The Prime Minister's Office of the Government of Iceland has released their policy on Free and Open Source Software. Reading it shows that the policy is well thought through. In the introduction itself, the policy states that:

"Free and open-source software is expanding rapidly all over the world, having already earned recognition as a realistic option when selecting information technology solutions. Such software has brought competition to a market previously dominated by a relatively small number of suppliers. Rather than hindering this trend, it is important for governmental authorities to support it and allow for its continued development, since the use of free and open-source software can reduce the ties of businesses, the authorities and the public to individual suppliers or service providers, thereby cultivating greater choice.

There are numerous factors, particularly the expense of proprietary software, which call for noting the possibilities involved in using free and open-source software. These possibilities add weight to recommendations stemming from cooperative projects and international organisations, such as the European Union and Nordic Council, that free competition be promoted in these matters. Public bodies are at the same time encouraged to utilise the power of their size to push for the use of free and open-source software. In fact, most of Iceland's neighbouring countries have already formed policies on such software."

The policy itself consists of five simple yet effective action items:

Point 1: When purchasing new software, free and open-source software and proprietary software are to be considered on an equal footing, with the object of always selecting the most favourable purchase.

Observation: The Malaysian MAMPU open source policy was similar in nature except that it was sensible in the sense  that it required preference to be given to open source software when all other considerations were of equal merit. This policy was under intense lobbying to be overturned from Microsoft Malaysia and its various fronts (such as CompTIA and IASA) in the interest of technology neutrality, which was a silly argument considering that technology neutrality benefited the proprietary Microsoft stack status quo and did not benefit the entire industry as a whole.

Point 2: Every endeavour shall be made to choose software based on open standards, regardless of whether the software in question is standard or bespoke (custom-designed). Generally, software which is free for anyone to use is also typified by open standards.

Observation: The focus on open standards is timely and wise. Open standards increase choice for users and vendors alike so it works to the benefit of all. However, a reference to a definition of open standards would prove useful as certain vendors have been known to fudge the definition of open standards and confuse the debate.

Point 3: Public bodies shall endeavour to avoid any undue dependence on particular software manufacturers or service providers. The utilisation of free and open-source software is one means of this.

Point 4: One goal for bespoke (custom-designed) software financed by public bodies, including software for research and development projects, should be its reusability. Keeping the software free and open-source is one way to achieve reusability. Strategies shall be devised at the outset of such projects for ensuring reuse of the software.

Point 5: Students in Icelandic educational institutions shall be given the opportunity of learning about and using free and open-source software on a par with proprietary software.

Observation: I love point no 5. Day in and day out, I encounter fresh university graduates who have been trained on proprietary software platforms and know very little about the fundamentals of computer science. They are really point-and-click developers (think Visual Basic) who are just denied from learning about the fundamentals thanks to the opaque interface provided by the proprietary platforms. By comparison, every single graduate with an open source background shines primarily because he/she has been able to grok and plumb the software stack to their hearts content. Being able to learn through open source software is a big big win and will reap benefits for the Iceland ICT industry for years to come.

All in all, good stuff from the Icelandic government. Let's hope more European governments follow suit!

The Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has announced that the agency will be migrating to OpenOffice.org office suite as well as adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF). In addition, Microsoft Office is to be phased out by end of 2008. The press release follows:

Putrajaya, 19th March 2008 - The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), today officially adopts a policy to migrate to the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite. This is in line with the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Master Plan, which calls for government agencies to reduce costs, increase freedom of choice and interoperability.

From April 1st, MAMPU will start adopting the OpenDocument Format (ODF), standard for all new documents created. ODF the ISO open standard for electronic documents is also the default format for OpenOffice.org. The agency will also uninstall all copies of Microsoft Office by the end of 2008.

To ensure a smooth migration, presently over 80 agency staff have been trained by the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC). Additional staff will then be trained internally by the IT department, which will also provide support for OpenOffice.org.

[Update by Hasan, 1:32 PM, 19 March 2008: Below are my translations of the MAMPU 2-page policy statements on the move to OpenOffice.org and ODF]

--- Page 1, originally Polisi Penggunaan OpenOffice.org MAMPU (in Malay) ---

The case for open source software has been made with general acceptance of its promise of better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost. Now is the time to hasten execution.

Y.Bhg. Tan Sri Sidek Hassan
Chief Secretary to the Government of Malaysia
December 2007

OPENOFFICE.ORG USAGE POLICY

1. Document distribution

a) Internal within MAMPU, in the basic OpenOffice.org format

b) Going outside of MAMPU, in PDF format if not necessary to be edited and in OpenOffice.org or MS Office if to be edited

2. All preparation of documents need to use standard fonts that have been stipulated.

3. Mandatory for every PC or Notebook to have OpenOffice.org that has been stipulated.

4. Every MAMPU citizen need to own OpenOffice.org to support prevalent usage of OpenOffice.org.

5. Before 1 April 2008, every user need to complete back-up of MS Office documents.

6. From 1 April 2008, new documents need to be produced using OpenOffice.org and templates that have been stipulated.

7. From 1 July 2008, MS Office software will be uninstalled from every PC and notebook.

Released on 19 March 2008

--- End of Page 1 ---

--- Page 2, originally Mengapa Bertukar Kepada OpenOffice.org (in Malay) ---

Increased Interoperability, reduced costs and vendor lock-in, and increased growth of knowledge-based society are among the compelling reasons for moving in this direction.

Dato' Normah Binti Md yusuof
Director General MAMPU
Prime Minister's Department
December 2007

WHY CHANGE TO
OPEN OFFICE.ORG?

1. Saves software licensing cost

2. Prevents supplier lock-in situations

2. Increases compatibility and interoperability

4. Stimulates growth of local ICT industry

5. Aligned with Malaysian Public Sector OSS Master Plan

--- End of Page 2 ---

Marc O'Brien of Projity sent this email:

Hello everyone,

I just read your latest ODF newsletter.... Projity has come to the open source party with our announcement at LinuxWorld.  We announced OpenProj, a complete free and open source replacement of Microsoft Project.  Project is part of the Office family of solutions and has been a key strategic solution for Microsoft without any alternatives...... OpenProj has been downloaded an average of every 23 seconds around the clock since we launched and are already in the Top 10 applications in Sourceforge.  We are hitting 100,000 downloads in our first full month... on our way to 7-11 million users :-)

OpenProj is free and open source software that is a complete replacement for Microsoft Project. OpenProj has equivalent functionality, opens native Microsoft Project files and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows.  Microsoft Project resides on 7% of all Office desktops and is part of the Office family of solutions (retail is $1,000 or to be precise $999.99).   However, Project is not included in any Office Suites so it is not pre-installed on any computers which means even Windows users need to purchase very expensive software for their project needs.  OpenProj is free and also cross platform.  It is interesting that Microsoft's market far exceeds $1billion a year and drives their other business software solutions as it is by far their most popular business program.

The leaders in the marketplace have clearly identified the problem without an alternative to Project.  This is now resolved with the OpenProj release which is why this is so important.  We are already eating into their business and expect 100,000 downloads at some point in September.  In addition, there are roughly 100 million OpenOffice users worldwide and an enormous additional market worldwide. We expect the 7% ratio to actually increase since there are no budgetary constraints.  This puts OpenProj usage in a very large pool of users.......    I have pasted a couple of articles below.  We have English, French and Spanish versions and will have additional languages shortly.  You can see the French screenshot in the attached photo.  If you want to download OpenProj feel free (download here).   

All best and hopefully we can get some coverage in your markets,

Marc

Here is a nice article out last week that really speaks to the impact Projity is having on Microsoft.  The link is here ... here is an excerpt.

"It’s not often I get to review a product that seems to have no downside. I sometimes feel I should say something negative just to show I’m neutral and balanced. But honestly, with OpenProj, I’m struggling to say anything bad about it. What Projity has done is astonishing. Well done guys."

Hasan's comment: I haven't downloaded and used OpenProj yet -- those who have, please let us know what you think.

.
28 August 2007
Microsoft bashed in OOXML shens (and comparing loos)
By Richi Jennings
A digest of blog posts alleging Microsoft improprieties on the ISO ballot for OOXML, including shenanigans in Sweden and Norway.
Computerworld: http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/6099

27 August 2007

Open standards dilemma/Technology neutrality in question
By Tech&U Team

The article still got it confused by saying that this Malaysian public sector adoption of open standards is for eventual migration to the open source platform (see first paragraph of the main article).

