Promoting ODF (OpenDocument Format),
My article on All for open standards was published in the Tech&U section of the New Straits Times newspaper yesterday (22 October 2007).
Not too long a writeup, so check it out by clicking on the image on the left to view its full size. See what you think of the article.
The only inaccurate part of the article is my pic -- should have sent them an updated one with my now shaved hairdo....
:-)
[Update 29 October 2007: Full text of article transcribed below.]
Headsup!
Bob Sutor, the IBM Vice President for Open Source and Standards, will be speaking in Malaysia on open source and open standards. He will be speaking in two places, first at the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers on the 19th April 2007 on "Opening Up Your Business Software: Why and When". This talk would be of interest to CEOs in the non-technical industries, or in other words, business owners. Do note that registration is mandatory. Click here for more information and to register. The abstract of the talk is as follows:
Businesses today will be using both forms of software to deploy the most cost-effective and flexible solutions to serve their customers and to maintain their competitive edge and more importantly, to differentiate. The only way to get true interoperability and these potential cost savings inside your company and with your partners and customers is to use true open standards. Your new office applications will depend on them. Your businesses will depend on them. So will your competitors.
Bob will also be speaking at a talk organized by the "Malaysian Free and Open Source Society" on Friday, 20th April 2007 at the Open University Malaysia Campus in Angkasa Raya building (beside KLCC -- Kuala Lumpur City Centre) on "The Shift to 'Open': Boost or Brakes for Innovation and Business". This talk would be of interest to those involved in the ICT industries (CEO, CTO's, software developers, technical managers and technology entrepreneurs should attend the talk). A panel discussion will follow after this talk. There is no registration required for this talk and more information is available here.
Leading ICT companies worldwide are moving towards open standards and open source. Open source is making significant headway into areas that were once the stronghold of proprietary software. Is this a fad or a genuine change in the IT industry? How will this affect your development practices and the skills that you need to acquire? Will we see more or less innovation as a result of greater cross-company and cross-border sharing of information formats and software source code? This talk will discuss the background motivating these questions and provide options as to their answers, as well as how things will shake out over the next five years.
Both talks are free so come early and enjoy yourself!
Yoon Kit wrote on Why OpenDocument Format matters to Malaysians in The Edge on 19 March 2007. In Texas, USA on Monday, 26 March 2007 Bob Sutor delivered a testimony to the Texas House and Senate regarding the open document format legislation being discussed in the state.
Bob gave simple, clear and strong messages in the testimony. Although they are addressed to Texans, I feel that they are universal enough. Click here to read it. I also transcribed it below.
Continue reading "Why OpenDocument Format matters to Texans" »
While the effort to recognize ODF, the international standard ISO/IEC 26300 as a Malaysian Standard is in progress, there may be concerns that Malaysia is "rushing too fast" as a country into adopting this international standard and that there won't be any support if we were to deploy it locally. This fortunately is not the case, as there has been a large market share of ODF-implemented products in governmental bodies to date.
If you were to follow this link, you see a list of decisions by government bodies around the world to adopt office software supporting the ISO/IEC 26300 standard. The list is far from comprehensive and is only the tip of a very large iceberg.
The link also says that the Yankee Group in October 2005 put the OpenOffice.org market share among small and medium businesses at 19 per cent, up from the 6 per cent figure reported by Jupiter Research less than two years previously. One might suspect that software supporting the ISO/IEC 26300 today has a larger market share in government offices than among small and medium businesses.
The link describes the following countries/states/regions/cities which have adopted the international standard:
These nations are already enjoying the benefits of sovereignty, cost savings and increased choice in their applications to use.
Is Malaysia rushing? Or are we refusing delay, expediting opportunities? Leader or follower, we are certainly not alone!
If you haven't yet read the feature in yesterday's The Star newspaper, a letter written by Dinesh, here is the online version.
Here is the full text:
=======================================
Tuesday October 31, 2006
Making a case for open source
REFERRING to your Oct 17 article on Making Microsoft More Malaysian:
Like all things coming from Redmond these days regarding open-source software, Yasmin Mahmood was quick to latch on to the Mampu Open Source Masterplan and complain about "Malaysia favouring open-source software."
The truth of the matter is this is just a fallacy.
The Mampu Open Source Masterplan clearly states that all government procurement will still be done based on technical and financial merit, without preference for either open-source or proprietary software.
However, should two competing proposals be exactly equal in both financial and technical merit, then as a tie-breaker, open-source software would be preferred due to its inherent nature of providing the source code to the customer, in this case the government of Malaysia.
