much concern in the US Congress as to the direction of the FTA's.

All in all, it was a pretty good discussion and I enjoyed the interaction of the participants.

Asia Commons came to an end soon after that. I came away with a strong appreciation of analysis conducted by various people (Vijayalakshmi, Lawrence, Peter come to mind) in this sphere and clearly, I have much reading to catch up on!

Last Friday, 23 June 2006 the India chapter of the ODF Alliance conducted a National Seminar on ODF in New Delhi. Quoting an article on the event:

Welcoming this initiative and highlighting its importance in Indian IT Scenario, Chandershekhar, secretary, Ministry of Information & Technology, Government of India said, "We are glad to note that with formation of a National ODF alliance, India too would be playing a pivotal role in spearheading the ODF revolution. Further, considering the huge potential of eGovernance in the nation as well as the need to adopt open standards to make our data systems more inter-operable and independent of any limiting proprietary tools, we feel that ODF is a great technological leap and a big boon to further propel IT right to India's grass root levels. I congratulate this initiative of leading private & public organisations and wish them all the best in this endeavor."

In another article in conjunction with the event, it was reported that several government departments in New Delhi have decided to switch over to ODF.

Note that the India chapter of the ODF Alliance includes CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) and IIT (Indian Institute of Technology).

I have encouraged before that Malaysian organizations and companies join the ODF Alliance and I should say now that these include Malaysian institutions of higher learning. We already have a Malaysian ODF SIG (special interest group) of individuals, but when sufficient number of local Malaysian organizations group together as ODF Alliance members, a different kind of ODF grouping and support will surely emerge in Malaysia.

MNCC is having an evening talk on "OpenDocument Format (ODF): towards true open standards" on Thursday, 29 June 2006 at Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Yours truly will be the speaker. Event details are here. See you there!

[Update 16 July 2006: Ditesh reported on the talk here. The presentation slides are here: .odp or .pdf]

So the second day started off with yours truly getting up to birds chirping and the Thai women speaking in the sweet dulcet tones that all men have come to recognize as heaven on Earth.

The second day was all about knowledge sharing and discussions. There was a session on speed sharing. It is a twist on lightning talks which are fairly common in geek and/or FOSS conferences. Each table is designated a speed sharer who talks on a particular issue/theme for 10 minutes. The participants move from table to table and are encouraged to discuss issues and opportunities at the table. A particular table I found interesting was a project by a Bangladeshi group that used their expertise in radio communications to allow for the youth to broadcast their own programs. Among the ways the youths communicated their message to the public was narrow casting (loudspeakers), burning their programs on to a DVD and  settings up TV's with their program playing in coffeeshops, and patching into the cable system and broadcasting their information. What excited me about this was the subversion of an information flow channel of state controlled media in a country where Internet access is not necessarily available. A fantastic idea and a great way to ensure equitable access to information and knowledge.

We also had the open space session whereby every participant was encouraged to put up a topic to speak on for 45 minutes. My session is tomorrow and I'll be speaking on the US free trade agreements and how it affects the commons. There was a session on countering IP propaganda led by the ineffable Lawrence Liang and Indymedia's Sasha. It was fairly informative.

Evening was a night out with Sam, Khairil, Anita with Chinarat as our tourguide. It was fun, other then a drunk Thai deciding to take on an unsolicited role of a tour guide to me (why oh why does my path always cross those of the strangest people?) :-)

I got to speak to James Love (of CPTech fame) about his suggestion to introduce an alternative IPR chapter in the US-MY free trade agreement negotiations. He sent me the following links that may be of interest to those who are following this issue:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/the-usmalaysia-trade-pac_b_19584.html
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/globalization-in-a-good-w_b_17974.html
• http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/rndtf/bridges042004.pdf

I needed to get some work done later in the night, and headed down to the conference room for some late night Internet surfing. Turns out, I was not the only midnight owl as Sasha, James, Linda, Jac and a couple of other froods I forgot the names of, were happily getting work done over a bottle of Scotch. Had a long conversation with a friend over some Scotch, got sleepy and headed back :-)

It's day 3 now and unfortunately most participants have left. Will post day 3 observations in a day or so.

AlohaSawadee from the Land of Smiles. I'm writing from the Asia Commons conference, in Bangkok from 6th-8th June 2006.

The day started off with the keynote speakers, Peter Drahos and James Love, talking about Intellectual Commons and the Public Domain. I did not really take down notes of what James Love said as my personal convictions were already in line with what he mentioned. Peter Drahos stated that while we already have many theories and analysis from an economic and social perspectives, what's lacking now is a political philosophy of the commons that allows for diversity to flourish. He noted that as  IPR is a (legal) instrument of coercion (and therefore falling in the realm of politics), the three important Q's of any politics apply:

1) How much say have we had in the new arrangement of IP?
2) Should we obey?
3) How much coercion should we tolerate over our rights?