Anyway, detractors are howling that the Malaysian Government adoption of ODF is against "technology neutrality."

Not so, say open standards advocates.

• Malaysian National Computer Confederation:  "There are many software out there that support ODF, so having an open standard document format will be good for end users to choose the software of their preference."

• Malaysia Open Source Software Alliance: "All companies and organisations in Malaysia can choose to adopt open standards without paying any royalties. This is because standards are not applications, interoperability is guaranteed, and competition is spurred."

Malaysia NST emedia: http://www.emedia.com.my/TECH/Computimes/Highlight/20070827111240/wartrevamp

Malaysia NST Tech&U (Scanned copy below - click image for full view):

24 August 2007
The world's fastest-growing economies reject Microsoft
By Matt Assay
"First it was China. Now India and Brazil. The rout of Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) standardization efforts is now essentially complete. When the world's fastest growing economies reject Microsoft, Microsoft has a problem."
CNet News: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9765759-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

23 August 2007
Microsoft kills its ‘Get the Facts’ anti-Linux site
By Mary Jo Foley
"Microsoft has finally acknowledged that its anti-Linux site had gone past the point of usefulness.  On August 23, Microsoft pulled plug on the 'Get the Facts' site, replacing it with a new Windows Server 'Compare' site.  I heard earlier this year that Microsoft intended to kill off the Get the Facts site. But Microsoft told me, at that time, I should get my facts straight, and that there was no intent to do away with the site."
ZDNet: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/index.php?p=670

.

Edwin Yapp from ZDNet interviewed us at openmalaysiablog a few weeks ago. His article entitled "Open source gathers steam in Malaysia" describes accurately the environment here in Malaysia as of today.

"Ditesh cited a recent Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) World survey of Malaysia, which stated employers in the country generally value OSS skills, and noted that this is particularly evident during job interviews. "This indicates a strong preference for OSS by Malaysian companies," he said."

It a good day for Malaysia at ZDNet with regards to the growing momentum of FOSS in this country. Just yesterday, Lynn Tan reported "Malaysia formally embraces Open Document Format" which is the starting point of the slow but steady migration exercise of leveraging the OpenDocument Format in the government.

This trend justifies the decision made by Malaysia to support FOSS products back in 2002.

"Malaysia stands out in FOSS, mainly because there's a fairly well-organized FOSS movement, the media is FOSS-aware, and there is support from the government for FOSS usage," said C.P. Loo, country sales director, Sun Microsystems Malaysia.

And although a certain vendor and its lobbyists would declare the removal of the "preference" back in December 2006 as a victory, its not clear that a simple editorial job will not dampen the rise and rise of FOSS usage. Rather, the term "Technology Neutrality" leads a bright light towards a certain path towards Open Standards where, FOSS provides the best choices for consumers in both the private and public sectors.

"...  we can surmise that organizations in emerging countries such as Malaysia, would leverage OSS from the beginning to avoid vendor lock-in," said Prianka Srinivasan, Asia Pacific market analyst at IDC's software research group, "... OSS is now used in almost all verticals and in different software stacks as there is sufficient support from OSS vendors."

Despite FOSS being childishly name-called "cancerous", educated developers too can easily reap the rewards without the fear of viral infection:

"And as an independent software vendor (ISV), our ability to develop and improve our core application framework engine is enhanced with the usage of some OSS components. This is a huge plus point for us," [KeshMahinder Singh, CEO of Profitera]

Thanks for reporting, ZDNet.

yk.

[Update 15th August 2007 12:15pm : The title of the ZDNet article has now changed from "Malaysia embraces open docs format" to the more accurate title of "Malaysia embraces Open Document Format". It is still grammatically in error, and not entirely accurate, as it should read "Malaysia embraces the OpenDocument Format", but ah well, we take what we get]

Again with thanks to my colleagues who have been compiling related articles on these, here's a digest of 23 pieces of news and articles on ODF, OOXML and the open source scene over the last one month from 05 July 2007 to 26 July 2007.

26 July 2007
Office Open XML ISO certification process grows even murkier for Microsoft
By Jeremy Reimer
The general trend among non-US countries is for rejection of the Office Open XML fast-track proposal, with many nations voicing objections to the process and some to the file format itself."  Events in South Africa and Portugal ("a comedic farce," according to the reporter) are described.
ARS Technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070726-office-open-xml-iso-certification-process-grows-even-murkier-for-microsoft.html

25 July 2007
ODF: The inevitable format
By T. Colin Dodd
"Opponents of the ODF devote considerable resources to lobbying legislatures and executive branch IT advisory boards in an attempt to convince them that the adoption of the ODF actually limits choice..."
Red Hat Magazine: http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/07/25/odf-the-inevitable-format

25 July 2007
Microsoft: INCITS standards committee will approve Open XML
By Elizabeth Montalbano
Correspondent Liz Montalbano takes Microsoft to task for falsely claiming that an advisory committee for the U.S. national body had approved ooXML.  Bob Sutor is quoted, calling for more openness in revealing how Microsoft is influencing ISO national body deliberations.
InfoWorld: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/25/standards-committee-undecided-on-Open-XML_1.html

24 July 2007
Now It's Spain and OOXML - More Standards Highjinks?
By Pamela Jones
The Andalusia region of Spain has "sent an official letter of protest to the president of the technical committee deciding whether or not to accept OOXML as an ISO standard, denouncing what it called an attempt by Microsoft to manipulate the process by selectively quoting from a letter from the Andalusian government back in January as if it were an endorsement of OOXML as an ISO standard today."
Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070723235113424

24 July 2007
World awaits crucial votes on Microsoft's Open XML
By Martin LaMonica
An ANSI committee confirmed that it had not yet reached a recommendation on how the US standards body will vote on ooXML.  A passage from a recent Bob Sutor's blog post is quoted:  "The fundamental question is whether a large company with a lot of money and business partners will essentially be able to stack committees so that they are out of balance and therefore buy an ISO standard. I, for one, do not think this is appropriate. I doubt ISO does either."
CNet: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9749069-7.html

24 July 2007
Double standards
By Leslie D`Monte
India may be inclined to disapprove of OOXML as an ISO standard.  Reasons cited include threats to sovereignty and the confusion of a duplicate document format.
Business Standard (India): http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?leftnm=lmnu9&subLeft=&autono=292022&tab=r

23 July 2007
Update on the US Vote on OOXML (and What Happens Next)
By Andy Updergrove
"I conducted an extensive interview over the weekend with an individual that is a member of both the V1 Technical Committee as well as the INCITS Executive Board in order to learn the steps that have been agreed upon to finalize the US position, so that we may all make the best sense of what we read and hear between now and the conclusion of the comment period."
Stadards Blog: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070723044713169

23 July 2007
A computer battle that could change the world as you know it
By Jeremy Howard
The case for a single, neutral document standard, and the elimination of Microsoft's maketplace domination, is made forcefully here.
Parliamentary Brief (requires subscription): http://www.thepolitician.org/articles/a-computer-battle-571.html

23 July 2007
Study: Red Hat Benefiting from MS-Novell Deal Fallout
By  Peter Galli
A survey found that deployments of Red Hat Linux have grown twice as fast as those for Novell SUSE Linux since Novell signed its agreement with Microsoft.  The survey also found that governments were leading Linux adoption in Europe, while in the US, corporations led.
eWeek: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2161500,00.php

20 July 2007
Proprietizing Standards
By Pamela Jones
Microsoft is misleading India's national body around the OOXML issue, and is being exclusionary in Portugal.  Meanwhile, Google is saying no to OOXML.
Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070720073215943

20 July 2007
Patrick names MIT exec to Mass. CIO role
By Catherine Williams
"Gov. Deval Patrick has named MIT and Harvard technologist Anne Margulies as the state's new CIO."
Massachusetts High Tech: http://masshightech.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/07/16/daily39.html

19 July 2007
Open standards beat Microsoft 13 to 4
By James Archibald
"Microsoft's plans of having its OOXML document format accepted as a national standard were thwarted by a conclusive vote against the move in a meeting yesterday."
Tectonic (South Africa): http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1641

19 July 2007
Microsoft Faces Petition To Defeat Office 2007 Standard
By Paul McDougall
The Foundation For Free Infrastructure Information says that more than 20,000 people have signed a petition opposing ooXML.