The benefits of being able to modify the software would swing the decision, when both financial and technical considerations are equal. However, this is a far cry from the assertion that Malaysia favours open-source, since it is only relevant in tie-breaker situations.
It must also be noted that Malaysia has joined a growing list of national, state and municipal governments worldwide who have such a policy in place and that we have also been held up by the United Nations as a case study in this policy.
Yasmin then goes on to imply that this has an adverse effect on intellectual property rights for software and that it will affect innovation.
Open-source software licensing is firmly based on an established intellectual property framework through copyrights. It is only through copyrighted intellectual property that open-source software licences hold their value and are possible.
As such, open-source software firmly believes in intellectual property copyright laws on software and thus contributes to the national intellectual property bank.
To imply that open-source software denies the IP rights of software developers and denies them economic value is misleading.
Furthermore, open-source software developers JBoss recent acquisition by Redhat for US$420mil (RM1.6bil) in addition to Oracle’s acquisition of Sleepycat Software certainly show that there is clear economic value in open-source companies.
For a developing nation like Malaysia, it is critical that we augment our national software capacity by getting involved in high end (and high value) software development.
Open-source software development gives us that opportunity by allowing us to participate and benefit from international and world leading software technologies like the Apache webserver, the Linux and FreeBSD operating systems as well as middleware and enterprise technologies like
PHP, JBoss, MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Dinesh Nair
www.openmalaysiablog.com
=======================================
It's not often that you read about something truly inspiring in the Malaysian civil service. Though they are a bunch of hardworking folk who run the engine of government, they sometimes are befuddled by technology and usually fall into the trap of believing what they vendor tells them. This is not always the case, though.
In these times, it is heartening to note the following snippet,
In a recent audit, he said it was found that the government was exposed to losses running into hundreds of millions of ringgit simply because civil servants did not peruse purchase agreements signed with vendors.
One example was the case where officers failed to understand the need for "source code" ownership, a computer program written by the programmer in a formal programming language such as Pascal, Basic, C and Java.
Without correctly interpreting this code, the computer system cannot be used to the maximum.
This also means that if the buyer is not thorough when reading the provisions of the purchase agreement, the system would still "belong" to the vendor under the copyright laws.
The buyer would also be unable to expand the program without paying millions of ringgit more for it in the form of proprietary licence fees.
He said it was therefore pertinent that all source codes and the relevant documents drafted in the various stages in the development of the government’s application system are owned by the government.
I did a short double take when I read that news article, published in the New Sunday Times on October 29, 2006. I fully expected the he in the article to be one of the more vocal members of the open source community, and was pleasantly surprised when I found out his identity.
He is none other than Tan Sri Ambrin Buang, Malaysia's Auditor-General.
Tan Sri Ambrin correctly identified why the MAMPU Open Source Masterplan exists. The ability to freely modify software from government procurement efforts leads to a lower cost of doing business and breaking the chains of vendor dependence. He further goes on to say,
If the source code belongs to the government, the development cost would only be one off when the pilot project is launched.
When there is a need to extend it to other government departments or agencies, the extra cost would only be for additional equipment, installation and testing.
As the man who's in charge of making sure our taxpayer funds are well spent, Tan Sri Ambrin's opinions are well taken. And if that's not enough, he goes on to prove that he really does get it right when he elaborates on the benefits of open source and having access to the source code,
- an integrated system between all ministries and departments
- the creation of an inter-operable system which could be upgraded as and when required
- doing away with monopoly — ministries and departments need not rely on the same vendor
- civil servants would be more adept at handling such systems.
I don't normally have a habit of cutting-n-pasting content without adding any of my own, but Tan Sri Ambrin Buang just said it all. Syabas, Tan Sri !
Read the full article in the NST.
Everyone should read this. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/when-standards-are-politi_b_32192.html
One key comment in this article:-
"Next year Microsoft will try to sell the public on it's latest file format -- "Open XML", which they are marketing as a "competitor" to ODF as an "open" data format. Open XML was described by one expert as a standard that only Microsoft could implement - similar to a job description custom made for a single job applicant."
Malaysia does not it seems have a significant creative and innovative developer community like that say in San Francisco and elsewhere so I suppose we are not up in arms over this issue. However most of the governments of the world are beginning to be aware of the major issue of being beholden to a single vendor for critical data. Consider historically, this particular vendor's track record in the legal space and the way it treats its competitors. It is not our intention to resort to the same tactics but in the interest of fair play, priority should be given to truly open standards. And here we need the Malaysian government's help. One must consider not just the technical aspects alone (which with proper motivation and participation can be developed - technically nothing is really impossible - within reason) but to support fundamental principles of good governance, equality and fair play.