Peter also brought up John Stuart Mill's - "Experiments in Living"; we would want societies that tolerate experiments in living. I liked this idea as it brings to the table the idea that societies and cultural norms are not stagnant and evolve (for better or worse) over time as well as the idea that progress in society is due to lessons we learn from our trials and tribulations in the past.

Peter also noted the important yet much overlooked point that Information grows through use and he termed this as the Law of Repletion. He also stated that information is too important to be left to private monopolies and as information/knowledge may be covered by different intellectual rights legislation, they may not go into the public domain even if the protection afforded by one aspect of the legislation had expired.

Of Jamie Love's presentation, what I found interesting was his suggestion that we present an alternative to the IPR chapter in the FTA, for example replacing the IPR chapter with an A2K chapter or another relevant chapter. In particular, he stated that there is a need to show economic incentives to Washington when presenting such a chapter. I should speak to him soon but I have not had an opportunity do so yet.

We had several other sessions that went into various other issues with regards to the commons. Of particular interest was a session on software patents. Laurent Elder led off that session with a patent spectrograph. He put on the slides three statements regarding patents in Asia (use, enforcement, efficacy) and asked the participants to arrange themselves across the Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree line.

As was expected, the majority of the participants did not particularly agree with either the fundamental concept of limited private monopolies or with the enforcement and scope of the current patent model. I found particularly interesting was how little I knew about the patent dynamics in the other Asian countries. Based on my discussions with the other participants, it emerged that while the participants clearly understood the issues with patents in other fields such as agriculture and biology, there was not as much awareness of software patents.

A presentation by Ronaldo Lemos from Brazil illustrated the Brazilian independent movie business model in Brazil which allowed for very profitable local content production without the passing of restrictive intellectual rights legislation. It continues to amaze me how Brazil continues to take the lead in civil society initiatives among developing countries.

Well, those were the salient points that I could gather. There are some other presentations that I hope other participants could chime in and fill the gaps :-)

Now some notes on the participants themselves; they come from all over the world with the majority coming from Asia. Quite a few of those present were lawyers, and those who were not, were representatives from NGO's. From Malaysia, we had a Creative Commons representative from the MDeC, Khairil, a chap from Open University Malaysia, myself and a couple other people.

The political persuasions of the participants compromise a diverse spectrum of thought. Some feel that the entire field of intellectual privileges should be demolished, but I could gather no credible alternative for replacing the current intellectual regime. Others felt that while some tuning is required in the current legislation, throwing out the entire regime would be counter productive .

Coming from a free software background, it was slightly shocking to find that not many participants understood the importance of free software to the commons and why the newer forms of legislation would hurt free software. On the other hand, it was also shocking how little I knew about other non-software intellectual right areas. So all in all, lots of knowledge was shared.

We had an evening cocktail and that was an excellent good opportunity to meet other participants. Discussions were extremely diverse; from discussing methods of kicking off Creative Commons in Malaysia to human right violations in Africa to operating ham radios to discussing ways of putting the current copyright legislation to good use by stopping bad Thai renditions of cheezy English pop music :-)

It's the second day now, will post latest observations in a day or so (it's already progressing at a most excellent pace!).

"For the times, they are a-changin'...," lyrics from a Bob Dylan song rang through my head as I started this post. That song was an anthem in the tumultuous 60's, inspirational to me even now as we see changes happening in Malaysia and the world.

Yes, the world and Malaysia is becoming open in many ways. The Public Sector Open Source Software Initiative from 2004 has shown Malaysia's enlightenment to move from status quo. Open standards in ICT took a historic turn last week when ODF (OpenDocument Format) was announced as an international standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) -- here just over a week before, the SIRIM meeting (thanks to Yoon Kit for the report) made Malaysia one of the 23 countries who unanimously voted YES to ISO for the ballotting process.

This is a blog about openness, saying that the changing times call for innovation through open collaboration. My colleague, Roslyn Docktor last week presented the subject "Innovation and Open Collaboration In ICT - The Way Forward for Malaysia" (again thanks to Yoon Kit for the report) at an event by MOSTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation). Roslyn's last week's visit to Malaysia was impetus for me to start this blog.

As this Open Malaysia blog unfolds, over the coming months and years we will witness more changes, but there will be obstacles, e.g. FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). We will discuss these changes and obstacles.

For now, I leave you with the last verse of the song:

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'...