18 July 2007
Open XML - US V1 Committee Vote and IBM Motivations
By Jason Matusow
In the comments section of this blog post by Microsoft's Jason Matusow, IBM's Rob Weir asks Jason Matusow:  "You also say that, 'Rob seems determined to question the motivations behind national body membership in Spain, Portugal and Italy as well.'  Where in the post do I do that? In fact, I'm not even aware of a problem in Spain.  Should I be?"
Matusow's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/archive/2007/07/18/open-xml-us-v1-committee-vote-and-ibm-motivations.php

More below...

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.

With thanks to my colleagues who have been compiling related articles on these, here's a selection of news, articles on ODF, OOXML and the open source scene over the last couple of weeks.

04 June 2007
In Other Words, Open Formats Surging Ahead
By Jonathan Eunice
The march of openness and open standards is progressing rapidly. This is causing Microsoft, the undisputed leader of the foregoing proprietary age and approach, to massively change its strategy and open up its own document format...
Illuminata Perspectives - http://www.illuminata.com/perspectives

04 June 2007
Microsoft Strikes A Deal With Linux Distributor Xandros
By Associated Press
Microsoft has persuaded a small Linux distributor to pay them patent royalties and to support Microsoft's ooXML document format.
San Jose Mercury News - http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_6058097?nclick_check=1

02 June 2007
Governing coalition to push for the adoption of open IT standards
Germany's "governing coalition would within the next two weeks submit a motion that would make open formats mandatory."  A legislator said that open formats refer to ODF, which "foster[s] competition between office applications."
Heise online - http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/90547

31 May 2007
The US OOXML discussion is public
By Bob Sutor
In a perfect world, we would know about and could see every committee email and every discussion regarding this and other standards deliberation. To the degree that the proceedings are closed, the standard is less open. ...
Bob Sutor's Open Blog - http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/index.php?p=1644

30 May 2007
A fight Microsoft can't win?
"If you can't beat 'em, tax 'em. That seems to be Microsoft's thinking in regard to the 'free and open-source software' movement."
Los Angeles Times - (registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-ed-microsoft30may30,1,4669333.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

30 May 2007
Canada requests OOXML comments
By Bob Sutor
The Standards Council of Canada is requesting comments from Canadians for the SCC's consideration of Microsoft's Office Open XML spec (OOXML) as an ISO standard. If you are eligible, you can leave your remarks from that page but you ...
Bob Sutor's IBM Blog - http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/index.php?p=1640

29 May 2007
A big surprise in your ISO standard
By Alex Neihaus
In a nutshell, ISO ain't open source. Far from it. The ISO is a super-bureaucracy of bureaucracies. Don't think for a minute that these standards-setting committees are like the open source projects which actually publish source code ...
3D Mojo - http://www.3dmojo.com/cad/a-big-surprise-in-your-iso-standard/2007/05/29/

29 May 2007
Norway Considers Using ODF, PDF Specs for National, Local Use; OOXML Lagging
"A Norwegian national hearing suggested making ODF and PDF compulsory for the Norwegian central government and recommended for use by local governments, but Office Open XML is not now under consideration..."
ICT Standardization - http://www.ictstandardization.com/news/200705/article20070577.html

26 May 2007
ODF en route to ANSI-dom
By Joel West(Joel West)
IBM's Bob Sutor -- who apparently believes in monopoly standards rather than competing standards -- sees efforts to provide choice as anti-consumer:. I believe the industry wants a common set of the fewest possible non-overlapping ...
Open IT Strategies - http://blog.openitstrategies.com/2007/05/odf-en-route-to-ansi-dom.html

26 May 2007
Bad Grace
By Rupert Goodwins
"despite its best efforts, Microsoft has been unable to integrate [ODF] properly with Office. Instead of having it as just another file format, to be opened, saved, converted, whatever, it has been shoehorned into its own strange, confined, ugly little world..."
ZDNet - http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10005378o-2000331777b,00.htm

On a day where Bill Hilf, Microsoft's platform strategy director, announces that the Free Software movement is dead, the news is out that the Japanese government intends to go the open source route by making Linux and open source software a priority for all its procurements. There are big bucks at stake - an estimated USD$10.4 billion will be spent on IT next year and the Japanese governtment has explicitly stated that it wishes to decrease its reliance from a single vendor (in this case Microsoft). The move by the Japanese government follows the policies of many other governments worldwide in adopting a positive open source policy.

The core reason to adopt open source policies is simple: the public sector must uphold vendor and technology neutrality in the interest of its citizens. The concept that technology neutrality boils down at some point to forcing all citizens to use a particular platform is just plain wrong, especially in this day and age where many choices exist and open standards allow for clean interoperatibility. A positive open source policy in the public sector ensures that the playing field is levelled and that the much maligned vendor lock-in problem is a problem of the past. More importantly, it allows for technology developers in the country to build their own intellectual rights portfolio by extending open source technology, and thus drive the country towards a strong and vibrant ICT economy where technology is created and monetized in areas where foreign software vendor dominance would have impeded their ability to do so in the past.

To give credit where its due, the Malaysian public sector has been rather good in ensuring that government web applications follow international open standards. Based on our interactions, we have met policy makers and technology professionals in the Malaysian public sector who understand that true citizen interaction and involvement on the Internet has to include all citizens, not just those who can afford paying RM1461 for a copy of Microsoft Windows Vista in a country where fresh university graduates can have a starting gross salary of RM1500.

There are, however, the occasional shortcomings. To illustrate a particular potent example, the Malaysian e-Filing tax system mandates the use of the Microsoft Windows platform. It also mandates the use of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, the version that has been infamously plagued by a slew of security problems for a number of years, causing a large scale grassroots migration to alternative browsers ("Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer"). Looking at the architecture of the e-Filing system, there is nothing that really requires the use of proprietary Microsoft technology. By using open standards, the e-Filing system will enjoy significantly larger usage among users of alternative browsers and operating system platforms.

In conclusion, with the world going open source and cherishing its technology freedoms, public sectors worldwide should strongly consider re-assessing their current applications to ensure that open standards are stringently followed.

Oh, and Bill Hilf should seriously consider attending any of the large grassroot FOSS conferences and understand that geeks worldwide working on Free Software really do believe in their efforts of allowing the world to have the choice of using free software on their systems. Hilf would also be well served to grok that Linux, PHP, Apache and all the other Free Software out there started off without any financial backing . The fact that companies monetize off it today only serve to indicate that Free Software works well with our existing free market economy. The logic does not follow that the current state of being indicates the reverse, as Hilf is claiming.

Having spent a long time in the FLOSS world both in community and industry roles, I started to see a serious disconnect between the industry and community perspectives on FLOSS about 5 years ago. I mean a disconnect that went beyond philosophical and into the practical, and this is largely because is a rapidly expanding userbase and industry around FLOSS. Community participants in FLOSS have a different understanding and expectation of openness than people in industry, and this difference is unfortunately being used to undermine the core values that make FLOSS more than just another technology set. The issue is that for all the well meaning of the 4 freedoms of the FSF or the Open Source Definition of the OSI, people can simply take those licences and not subscribe to any of the other attributes of openness that are expected of a FLOSS project and still get the good name of being a FLOSS project.

Openness has been proven time and time again to be the way forward. We saw it with TCP/IP, with HTTP, and now with FLOSS projects like Apache. Openness provides a platform for innovation, collaboration, an open and competitive market, and a sustainable approach to a digital future. In the same vein, a more closed approach may in some cases also be appropriate. For instance some  popular and successful FLOSS projects have relatively closed development models controlled by an individual or a single company. An understanding of the degree of openness in software helps people understand the implications of the software model and also the implications in using the software.

In the spirit of discovering the core principles of openness, I spent some time working on a model to help explain openness in such a way that it couldn't not be undermined. I came up with 5 Foundations of Open:

• Open Source – the conditions surrounding the project source code. Usually defined within the licence terms.

• Open Standards – the data, communication and other standards used within a project, for example, APIs, protocols, & documentation norms.

• Open Knowledge – the documentation, project information, decision making, communication archives and any other content related to the project.

• Open Governance – the structure of the organisation that defines who participates in a project and the terms of participation. Includes decision making, and any practical or policy limitations on participation.

• Open Marketplace – the ability for any organisation to build a business around a project. Includes practical, legal and technological limitations to building an open marketplace around the project.

As we can see, above is a far broader understanding of openness than is generally subscribed to. A project may decide to have a more closed approach to any of these 5 vectors, and sometimes for good reasons, however by looking at all software (not just FLOSS) using these vectors people will  be able to have a good understanding of how open the software is and what that means for using it, developing on it, building a business around it and so on and so forth.