This has to be good for aspiring Malaysian Technopreneurs as well. For one the ODF format will be much more portable from the perspective of cross platform availability in terms of applications from the many distros of Linux to even Windows based systems and will work consistently. Any one can create their own application either open or proprietary (not just Office suites but workflow apps as well as numerous others) and write to this format for transmittal to other systems without fearing that some arbitrary changes in the future that will affect the functionality of their applications in a detrimental and non competitive way. This does not happen because there is the OASIS governance process and the specifications for ODF is part of an open process involving many parties.
Adopting ODF is part of a strategy. The definition of a strategy is: having a vision of where you want to be and a step by step implementation plan on how get there. Can you see how ODF fits in Malaysia's ICT agenda? If you can't, well, then we (Malaysians) are in deep trouble.....
Mansur
Fox the fox
Rat the rat
You can ape the ape
I know about that
There is one thing you must be sure of
I cant take any more
Darling, dont you monkey with the monkey
Monkey, monkey, monkey
Dont you know you're going to shock the monkey
So goes Peter Gabriel's seminal 1982 classic, Shock the Monkey. He's now done something even more revolutionary, Gabriel has released the separate musical components of the song and invited the Internet to remix it into anything they'd like. He's even running a contest to pick the best remix, of which 700 entries have already been submitted.
By essentially open sourcing Shock The Monkey, Gabriel and his record label intend to tap on to the collective creativity of the planet, inviting both fans and musical manipulators to innovate on something which was by itself a revolution. This worldview is a far cry from the established music industry which is lobbying hard for the inclusion of barriers in the form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) into software and settop boxes as well as working just as hard to shut down P2P networks.
Inviting collaboration and participation for creative works is something the Internet was designed to do, just as Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave us HTTP because he wanted to share research documents. The spirit of openness inherent within the structure of the Internet is deeply embedded within the culture of the Internet generation. In spite of the efforts of some to close down on openness and sharing, folk like Peter go a long way towards letting us know that embracing the technological and cultural changes are much more fruitful than denying them.
Well done for your Sledgehammer move, Peter !
I want to be your sledgehammer
Why dont you call my name
Oh let me be your sledgehammer
This will be my testimony
Show me round your fruitcage
cos I will be your honey bee
Open up your fruitcage
Where the fruit is as sweet as can be
Image: One of the Tak Nak campaign posters (click image to view full size)
Last month I presented ODF - Towards True Open Standards (in ODF .odp format - right click and save) at the MNCC-CICC-OUM Asia OSS Training 2006 in Kuala Lumpur. During Q&A, a participant gave me a very interesting suggestion.
He said since I am promoting ODF, open standards and everything "open", why don't I get the Malaysian Government to run a national campaign on "open"?
After all, he reminded the participants and I, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage have spent millions running the Tak Nak (Don't Want) anti-smoking campaign (hmm... women smokers I know don't have teeth that bad -- no wonder the campaign flopped) and the Budi Bahasa Budaya Kita (Courtesy Our Culture) campaign.
Yeah, I responded. Why not? Possibly something I will bring up to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
For ODF, perhaps it will be along the line of the ODF T-shirt design that cafepress.com is selling. Like the one shown here.
The tagline there reads "OpenDocument - The choice that lets you choose" coming from the OpenDocument Fellowship. Try translating that: "DokumenTerbuka - pilihan yang membenarkan anda memilih." Yucks, doesn't sound right. Okay, okay, we need to put more heads together to get the right words.
The ODF icon options proposed by the OpenDocument Fellowship will certainly be considered.
Then there will be other "open" messages (open standards, open source, etc.) to be considered in such a campaign. Or should we not dilute the campaign with too many messages?
If Datin Siti Nurhaliza sings Budi Bahasa Budaya Kita (Courtesy Our Culture), now who should we get to sing for our Open Malaysia campaign? Perhaps the band Disagree?
I might just bring this up at the next ODF SIG meeting...!
In the chase for digital dominance in the region, Singapore has just fired another one of its guns. The Infocomm Development Authority has announced that it intends to turn 48 highly populated areas of the city-state into free 802.11 WiFi hotspots for the public.
The service will be provided by 3 of their existing WiFi hotspot providers; iCell, QMax and Singtel. To sweeten the motivation for the providers, the IDA is even willing to fund up to S$30 million of the expected S$100 million it'll cost to do this. While I think that S$100 million seems like an excessively large number, the point that counts is that the IDA will subsidize the rollout of WiFi coverage which will be provided free of charge (for 2 years) to everyone.
That's the clincher, right there. The ubiquitous availabity of free WiFi in these highly trafficked areas will undoubtedly lead to an increase in IP telephony calls made from WiFi and SIP enabled GSM mobiles (see here and here). Converged network, here we come !