I'm currently building some metrics around this to help determine the openness of any software, and will announce here when it is done.

VietnamNet Bridge reports that:

"The government has approved the software industry development programme to 2010, in which priority will be given to the use of open source software in state-funded IT projects.

The state will encourage and assist organisations and businesses in providing services supporting the use of open source software.

According to this plan, the country aims to become one of the top 15 countries providing software outsourcing services in the world by 2010. Development of human resources in terms of quality and quantity is the key to the success of the software industry."

In the context of the many open source national initiatives worldwide along with the pilot OLPC deployments, it should be noted that Microsoft has announced a development initiative for the "billions" of people in developing countries to get exposed to ICT:

"Bringing the benefits of technology to the next five billion people will require new products that meet the needs of underserved communities; creative, new business approaches that make technology more relevant, accessible and affordable; and close collaboration between local governments, educational institutions and community organizations."

I'll leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions on this latest turn of events.

Dzof wrote a piece on open source called "Open up and be free" in his fortnightly Contradictheory column in the Sunday Star newspaper on 15 April 2007.  It made it to The Star's TechCentral Editorials online edition, but actually Dzof 's column is for the lifestyle section and it appeared online in Lifestyle Focus, too.

The print version in the Sunday Star appeared in StarMag, complete with a picture of Lucky and Flo. (Click image for bigger size.)

My point is, it's in the lifestyle section!

Some way to go until we get to a national campaign on openness! But hey, like this dude called Mack said, we need to turn these geeky "openness" subjects into populist/common-people discussion. So yes, please get your columnist friends to humanize these topics in the mainstream media sections other than the usual ICT pullouts or even business sections.

Dzof, write on the otherwise dry topic of standards next?

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!

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. ;)

An Abiword Developer responded to the technical commentary I posted up addressing the BiDirectional issue with AbiWord which was 'capitalized' by a Vendor to suggest that ISO 26300 did not support international documents.

The AbiWord developer requested for the test file as he wanted to look into the problem highlighted by this concern. I sent it to him, and within an hour, he reported that he has fixed the bug in the Open Document Format file import filter for AbiWord. The first screen shot is the current release version v2.4.6 which shows the error, and the second screen shot is the developer version (not released yet) v2.4.7 which corrects this bug.

His explanation on why this occurred was:

“The problem was indeed with the OpenDocument import filter.  The importer was completely ignoring the "style:writing-mode" paragraph attribute, so all paragraphs were rendered as left-to-right, even those that were correctly placed on the right-hand side of the page. 

The OpenDocument filter is not complete, as you mentioned in the post, so I was a bit dismayed to see it being used to spread misinformation.”

It must also be noted that the "style:writing-mode" in ISO 26300 is fully documented in Section 15.5.36 which satisfies the requirements of the concern.

This is a fantastic demonstration on ISO 26300's published capabilities and also the Open Source development process where bugs such as these are fixed almost immediately to respond to end users requirements.

The Vendor should have contacted the AbiWord developers or lodged a public bug report instead of using this error as an example of a 'deficiency' in the ISO standard. That way, they would not have embarrassed themselves on raising this problem as a major technical criticism to ISO 26300 when instead it is a mere application file filter problem.

If this is the source of concern which caused some companies to raise the issue of “ODF does not support international documents” during the Public Comments, then we can now confidently say that their concerns have been overly hyped and they have been misinformed as this concern has been a non issue to start with.

I hope that it is now apparent to us all that there are no substantial technical concerns regarding the adoption of ISO 26300 as a Malaysian Standard, and we should not delay this process any further.

This post is an update to Bi-Directional Multilanguage Fidelity ODF Concerns

yk.

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:

This is certainly exciting news as we move into 2007! About 14 governments will be involved and Malaysia will surely be able to play an active role.

Press release from UNDP:
UNDP, IBM and Oracle to Help Asia-Pacific Countries Create Strategies and Policies for Adopting Open Computing Standards

Excerpt:

BANGKOK, 19 December 2006 - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), IBM and Oracle today announced a joint research initiative to help Asia-Pacific countries share and create strategies, blueprints and policies for adopting the right blend of open standards and technology services. The goal will be for more countries to develop universally compatible applications and networks to make internal and external government services and transactions more automatic, affordable and efficient.

The UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) will facilitate the development of Government Interoperability Frameworks (GIFs). Many countries around the world have developed GIFs to guide the development of government-wide systems and policies that permit electronic transactions and data and information exchange to take place seamlessly across agencies and jurisdictions.

Today, many e-Government initiatives show that new systems are very often developed from scratch at both central and local levels. New systems are developed with specifications and solutions that match goals and tasks relevant to a particular administration, but without adequate attention to surrounding government institutions and information and communications technology (ICT) systems. The result is a patchwork of ICT solutions that are not always compatible with each other, reduced efficiency and duplication of effort.

UNDP-APDIP, IBM and Oracle, together with the International Open Source Network (IOSN), have teamed up to conduct a thorough review of how governments in the region and beyond are promoting efficient, government-wide sharing of information and data by focusing on automatic technology services provided by computing networks, rather than individual technologies. For instance, this project will examine how existing GIFs are focused on a service-oriented architecture.

The objective is to identify promising practices around interoperability, then document case studies of those practices in action, and ultimately develop and recommend guidelines. Over the next year, UNDP-APDIP will hold workshops to share experiences and findings of the project with interested groups, and publicly release studies and reports at various stages of the project.

Project description

Excerpt:

Government Interoperability Frameworks: A Project Proposal

UNDP-APDIP, with support from IBM and Oracle, is proposing to implement a project that will:

• Conduct a review and analysis of whether and how existing GIFs are focused on a service-oriented approach and on open and/or proprietary standards, and identify promising practices on interoperability achieved based on Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) or Open Standards adoption.
• Prepare, publish and promote a “best practice” template/reference document that includes at least three e-government case-study featuring interoperability achieved based on SOA and/or Open Standards from at least three countries participating in this initiative.
• Prepare, in collaboration with the relevant national agency in three Asian countries a draft GIF based on an SOA approach and Open Standards.
• Prepare detailed interoperability implementation guidelines on 2 -3 specific citizen service areas such as National ID, Land Records, Tax etc.

Yoon Kit's article, 'Technology neutrality' and what it means to us Malaysians got published in the New Straits Times Online  today.

Yoon Kit wrote the article afer the MOSSA Round Table on Software Neutrality and Openness on 7 December 2006. The online article is found here and also transcribed further below.

Excerpts:

"We do need to clarify the terms "neutral technology platform policy" or "Technology Neutrality". "Neutral" seems to suggest a passive attitude towards adopting the best solution. We do not believe that this is the true meaning of the direction. A "Neutral" position should mean that all procurement decisions should be based on a level and competitive playing field, with regards to triggers to mitigate risks of market manipulation through monopolies, results which are openly accessible standards with no encumbrances to patents and royalty, and the merits based on solid business rationale on functionality, cost effectiveness, interoperability, security, flexibility and performance.

This is true "Technology Neutrality" as it encourages competition, innovation, better service and a healthy local ICT ecosystem."

"So what "Technology Neutrality" means to Malaysians is more competition and more choice. Our current ICT ecosystem is severely lacking of choice, and hopefully the recent announcement by the Minister would mean a more pro-active effort in enforcing "Neutrality" in terms of policies, government spending and education. OSS will always be on the forefront in terms of features, interoperability, customisability and of course value."

Yoon Kit recently wrote a long piece on Accessibility - ODF for Malaysians with disabilities. The further good news is that a new technology will allow applications based on ODF to even better communicate with products used by the blind to access visual information on computer screens.

• Sam Hiser: ODF Apps to Work for the Blind
  Excerpt:
  "A key application interface -- called iAccessible2 -- has been developed to enable ODF-ready applications (like OpenOffice.org) to be rapidly developed to work well with screen-readers and other assistive computer technologies that help the blind access visual information. iAccessible2 has been donated to Project Missouri, where work will continue."

• Andy Updegrove: Showing the Accessibility Way: IBM Contributes Project Missouri to the Free Standards Group
  Excerpt:
  "The Missouri Project is only one of a number of ongoing initiatives intended to enable improved accessibility for ODF compliant products. OASIS, which developed and maintains ODF, is supporting a number of these efforts. Version 1.1 of ODF, which has already been adopted as a Committee Standard at OASIS, already includes features based on these efforts. The project supported by IBM specifically addresses the needs of visually impaired users, and is engaged in developing APIs (application programming interfaces) that they have named iAccessible2."
  

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:

The latest version of OpenOffice.org is out. At "no extra charge" (tm), this new version is reported to provide enhancements such as:

• Multiple monitor support for Impress
• Improved Calc HTML export
• Enhanced Access support for Base
• Even more languages
• Automatic notification of updates

Please read more about OpenOffice.org v2.1 here.

Im currently downloading it via bittorrent, and getting a speed of about 12kB/s. Lets see how good this version is, although I was already very happy with v2.0.2, which was one of the more popular applications in my 1GB thumbdrive.

The last install was at the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs where I had to give a presentation using "Impress". After the presentation, I casually said that I was using OOo, and did a very brief demo of the app. The government servants there were well impressed with the polish and functionality of this OSS product.

You could almost hear the lightbulbs popping within their collective minds on the cost savings they could enjoy  ...

It also helped that I added that this installation was completely legal, and was all within the Malaysian Copyright Act, as the man incharge of Copyright Enforcerment was present.

yk.

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."

Image: scanned article (click image for full size)

The New Straits Times newspaper in the Tech&U supplement yesterday (11 December 2006) covered the MOSSA (Malaysia Open Source Software Alliance) Round Table in response to the recent announcement of the Malaysian Government's policy on "technology neutrality". It is not online, so I've transcribed it here.

Impact from software neutrality
By Izwan Ismail

      The Government's adoption of a neutral technology platform policy must ensure that a more level playing field is established, which benefits the consumers in terms of quality service received and long-term gains.
      According to newly established Malaysian Open Source Software Alliance (Mossa), the policy should include triggers that look beyond the short-term goals and mitigate risks of market manipulation by companies or organisations that might offer more in return for market monopoly, hence imposing restrictive strategies and hindering the growth of the local information and communications technology (ICT) industry in the long run.
      Mossa member Dr Yusseri Md Yusoff said that the concept of neutrality should result in openly developed, maintained and accessible as well as royalty- and patent-free standards to mitigate the risks, which favours both the market and industry and gives true meaning to neutrality. "Software neutrality needs to include understanding that considerations when acquiring software are independent of whether he software comes from a proprietary or open source provider. In this case, the procurement decision should be based on solid business rationale which must consider functionality, cost-effectiveness, interoperability via open standards, security, flexibility and performance.
      "And additional considerations would include the effect on local economies, the adoption of open file formats and adaptibility to future technologies," he said during a roundtable discussion in Kuala Lumpur last week.
      Commenting on the effect the new policy would have on the Government's present open source software (OSS) initiative, Yusseri does not see any problems here.
      "From the start, the Government OSS initiative has always had a balanced approach to software deployment with no preference given to either open source or proprietary software," he said, adding that the Government has never issued a mandate that procurment of ICT solutions should be based on OSS or proprietary.
       Yusseri also said the OSS initiative is to give the Government more choices in terms of software solutions.
      "The advantage of OSS is that you will get the source code, not vendor locked in, and the standards are almost completed."
      Meanwhile, OSS advocate Nah Soo Hoe said in procuring ICT solutions, the Government needs to realise the many benefits of open source. "What needs to be understood is that the cost of the software is just the icing on the cake; the main thing is that it gives you the freedom to learn, innovate and invent."

The Edge in its last week's edition on 4 December 2006 had 2 articles related to the recent announcement of the Malaysian Government's policy on "technology neutrality" and they are now online, as below.

Much ado about nothing
by Lee Wei Lian
Excerpt:
Michael Mudd, director at computer industry association CompTIA in Hong Kong, said in a letter to netv@lue2.0: "CompTIA also believes that [Jamaludin's statements] now result in a level playing field and mark the start of software platform democracy in Malaysia. This is healthy for the Malaysian software ecosystem as it encourages innovation and competition for a technology-neutral approach."

Software democracy was always here
by Dinesh Nair
Excerpt:
The minister's statement in no way deviates from existing government procurement methodology as even the Mampu Open Source Masterplan clearly states that all procurement will be evaluated firmly and equally on technical and financial merit.
Therefore, this is not a swing nor a victory for any party. Elements who are claiming a victory of sorts are quite obviously not up to date with Malaysia's policy on the matter. Our technology procurement policies should be technology neutral, based on validated open standards and beneficial to the government and the people of Malaysia. Such a policy would provide choice, efficiency and economies of scale to ministries, government departments and agencies.

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.

By now we've all heard about the purported about turn by the government on its open source policy. Apparently, we now have a technology neutral procurement policy. And we'll soon see folks like Microsoft, BSA and CompTIA go to town about a victory in overturning a "biased" policy.

The point they're all missing is that there has been no about turn. Datuk Seri Dr Jamaludin Jarjis just reiterated what has always been the case, that all government procurement will be evaluated on the basis of technical and financial merit without bias. This has always been the case, and its even mentioned as such in the MAMPU OSS Masterplan.

With Microsoft going to town about Market Neutrality, one really wonders what this is all about. As Mack Zulkifli put it, a convicted monopolist isn't going to be championing market neutrality. Just as they are opposing the adoption of ISO 26300 as a Malaysian Standard. Clearly, neutrality here is used sparingly and when beneficial, as opposed to doing it across the board as one would expect. Given the joy about  Market Neutrality, I wonder what the good folks at Microsoft, CompTIA and BSA are going to say when it comes to ISO26300's adoption as an MS.

One wonders why they'd object to an international open standard validated by the ISO from being adopted as a Malaysian Standard. Surely the champions of market neutrality aren't against open standards, since open and freely implementable standards like ISO26300 are drivers for market neutrality and provide the user with choice of technology implementations. Surely, they're not suggesting that we use a yet-to-be-an-open-standard OpenXML which only has a single technology implementation by its champion, Microsoft.

Having just got back from India, where I witnessed the opening of MDeC's Bangalore Representative Office by Datuk Seri Dr JJ, I am reminded of the lone coconut tree which rose above the buildings surrounding it in one of the city's suburbs. Like the beacon of open source, it stands tall and refuses to be overshadowed by attempts to throw it into disrepute.

I've been asked to comment on a number of soon to be published newspaper articles on this issue, and to all the journalists, I've said the same thing: There is no about turn by the government. The technology neutral policy was always in place and the government has always evaluated tenders equally, open source or proprietary software. Just as I said in my letter to In.Tech a few weeks back.

So there's really nothing to see here folks. Move along.

Free/Open Content, Standards, and Software are a catalyst to one another, and one can only get stronger with another.  There exists a large dependency between Free Content, Open Standards, and Free Software that rarely gets touched.

This postings requires understanding what Free Software is about, and somewhat its distinction from Open Source Software.

Let's have a look at Content, because the issue about Free Content doesn't have the same high profile as Open Standards and Free Software.  Free Content may also be referred to as Open Content, in the same sense that Open Source Software downplays "freedom".

Free Content is very similar to Free Software, in fact they have very similar definitions.

The Free Software Definition:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

The Free Content Defintion (as of v0.66):

• The freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
• The freedom to redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression
• The freedom to make improvements or other changes, and to release modified copies

What exactly is "Free Content"?  With the advent of the Internet, and the "copy-paste" generation, the definition of "free content" continually gets blurred.  Does it refer to the availability and accessibility? Yes it does, but that does not define it to be "Free Content".  Though the content may be available freely (as in no monetary cost), and being easily accessible, it may be deemed that they intended for you to use it how you ever please.  Generally it does not work that way.  Though these two properties have been satisfied, they do not specify what permissions you have over it.  Can you copy it, burn it to a cd, remix it, sell it?  Again generally it is accepted that you can, because of its accessibility and availability, but sadly, the truth is you can't.  You have no permission what so ever to do as you please with your newly found content.  If you don't get permission, and you did something/anything with it, chances are you would be breaking the law, and would be liable for charges.

In reality, a lot of people want you to build off their work, and want to give you permission to do whatever you want with it.  As to them, they have justified that it is more beneficial to the public, than keeping it to themselves.

This is where Free Content comes in.  The last property, the ability to build from previous works.  They want you, and give you the permission to build off their work.  This is Free Content.