Singapore seems to be taking the first concrete steps with strong government-led motivation and support to build a converged communications infrastructure in the country. By leveraging of the ubiquitous WiFi access point and the economies of scale and availability which millions of chipsets have generated, they're clearly setting in place the foundation for what they hope to achieve. On our side of the forgotten Scenic Bridge, we are still chasing elusive dreams of WiMAX and 3G and to our loss, ignoring the humble 802.11 WiFi protocol.
By providing the access network, Singapore will also be able to deregulate its telecomms industry much faster as consumers would be able to get CLASS 5 and other PBX-type services from their IP PBXes back in the office, thus weaning them further away from the dominance of telecomms monopolies.
Features like One Number and Call Forwarding, FindMe, FollowMe as well as local transfers and conference calls can all be enjoyed by consumers as long as their enterprise IP PBX provides these services, freeing them from the chains which bind to their cellular providers.
It is really heartening to see Singapore take these first steps towards opening up access in the telecommunications space. They must have pondered long and hard over the pros and cons of this move, and clearly the IDA's offer of subsidy is testament to the faith they have in the converged network.
I just can't wait get turn on my Nokia E61 and enjoy connectivity to my office IP PBX and both outgoing and incoming calls through our fixed line without having to fork out huge roaming charges.
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.
Much has been said by all and sundry about the need to Beli Barang Buatan Malaysia. And yet, the common lament among local innovators is that they just don't get opportunities when it comes to procurement, both by government and by the private sector. The latest to make this call is none other than the Prime Minister,
Give local inventors and their products a chance. This is Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s message to Malaysians with a penchant for imports.
Abdullah said Malaysians were generally sceptical when it came to locally made products, but embraced imports without question.(October 8th, 2006)
The PM's message is very apt, as the mindshare and perception problems faced by Malaysian innovators is both very real and entrenched in the psyche of the nation. Too often we find that an imported solution is used, inspite of the availability of much better locally developed solutions. As a result, the local innovators will eventually find their funds (and support) drying up and much worse, lose the enthusiasm to further innovate in their respective fields. The net result would be the slow but steady colonization of our industries and our economy by foreign companies.
I've been told many times by well-meaning folk that we should actually be basing our company in Europe or the United States, and from there make our approach into the Malaysian market. Apparently, we would be more accepted through this method as we'd be seen as an imported solution. Coupled with our technological advances, this would (they say) make us a shoo-in for projects we submit proposals for.
Many a time, I find it hard to disagree with this line of thought. To do this however would raise our costs of production, and this in return will result in a higher price paid by the Malaysian customer. To top it all off, this just seems to silly given that the solution originates in Malaysia, and is worked on by Malaysians and would be supported from Malaysia by Malaysians. MSC notwithstanding, I think a better way needs to be found in order to address the issue. The cause of the problem should be eradicated.
For the mindset to change, an impetus with far reaching impact should be made. The cause of the problem lies deep within the Malaysian psyche, which is still shackled by the mantles of colonialism when it sees imported solutions as being better. This malaise rests in all sectors of our industries. To make a change here and to bootstrap the local software development capacity of Malaysia would be the single most influential thing any administration could do.
While preferential policies may raise the ire of "fair and balanced" arguments by the US and the WTO, the fact that the present situation is unbalanced viz a viz, the unwritten preference for imports over supposedly inferior locally developed solutions. Procurement of government solutions should be made on a truly fair and balanced basis, with local solutions being evaluated on par with foreign solutions. This would require greater enforcement by the relevant agencies to ensure that such practices are maintained and that personal preferences for imports do not creep into procurement decisions.
Building our local software capacity and our technological prowess will provide a strong impetus to our future economy, as the reliance on imports and foreign exchange are reduced. Short sightedness in proliferating the perception that imports are better irrespective will only serve to harm our innovation and domicile us as industrial colonists in the long run.
The change has to happen now, and words must be translated into concrete action one way or another.
When engineers build roads, they're usually faced with what seem to be insurmountable barriers in the form of ridges, hills and mountains blocking the proposed path of the highway. There are two ways around this, to either reroute the highway around the barrier or the more brute force method of going straight through it.
If they choose the latter option, splitting a mountain is by no means an easy task. Thousands of years of geological growth is not going to allow itself to be broken apart easily. Engineers however sometimes use the strength of Mother Nature against herself. A common way of splitting mountains is to make cracks in the mountain, and then pour gallons of water into the cracks. They then freeze the water and take advantage of the fact that the volume of water will expand when it becomes ice. The expansion of the freezing water pushes the cracks apart and the mountain is then slowly broken into two by the forces of nature and physics.
Just like freezing water splitting a mountain, the opening up of the telecommunications mountain by IP telephony is breaking down barriers artificially put in place by legacy providers. The continuing growth of the Sessions Initiation Protocol (SIP) commonly used for IP telephone calls and its near ubiqutous availability is allowing individuals and enterprises to wean themselves away from their providers and at the same time take a firm grip on their communications needs. 
Because SIP is an IETF open standard, anyone can implement a SIP stack into their software. We are increasingly seeing the IP telephony enablement of traditional enterprise applications like ERP, HR, financial and operational systems and this is a good harbinger of the converged network. Some legacy handset manufacturers have read the writing on the wall and have either released or have plans to release SIP enabled GSM mobiles. I wrote about one such device by Nokia, the E61 which I use on a daily basis. D-Link will soon release a WiFi/GSM handset which is based on Linux and contains a SIP client as well.
These two will not be the last SIP enabled devices either. As more of these devices proliferate in the marketplace, enterprises are going to realise that there is a whole lot more their communications systems can do for them through open standards and interoperability. True interoperability which is based on open standards would make it trivial to connect your enterprise's IP PBX with your Web 2.0 AJAX driven application. Our developers at QubeConnect, led by Ditesh, are exploring this right now and are producing some really cool applications based on Javascript, AJAX and Firefox plugins.
For this growth to sustain however, the adherence to the SIP standard has to be complete and clear. Too often, vendors are known to bastardize a standard in order to create an intentionally non interoperable product in order to lock in customers. Nowhere is this practice more pervalent than in the telecommunications industry, as even we've experienced before when attempting interoperability with a very large legacy equipment vendor.
Additionally, regulators should also be wary of telecomms operators who accidentally on purpose block SIP calls over their ISP networks. Wary of the next generation network eating into the revenues of their incumbent parent, these ISPs usually try to stall these moves until they have a competing service in the market and then use less than ethical practices in QoS to show why their service is better than rival players.
But like water eating into cracks and breaking up the mountain, the flow of openness in the telecommunication sector will erode the barriers which are put in place. As more enterprises and individuals go towards IP telephony, the relevance of monopolies of old will become less of a factor. This includes companies like Skype, popular though they may be, who are still based on closed and unpublished standards to create a walled garden for their subscribers.
Communications is all about being open and connected, and we are not going to be able to get this done well if we practice a closed approach to the matter.
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.
Three months ago, I wrote on neighbouring Singapore's Resolvo Systems launching their beta online training portal, OpenOffice.org Computer-Based Training (OO.CBT). Yesterday, Mark Nguan, Programme Manager at Resolvo emailed me to inform me that they have officially launched the portal!
Excerpts from Mark's email:
Resolvo believes that this is possibly the first OpenOffice.Org online training portal that provides comprehensive step-by-step interactive flash tutorials, knowledge base with search by topic/keywords capability, humorous animation coupled with online quizzes to measure pass rate for users.
Recent development of OpenOffice.Org has been very positive, especially now that Open Document Format (ODF), the format which OpenOffice.Org uses, has become an ISO standard since May 2006.
"This project is symbolic for everyone in Resolvo. We have always been strong advocate of OpenOffice.Org adoption. Since our last big win with Singapore Ministry of Defense in a project that leads to migration of 25,000 users to OpenOffice.Org, we have been exploring how we can further contribute to drive even wider adoption. One of the top concerns we gathered over time is the user re-training cost. Therefore, we thought the best way to address this concern is to have a D.I.Y learning portal for the users." said Yap Boon Leong, Resolvo's business development director.
Resolvo also hopes to explore partnership with various Linux desktop operating system vendors on extending value of their current Linux desktop O/S (usually comes default with OpenOffice.Org) with this training portal.
Access to this portal is FREE for individual/home use. For corporate, there is a free trial version available online.
Go check it out! When I wrote about it in June, one reader, Dennis Lee found the beta version to be "very impressive".
Continue reading "OpenOffice computer based training - Part 2" »
One thing which has become quite clear with the prolification of the Internet is that openness is now a business principle which has been made dominant. The rise of service oriented architectures, Web 2.0 (AJAX, XML-RPC and SOAP) for example could only be made possible if we're all interconnecting over standards based interfaces.
A closed model wouldn't work here as all we'd be doing would be to build inpenetrable silos of applications and information. There're so many different ways of doing this, mostly adhoc and undocumented, that the business applications people have come together to strategize on a common way of talking to each other. This is a Good Thing™ in more ways than one, and sends a very strong signal to the proprietary vertical applications people (SAP, Oracle) that they'd better buck up or see themselves being made irrelevant.