With the success of Free Software, the rigid perception of Intellectual Property began softening.  Modeled after Free Software, efforts towards promoting Free Content include the Creative Commons, which help to provide licenses for you to share your work.  These licenses indicate what properties you want your content to have.  Most importantly, these licenses transcend borders.  The borders of Intellectual Property, and international borders, as they have been acknowledged in many countries, including Malaysia.  The licenses are prepared, in an easily understood "human" form, and one in legalese "lawyers". 

Though these efforts are valiant, they would be wasted if not for Open Standards and Free Software.  There is a "somewhat" strict dependency between them.

Lets have a short review of what Standards are, at least in the context of Content.

Standards help ensure that a message be communicated between the speaker and receiver.

Standards can specify:

• How the message should be interpreted.
• How the communication process works. What happens if the message didn't get communicated? Who should start the communication?
• and many others...

Free Content depends on Open Standards because of the criteria of what defines an Open Standard.

Criteria for Standards to be considered Open Standards (at least in my opinion):

• Publicly Available
• No royalty
• No discrimination
• Collaborative Process
• No control or tie-in by any specific group or vendor

If content was released under a Closed Standard, which fail any of these criterias, most importantly publicly available, would it still be considered an Open Standard?  Yes you can create Free Content released under a Creative Commons License, and say in a possible scenario it was produced on Microsoft Word, using the OpenXML Standard.  But is it truly free?

If the Standard is not publicly available, people would not know how to interpret the content without paying certain premiums (be it monetary costs or limitations).  If people could not interpret the content freely, then isn't this affecting the definitions of what constitutes as Free Content?  The properties of the Content does simply does not equate to the definition Free Content, simply because of the Standard.

Sure, I'm being a bit restrictive here, but I would like to ensure the Free Content is actually free (as in freedom) so that people can benefit from it.

Free Software and Free Content are like lovers, bounded by marriage through the vows of Open Standards.  The issues with Free Content and Open Standards discussed earlier play the same role between Free Software and Open Standards.  If a standard was restrictive, how could a Free Software implement that standard.  Previously Free Software could not implement the GIF image format/standard as it was patented, and the owners demanded compensation for its usage.  Due to this severe constraint, and the need for an image format/standard (preferably open to ensure that such an act does not happen twice), the PNG image format was developed.  As an Open Standard, many Free Software quickly adopted it for usage.  Luckily for us the GIF patent has expired, and Free Software can finally implement the GIF image format/standard without any legal implications.  Examples like these help illustrate well why Free Software should depend on Open Standards, as Closed Standards impedes innovation.

A relation can be made between Free Content and Free software through using Open Standards as a proxy.  But a direct relationship exists between these two.   While proprietary software may adopt Open Standards as well, if all software that adopted Open Standards were proprietary, then the user would be giving up his Software Freedoms.  To prevent this, Free Content has to depend on the development Free Software to protect the user's Software Freedoms while managing the Free Content.

With the relations made, it may appear to put Open Standards on top, dependent on nothing.  This is where it should be, as Open Standards helps to provide a neutral platform from which both Proprietary Software/Content and Free Software/Content can be built on.   As a neutral platform Proprietary Software and Content they don't have to, or forced to adopt it.  Whilst Free Software and Content have to rely on Open Standards to ensure their users freedoms are continually preserved.

Therefore by ensuring that the dependency of an Open Standard is settled, innovation can be fostered in the areas of Free Software and Content.  A chain reaction has been lit, and Free/Open Content, Standards, and Software building off one another.

As a platform by itself, the importance of Open Standards is generally unrecognized. But when viewing the entities depending on it, and the benefits that they bring, then only does it truly shine.

Once upon a long time ago, I was the Consulting Project Director for the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Initiative. While doing the project, I had to occasionally present some papers in "Awareness Programs" which were carried out throughout the country for members of the public sector. Some time in 2004, I was making a presentation on "Emerging Global Trends: Issues and Challenges", where I was to do a tour of countries which had enacted some sort of OSS policy or had made a pro open source stance.

So, I looked around in the web and the available documentation that we had to provide data for my presso. I found lots of other OSS initiatives all over the place. What I also found was a fair amount of resistance against the initiatives. This resistance was led by one large multinational corporation and a few "alliances" -- namely the BSA and the Initiative for Software Choice. There were no other single corporation that protested, campaigned, lobbied or made donations against the disparate initiatives.

There was only one: Microsoft.

All the others -- IBM, Sun, Oracle, SAP, CA, Symantec, Adobe, Autodesk, etc. -- either made supporting noises or kept quiet altogether.

I checked all over the world -- America, Australia, South Africa, India, Korea, Japan, Germany, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, and more -- and it was all the same.

I remember saying to the assembled audience at the start of my presentation that I was not planning to do a Microsoft bashing presentation, but it sure was going to sound like one. I couldn't find any other examples where the other chaps "doth protested". I even tried to do a positive spin on the whole presso but failed miserably.

After all, how do you explain that a convicted monopolist only have your best interests at heart?

Image: a chart from the "IBM Open Source and LinuxLine Survey"

Findings from a recent report, the IBM Open Source and LinuxLine Survey conducted by Unisphere Research include:

• 83% plan to implement new workloads on Linux during the next 12 months.
• 23% expect to deploy new applications or functions on Windows,
• 14% anticipate increasing their level of AIX usage

The most pronounced plans are within

• professional services firms (86%), followed by
• government or nonprofit organizations (84%)

ZDNet declares it "The war is over and Linux won".

This survey and plenty of other information and resources on open source can be found at a  portal launched last month called "Open Source at IBM".

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!

The deal between Microsoft and Novell includes work on ODF:

"The two companies will now work together on ways for OpenOffice and Microsoft Office users to best share documents and both will take steps to make translators available to improve interoperability between Open XML and OpenDocument Formats."

(From Novell's FAQs)

Some links:

NetworkWord.com -- Microsoft, Novell partner on historic Windows, Linux interoperability deal
Linux.com -- Microsoft and Novell partner up

Commentary from Groklaw -- Novell Sells Out

No doubt there will be a lot more coverage on this development. Interesting to see what the two companies will really do with this deal.

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...!

Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog, How the anti-open game is being played in Europe, see the Techworld article Leaked letter warns of open source 'threat to eco-system'.
Excerpt:
"A leaked letter to the European Commission has revealed the extent of lobbying by proprietary software groups to prevent the widespread adoption of open-source software."

Watch out - this kind of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) messages may find its way to Malaysia.

[Update 18 October 2006, 03:45 PM:
Related blog posts:
27 Sep -- Open Malaysia blog: Appeal of Neutral Software Approach. A rebuttal.
15 Oct -- Rob Weir - An Antic Disposition: When language goes on holiday]

[Update 20 October 2006, 2:07 AM:
More comments:
19 Oct -- ZDNet: Microsoft-sponsored lobbyist to the EU: It’s a mistake to floss us]

Some background information on the French ODF recommendation: On the 3rd of October 2005, the prime minister of France (Dominique de Villepin) asked Carayon to head up a new report that would focus on, to put it blightly, world domination for French companies. In particular, the report would analyze the constraints and opportunities for France and among other things:

• “to weigh in the production of standards, in particular technical, by the international authorities, in particular European”,
• to sensitize the companies “with the negotiations in progress”, and
• to inform them “of the stakes and the content of the international discussions in the fields with regard to them”.

His report, titled "On Equal Terms", was published in September 2006 and made policy recommendations that:

• ODF be used as a document format in the French public sector as well as a document exchange format with other European countries
• France fund an open source research security center
• a system to share best practises in open source between French governmental agencies be set up

In an interesting coincidence, a study done by Ramboll Management reported that the Danish government could save USD$ 21 million over the next five years if they adopt OpenOffice. This report was commissioned by the Danish Open Source Business Association.

With other recent developments in this area, strong governmental and business interests in pursuing an agenda of promoting forth Free Software and Open Standards (FSOS) for cost reductions, economic impetus and national sovereignty are no longer just minor data points but a strong upward trend.

Image: Map of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA

In August, I blogged about Massachusetts proceeding with ODF by January 2007, citing Louis Gutierrez, CIO of their ITD (Information Technology Division) releasing the Massachuestts Mid-Year Statement Regarding ODF Implementation.

This week we learnt of CIO Gutierez sending in his resignation letter. How unfortunate. His reason for resignation has to do with issues of Massachusetts budgetting for the ITD initiatives. I await further developments in Massachusetts, but I am at least comforted by the quote from a Massachusetts spokesman, Felix Browne saying that Gutierez's departure will not derail the state's policy of adopting ODF as the state's default document format.