From a recent WiReD article,
One day in 1995, Marc Benioff, then a senior VP at Oracle, was trolling a new Web site called Amazon.com. He clicked on the Buy button, and a thought struck him: Applications on the Web were the opposite of Oracle’s bloatware. They executed transactions through a simple interface that was available to anyone on the Internet. Web standards made it unnecessary for customers to install, upgrade, or maintain anything but a browser and a TCP/IP connection. “I thought, ‘This is amazing,’ Benioff says. “I saw the power of an open-standard platform.”
Like Benioff, who went on to co-found Salesforce.com, many people have had the same epiphany. There is a clear understanding that only in aggregating all our guns into the same bunker can we exponentially multiply our business firepower[1]. The removal of these silos then become a critical factor in the effective utilization of the information bank, and the integration of a smooth and flawless user experience.
It's a simple epiphany, but one which has tremendous groundbreaking capability in refining our industry.
[1] A convoluted turn of phrase and mixed metaphors, but it's a lazy afternoon so the brain cells aren't too active.
Photo: Irving Wladawsky-Berger
I have blogged about Open Innovation and the Global CEO Study 2006, Open Innovation in Government - Part 1 and Open Innovation in Government - Part 2, and will continue with Open Innovation in Government - Part 3 soon.
In the meantime, I thought readers may be interested in posts by an active senior corporate blogger, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President, Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM Corporation. Irving blogs about once a week on "A collection of observations, news and resources on the changing nature of innovation and the future of information technology."
I especially draw your attention to two of his posts related to his viewpoints on innovation and the Global CEO Study 2006:
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:
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:
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.
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.
Continue reading "Open innovation and the Global CEO Study 2006" »
The one big fillip open standards gives us is the ability for different people and organizations to communicate. That, in essence, is the prime aim of open standards: to ensure that we are all going to be speaking the same language.
Nowhere has this been proven in practice more than the Internet. Everyday tasks like sending an email, reading a blog or online newspaper or even googling something up is made possible because the standards which define how information is sent across the network are mature and have been implemented the same way by everybody. This has resulted in a very connected world.
The same revolution is now taking place in the telecommunications industry. We are beginning to see the true convergence of voice and data, as Voice over IP services are now becoming the norm for phone calls. No, I am not talking about using a VoIP provider to save a few sen on your long distance or international calls, but rather the backbone which delivers your voice between any two elements of the network.
Today, telecommunications operators are increasingly using packet voice networks over IP trunks to deliver even traditional fixed line telephone traffic. Clearly, they're moving away from traditional circuit switched TDM networks. What this enables us however is more exciting than just discounted long distance and international calls. It enables us to finally make that jump across the chasm towards an open network which combines voice, video and information.
End user devices, like the Nokia E61 I recently acquired, are beginning to have both WiFI 802.11 connectivity as well as a builtin SIP VoIP client. This allows the same phone to be used both as a 3G/GSM mobile as well as an office phone extension when paired together with our IP PBX. Incoming calls, either on my GSM number or my DID direct line are delivered to the same phone, and I get to make the choice to either use VoIP or GSM for my outgoing calls. Admittedly, this is still treated like a separate application by the phone device itself, but it heralds the changing mindset among the legacy telecommunications players.
They are now beginning to see that being open and allowing seamless interconnection between Internet based devices and legacy telecommunications elements has benefits far beyond the sum of its parts. While at the onset, with so many differing interoperability standards, this may take a while to happen, we will soon however begin to see intermediate technologies which bridge the pervailing telecomms infrastructure with Internet infrastructure in an invisible way.
Invisible because it will be virtually indistinguishable to the user, as voice carriers start ditching their TDM backbones and replace them with pure IP links. The growing emergence of IPv6, and the additional options it enables, will acccelerate the interconnectivity between the currently disparate networks.
What's interesting about this, and the point of this entry, is that without open standards and interoperability, this would just be a pipe dream instead of the next wave of communications.
Interesting, isn't it ?
A good way to start the morning is by reading that yet another government has decided to move to free software, Croatia in this case. In the article by Nick Farrell with the tagline "Apply Open Sauce on the Balkans", the following was noted:
It's good to read this. The Croation government must be hungering for success and hoping that "open sauce" would be their recipe to do so.
This measure, strong as it is, must be augmented with a focus on open standards as a measure to ensure interoperatibility and allowing for free access to information for all citizens. Free software and open standards work hand in hand in building resilient IT governance policies. A preference policy for free software is ineffective if procurement and policies are based on proprietary and defacto standards. Free software may not be able to fulfill requirements of such policies due to issues that arise from licensing and effective implementation concerns. In this vein, it is good to hear that, as a start, the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit, MAMPU, is giving support to ODF in the Malaysian public sector.