Selected links on Gutierez's resignation:

• Computerworld: Mass. CIO Louis Gutierrez resigns - He's upset about the state legislature's lack of funding for IT projects
• Bob Sutor's Open Blog: HR news from Massachusetts
• Andy Updergrove's Standards Blog: Louis Gutierrez Resigns: Deja Vu on Beacon Hill

But this week also brings cheer!

Vive le France! OK, so this year they disappointed me by losing in the final of the World Cup. But now I'm happy to learn that a report commissioned by the French Prime Minister has recommended that all government documents should be made available in ODF. France is also to ask other European nations to do the same.

And the report further recommends "the government fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security, and set up a system to help national and local government agencies exchange information about best practice in the use of open-source software."

Selected links:

• News.com: French government report lauds ODF
• Jeff Kaplan's Open ePolicy blog:  France Says: Vive le ODF! Vive Open Source!

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".

In the New Straits Times on the 25th of September, there was an article entitled 'Appeal of neutral software approach' written by Rozana Sani.

In it, it was reported that Yasmin Mahmood, the new Managing Director of Microsoft Malaysia has some comments regarding MAMPU's initiative for the Goverment of Malaysia to encourage the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the Malaysian Public Sector by having a preference for FOSS solutions.

The Stifler

Her first claim to this policy is that it "could stifle innovation and dampen the country's transformation into a knowledge-based economy"

The key word here is 'could'. After all, anything 'could' happen. How exactly having a policy to promote FOSS in Government agencies would stifle innovation, is not elaborated and backed up with facts in the article. This is a classic example of the seeding of 'Fear'.

On a side note, the article conveniently did not mention the fact that Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE) did not innovate for over 5 years after the demise of its closest rival Netscape. Ironically its revival in innovation only occured when an emerging competitor, Firefox, which just happens to be a FOSS project, started claiming back market share.

How exactly this policy will 'dampen the transformation to a k-economy' is also not specified. Neither is there elaboration on the meaning of this 'dampening'. What is exactly being suppressed, and what exactly is this k-economy? Is it that the dampening will only affect the 'local software economy' specifically based on Microsoft Technologies?

Preferencial Policies

"My opinion is that it [the policy] limits choice as the country has a software procurement preference policy"

The choice may be limited, but for a good reason, as outlined in the objectives of the policy. Proprietary software is still available as an option, it's just that now it has to be justified with the added benefits over FOSS solutions.

In fact, us tax payers find that this policy does not go far enough. Our close neighbour, the Philippines is considering an even more proactive approach:

"...the bill allows the use of proprietary software in government only when no open source alternatives are readily available, or when a proprietary system is already widely in use.

The bill also prohibits any government agency from procuring technology goods and services that are locked in to or dependent on a single vendor."

Other Governments are following suit, for example, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, India, Germany and Spain to name a few.

Just for nerds, not for serious biz

"This is different from merely promoting the use of OSS, which does have its place in the ecosystem such as in academic institutions for research, for example..."

This is interesting in that she is downplaying the significance of FOSS, relegating it to just toys torn apart to be studied in labs, with little relevance to 'The Real World' of business. i.e. FOSS does not have significant business value.

Perhaps a quick look at all the high tech companies who are backing FOSS projects would suggest that FOSS does provide a good business case for adoption. From Google and Amazon, with their large server farms running Linux, IBM who uses FOSS projects to sell their services and hardware, to the millions of companies who run e-commerce sites on Apache, commanding a 60% market share.

FOSS has significant business value, and Governments too are realising this. Governments would be fools not to take advantage of this technology.

The attempt to link FOSS projects as lab playthings also insinuates that FOSS projects are lacking in quality, stability, security and support. Commercial endevours based on FOSS developments like MySQL, RedHat, SuSe, SugarCRM, OpenOffice amongst others show that FOSS projects meet if not exceed the standards set by proprietary solutions.

But yes, FOSS has a great place in academia. Not just because of the price (zero cost) and liberal licensing, but because students have all the source code and face no restrictions in exploring and extending. Unlike proprietary 'Academic Licenses' which force researchers to sign their rights away to a third party as specified by a viral End User License Agreement (EULA).

User Friendly License

"Yasmin believes a more neutral software procurement policy is more appropriate because a technology-neutral approach within the framework of a healthy intellectual property system can act as a strong stimulus for more healthy competition among players"

This quote was highlighted in the article next to Yasmin's picture, so it must be important. However to me it is a mish-mash of three points which is at best, wrong, or at worst a deliberate attempt to confuse the reader. Here is why I think this is wrong.

"Technology-Neutral software procurement is good". The issue here is not about the technology. It's about Licensing.

FOSS projects are usually created because of a need to implement a freer version of an already existing proprietary product. FOSS always has a more user friendly licensing, in that us users would have the full rights to use, modify and redistribute this newly created product. This provides a great platform for innovation in ways the original developers would never conceive of.

A good example would be the Mono project. Microsoft's .NET 'Technology' was ratified in ECMA as an open standard, free for anyone to implement. Some hackers got together and found value in this technology but did not like the existing but restrictive implementation of Microsoft's .NET (in the Visual Studio range of products.) Using the open standard, they recreated the 'Technology' under a freer 'License' in the GPL/X11. They called it Mono, and now it can run .NET applications under Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, *BSD and Sun Solaris.

This is significantly more 'choice' than just Wintel, which is currently the only platform Microsoft can offer to the end user.

So if we were to rephrase the statement to "A more neutral software license procurement policy is more appropriate", it's just obvious that a software vendor would say something like that and not us users or even a Government.

It is only obvious we demand "A more User Friendly software licence procurement policy is more appropriate," which is what the MAMPU plan intends.

Arrr, ye maties!

"... within the framework of a healthy intellectual property system ..." is a statement which seems out of place. Unless of course it was purposely inserted to insinuate that any other approach does not respect Intellectual Property Laws.

All the FOSS Licenses depend on established International Copyright Laws. If the users of FOSS software do not comply with the requirements of the Licenses, their right to use the software is automatically revoked. So implying that FOSS is unhealthy to IP Laws is misleading.

Lower prices dampen competition!

"... [neutral policy] can act as a strong stimulus for more healthy competition among players." Looking at the current world developments, FOSS adoption by users have provided a strong stimulus for more competition amongst players.

This healthy competition has brought benefits to the end users who now enjoy better features, innovations, services and at more competitive prices. It now forces incumbents to prove and justify their worth. So the inclusion of this policy would have certainly driven negotiations to the advantage of the Malaysian Government, and that would hopefully mean better savings in our Tax Dollars.

Sorry ... I wasn't here... can we discuss that again?

"She hopes to engage in discussions with the relevant authorities to understand the thinking behind the current software procurement policy and come to a solution that would create a win-win environment for all relevant parties"

It is not necessary to try to re examine this policy. The rationale for the policy in itself is easy to understand. As stated in the MAMPU's OSS Objectives:

• Increase choice of software usage
• Increase interoperability
• Increase capability to maintain and support software
• Reduce total cost of ownership
• Reduce vendor lock-in
• Increase security and
• Enforce Sovereignty

Each of the points are clearly highlighted and elaborated in the paper. The other fringe benefits would be that there will be more user rights, it makes better use of Government Funds, it still builds the local software economy, and it even reduces the outflow of Malaysian monies to a foreign economy. It is an extremely far sighted policy and thoroughly for the benefit of Malaysian citizens.

Pirates deserve less.

"With Malaysia recently categorised as a 'large emerging economy' by MS HQ ... intends to grow the business here at the rate benchmarked against other countries in the grouping which include Brazil, Russia, China and India."

I thought the 'Large Emerging Economies' or E7 were China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico. Malaysia hardly has a large enough potential economy to belong in this group. Or are the similarities within this group due to the high Piracy Rates as declared by the BSA, where all of which are over 60%?

Or is it because these markets were offered with the cut down version of Windows XP, called Windows XP Starter Edition? This is the localised version which has severe artificial limitations to the detriment of the end-user's experience, namely only 3 applications can run with each opening only 3 windows. There is no support for workgroup networking, only works in low end CPUs, and has a 256MB limit on RAM. It's truly a disaster in the making.

It is no wonder then that these emerging markets are continually exploring FOSS alternatives which do not impose these arbitrary restrictions. India has a huge community of FOSS advocates, China has its own Linux distro called Red Flag Linux, Brazil is very pro FOSS and Malaysia of course has a preference to FOSS policy.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother...