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:
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:
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:
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:
Hasan then illustrated the OpenDocument Format succintly as follows:
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:
Feedback and comments are appreciated.
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'.- Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changing
I have many a times privately remarked to friends that Sun Microsystem's approach to the Free Software movement has been schizophrenic at best. Given Sun's considerable contributions to the Free Software community, this view may seem excessively harsh yet the facts do bear out the truth. Sun has certainly opened up the OpenOffice.org codebase under the popular LGPL, but this is followed by its CEO (COO in the past) Schwartz going on record to criticize the GPL as "a rather predatory obligation to disgorge all their IP back to the wealthiest nation in the world" [source]. Sun's tango-ing on the issue of free-ing the Java platform and it's obsessively tight control over the OpenSolaris platform have caused a negative flow of contributions (ideas moving out of the OpenSolaris codebase, but not inwards). Given Sun's strong engineering culture, its deep Unix roots and its support of free software in the past years, some of the positions taken by the top executives have been a cause of despair for those who see Sun being able to collaborate with the Free Software community in a constructive manner for both parties.
Despite all the hoopla Schwartz, Simon and other top Sun executives make about needing to protect Sun's "intellectual property"[1], it is clear to industry observers that such rhetoric is mainly aimed to appease Sun's shareholders, and that very few believe that Sun can credibly and legitimately be part of the Free Software movement and still have a strong "intellectual property" agenda. Putting the ideology and philosphy aside, the Free Software movement's greatest strength lies is in the network effect of sharing information and knowledge. The rapid advancement of free software packages in the last decade have had many contributing factors, but the ability of individuals to communicate, contribute and confluence trajectories of growth remain one of the defining characteristics of its success. And that fundamental characteristic is at complete and intractable odds with the absolute control that is defining hallmark of traditional intellectual rights regime.
Governer Tarkin: Princess Leia, before your execution, you will join me at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.
Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
So, is the Sun's past dazzling past truely dimming? Are the star systems that were its dominion slipping through and establishing new empires of their own? I can almost imagine Linus hurtling in his embattled X-Wing, RMS appearing in a ghostly form and saying "Use the source, Linus", and Linus firing that memorable shot that completely annihilates the Death Star. As analogies go, the Death Star was Sun's proprietary business model, the memorable shot was the release of the 2.2 Linux kernel and cheap x86 hardware, and the resulting ka-boom you hear is Sun's annihilated value in the enterprise Unix space.
Yet, despite all the eye-rolling that commences when Schwarz and Scott McNealy rhetorize on why Sun is still relevent in the 21st century, a happy ending for Sun may actually still be possible. I personally like where Sun has been heading in last year, both from a business perspective as well as from a community perspective. Consider its strong involvement in ensuring that the OpenDocument Format is truly open and unencumbered. Consider that Schwartz finally seems to have grokked the importance of open standards in leveraging market adoption. Consider that Sun is putting its weight behind the free software distribution Ubuntu for its hardware platform (it's earlier Linux JDS platform was based on the then closed Suse Linux platform). Schwartz, in a fundamental shift of strategies, has actually gone on to say that "on the hardware we ship, I don't want to be Solaris only, because then I will just define my market to be smaller than the opportunity". Consider that Sun has finally decided to free its Java platform (although negotiations on the fine print is still ongoing between Sun and the free software community leaders). Consider that Sun is expanding its OpenSolaris program in response to feedback received from community contributors. Consider that Sun is free-ing not just its software platform, but also its hardware platform ("Expanding SPARC beyond Solaris to Linux opens new markets for everyone." - source).
All of these are strong indicators that Sun has finally come to recognize that community engagement and opening the gates of innovation will lead to new market opportunities that Sun badly needs to monetize at this juncture. It's a risky move but at this point, Sun has little to lose. The line has been drawn, the curse has been cast, the times are surely are a-changin' and it is going to be an electrifying ride for Sun.
[1] If we had Millenium Prizes for Misnomers of the 20th Century, the phrase "intellectual property" would be leading the race to the finish line by a large margin.
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:
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!).
Intellectual Property, or IP in techspeak, is making a lot of news lately. Partly due to the misinformation spread around it in the push to get governments to legitimize software patents[1], it's come to mean many different things to different people. At the core of it all though, intellectual property as it applies to software should be only limited to copyrights, and not patents as many multinationals are pushing for and like the US Free Trade Agreement with Malaysia will most likely backdoor into our legislation.
A lot of people are pushing for increasing Malaysia's IP bank, and while I certainly do not agree with how they have defined intellectual property to be, the call still does have some fundamental basis. Malaysia has for too long depended on external sources for our technology, and the creation of indigenous software technology is paramount. It is for these reasons why I have long pushed to have our country increase it's software capacity. Software capacity is defined as the capability of a nation to utilize, create and manage complex and sophisticated software.
In the column, the MD of Microsoft Malaysia suggests a number of examples of companies which have built their own software capacity and are now quite successful on the global stage. However, these companies have done so on the back of infrastructure, tools and platform technologies based on closed source software.
By doing so, they have not contributed to the greater body of software knowledge. Open source software does not share this anomaly, and instead allows independent software vendors who've based their technologies on OSS to not only further the technological envelope, but also enhance the nation's software capacity.
The usual argument against open source software in enriching our IP bank however is that it generates no economic value as open source largely is distributed for very low costs. This argument fails to realise the value of the knowledge created, and the offshoots of increasing software capacity. In addition, the economic arguments also usually fail to take into account the tremendous economic value open source software companies have created for themselves.
Sleepycat a developer of an open source database engine, was recently acquired by Oracle. This may not stop there as Oracle is also rumoured to be interested in acquiring Zend Technologies who open source the very popular PHP web development language. Redhat, another NASDAQ company, has also bought JBoss, maker of the open source JBoss Java middleware stack for US$420 million. Sleepycat was profitable for over 9 years, before being acquired by Oracle.
Clearly, there is economic value for companies who do open source inspite of the misinformation that only in closed source can one get returns of investment in software. Developing on open source however will increase our IP bank much, much quicker as more people get on the bandwagon and create wonderful software. Keeping this software closed definitely does not enrich our IP bank but only the bank accounts of companies who make the tools, platforms and infrastructure upon which these applications software are based on.
It is from this utilization of open source software that the fuel for our local software economy will be burnt together with the talent of Malaysian software developers to produce the next engine of growth.
[1] The European Parliament has voted to not recognize software patents, which was underscored with a recent clarification by the European Commission that software in Europe is not patentable.
It has been a growing trend for many countries as well as economic regions to explore procurement policies for free software and mandating open standards to ensure interoperatiblity and avoid vendor lock-in. This move has been vehemently opposed by several organizations as they wish to see a more "neutral stand" to ensure free market competition and the provision of sufficient legislation to protect the intellectual value of these companies.
Unfortunately, this "neutral stand" focuses on establishing de facto and RAND licensed standards, technological protection measures (TPM) as well mandating software patents - all of which work towards persisting existing monopolies, reducing competition and discouraging innovation.
The net effect of the proposed "neutral stand" is to effectively lock out competition:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
In a nutshell, the "neutral stand" is anything but, and those seeking to establish policies in these areas need to carefully examine the statements and representations made by these organizations.
Innovation happens in many ways.
It happens when we're engaged on the throne and the eureka! idea hits us. It happens when we hit a stumbling block, and a new solution to the problem is discovered through thought and error. It happens when you gather a group of open source hackers together for four days, and give them the freedom to rip something apart and put it together again.
That's exactly what happenned for four days last week in Pisa, Italy. It was AstriDevCon Europe 2006. 96 hours of hacking on the source code of Asterisk, the open source PBX and engineering the architecture for the 1.6 release of the software. The open flow of ideas, of immediate coding spurts followed by innecessant chatter on subversion commit conflicts, this is what innovation in the new economy is all about.
It's a mixture of collaboration, open discussion, open standards and sharing which results in innovation today. The mantle of innovation is no longer carried by the cathedrals which hid it behind layers of protocol, secrecy and control. Innovation is the very act of advancing our science to the next step, and in doing so, advances the capabilities of our species. Sharing our ideas is the very act of enhancing innovation in the new economy, not hiding it behind layers of laywers and legalese.
By being a party to this cultural and economic upheaval of openness, we enable ourselves to determine our future and our existence. Openness cultivates the sharing of information and knowledge, instead of encouraging them to be locked within the cathedrals of old. Sharing can only happen when we are open, for a common language and a common format we need to adopt.
Openness, collaboration, open source, innovation, open standards. Understand them well, for polluted their meanings have been by those misled into getting the wrong facts.
With a new standard adopted by the ISO, ODF, our daily output of documents, spreadsheets and presentations can now be shared by all, the information is free to flow from mind to mind. No longer will we be tied to proprietary standards which change in every software release. Any software can now read and write ODF, freedom of choice is provided for.
Open the gates of knowledge...
"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'...
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