"... the third goal is to make Microsoft 'more Malaysian' sharing the same objective of building the nation towards a knowledge-based economy, Yasmin said this is to fulfil Microsoft's role as an accountable and responsible corporate citizen."

The term 'knowledge-based economy' is a rather nebulous term. Ask someone what it means and it will probably be completely different to what another person thinks it is. In the case of Microsoft Malaysia, it would probably mean an economy which would support a good License Reseller market, and the training of IT professionals specific to Microsoft's products.

What us Malaysians really want in a 'Knowledge-Based' Economy is a self-sustaining ICT industry which has a framework for innovation, growth and development. Meaning that we should encourage the means of creating and supporting our own solutions.

Her aims of being a responsible corporate citizen is laudable. It's great that she has that intention for us Malaysians, however I hope that MS Msia does not follow in the footsteps of MS USA which has been convicted of monopolistic practices both in the US and in Europe.

Ah, fresh meat ....

"Investment will be focused on human capital development - this covers those who are starting to go to school, all the way to those who graduate."

The 'Get them while they are young' strategy has been successful with Apple in the past, where a whole generation of students would come out reluctant to use anything other than Macs. Unfortunately this works only for economies which can afford the full retail prices of the OS's.

But fortunately for us, the philantropic works of Mark Shuttleworth has spawned a distro called Edubuntu which is tailored for the classroom. The fact that it is based on FOSS solutions means that when the student leaves for real work, she will not be shocked in having to pay the full price of what she has been using all those years. Countries all over the world are now using this distribution for schools to great success.

Investigative Journalism in Malaysia.

All in all I found the article bad. Either the subject was wrongly quoted, or because it was crafted as such to purposely spread doubt, I just had to comment on it. I do hope that I do not come off as some fanatic. I have tried to put across references to back up my counter points, and if I have made any errors, please comment and I will correct it.

Articles like this in mainstream papers would certainly be more productive if there was more balance in the reporting, with good research justifying the points claimed.

Not that I'm in a position to tell what Ms. Yasmin should do, after all she has over 20 years in the IT industry and far more experienced than I, but it is still her first few weeks in her new position and jumping into a topic as far reaching as FOSS is a significant challenge. Learning up the concept of FOSS and its effects on developing economies like Malaysia would definitely be beneficial to her in this job. I just hope that her reference material does not just come from this site!

She has a duty to do a job, but she also has a higher duty to be a Malaysian and to do what is right for our country.

yk.

[Update by Hasan, 18 October 2006
Related blog posts:
15 Oct -- Rob Weir - An Antic Disposition: When language goes on holiday
18 Oct -- Open Malaysia blog: Watch out for more FUD]

Reported by Chin Wong from our neighbouring Philippines, a bill will be filed this week  requiring the Philippines Government to use FOSS (free/open source software) and open standards, except in "extraordinary circumstances."

Read about it in Chin Wong's blog post,
Bill requires open source use in govt
Excerpt:
"...the bill allows the use of proprietary software in government only when no open source alternatives are readily available, or when a proprietary system is already widely in use.

The bill also prohibits any government agency from procuring technology goods and services that are locked in to or dependent on a single vendor."

Commentary from Jeff Kaplan,
Mr. Gates, Tear Down This Wall
Excerpt:
"Laws requiring open source have been a cause of controversy in recent years. In the Open ePolicy Group's Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosytems, we recommended that people focus less on the software development model and more on actions that increase choice and competition.

Why? Because open ICT ecosystems are neither 100% open or closed; they are a mixed environment. With open standards as a foundation, specific software procurement should be driven by the business case and clear public policy needs.

From that perspective, much of the draft Phillipine legislation seems designed to build a critical mass of open ICT in its ecosystem. It will promote research in open source software, incorporate open source into the computer science curriculum in schools, and provide legal recognition for open source licenses. These are all important ways to even the playing field for open source without mandating its procurement."

How much cost savings does implementation of open standards, open source and ODF (OpenDocument Format) give? Will it cost Malaysia less?

ODF is a great example of a truly open standard. In the case of ODF, applications that implement the ODF standard can be open source (e.g. OpenOffice) or otherwise (e.g. IBM Workplace). I list here several case studies that point to quantitative cost savings.

Note the latest on Denmark, with thanks to John Gotze in his blog  citing the report prepared by the Danish consultancy Ramboll Management (the so-called Ramboll report), the Danish Open Source Business Association, where it is said that US$94million can be saved by a move from MS Office to OpenOffice/ODF by the entire Danish government. The analysis includes migration costs, plus already existing MS licence costs until outphased.

Note also Sam Hiser's remarks beyond the quantitative analysis of cost savings. Excerpt:

"But what of the productivity gains -- the significant REVERSE COSTS / OPPORTUNITY GAINS -- from pushing desktop data into a format owned by the Commons? What of the budgetary control issuing from ODF's release of the Monopoly's pernicious lock (upgrade decision processes become internal)? What of the smoother, faster document turn-around?

What of it, eh?

These will be the gains which bubble beneath the surface -- those hard to quantify which no one discusses -- while those using ODF are simply thrilled to be able to collaborate and share documents that they can open without Monopoly approvals."

But while on quantitative cost savings analysis, below are several other case studies prior to that Denmark one. These are Haarlem City (Netherlands), Government of NCT, Delhi (India), Bristol City Council (UK), Broward County Public Schools in Florida (USA) and Stockholm (Sweden).

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.

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."

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.

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)

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 ?

We need help filling up the FLOSSWorld Survey, available http://www.flossworld.org/survey/dev_open.php

While the survey is long, it is important as it gathers important data that will be used for policy and planning purposes. Filling up the survey will definitely benefit the community as a whole, the users and developers of free software in the long run.

Your help in filling up the survey would be very much appreciated. If possible, please ask your friends to fill up the form too. And do put this up on your blog. We need more Malaysians to fill up the survey :-)

Greetings from New York city! Arrived Friday night for some holiday and business. Here are some links on ODF.

Sam Hiser on ODF - an excellent "neutral" party description, developments and assessment: What Is OpenDocument

NewsForge -  A moderator at an O'Reilly Conference forum on open source confronted Microsoft with the expose by Rob Weir in his blog of ODF's second-class status in Office: OSCON day 2

Coverage on July 27 ODF Alliance press release citing Malaysia's proposal to make ODF a Malaysian Standard:

• ZDNet: OpenDocument wins more fans - Malaysia and Bristol are just two of the latest places to fly the ODF flag
• Andy Updergrove: Checking in on the ODF Alliance
• [Update 02 Aug 2006] Open Source News: Open Season - OpenDocument gets boost; Microsoft lets users share some code
• [Update 02 Aug 2006] Computerworld: Malaysia OKs move toward OpenDocument Format - It joins Belgium, Denmark and Massachusetts in embracing ODF
• [Update 02 Aug 2006] Newsforge: ODF Alliance Grows, Shares Good News from Malaysia

The following is an excerpt of an interview that was recently conducted:

Interviewer: Mr. Corporate, thank you for agreeing to this interview. First off, I would just like to say that it's great that you have enacted an OSS policy within your corporation.

Mr. Corporate: Yes, it's a policy within our group that we should always be at the forefront of technology. From what I read on the Interweb, Open Source software is definitely on the forefront. Not that "free" stuff, though, mind you.

Interviewer: I note, however, that you haven't actually started any roll-out yet. There is just this talk about migration to OSS.

Mr. Corporate: Absolutely. The problem with being at the forefront of technology is that you often end up with a lot of stuff and you can't just change overnight, you know. For example, why is broadband more widespread in Korea than in the US?

Interviewer: Er, because the Korean government told the telcos to provide the infrastructure or else?

Mr. Corporate: Partially, yes. But it's also because there aren't as many old cables lying around everywhere in Korea as opposed to the US. And old cables are no good for broadband, you know. In other words, the US has legacy issues.

Interviewer: The fact that Korea is smaller than the US also probably had something to do with it, I think.

Mr. Corporate: Of course, of course.

Interviewer: Anyway, when will the migration plan be implemented?

Mr. Corporate: Well, we've got a team of consultants drafting the plan at the moment, but I have seen the PowerPoint of the overview which they gave earlier this month. It should be ready in 6 months or so. They're sending over the Project file with the chart thing soon. That would give the timeline. I told them not to use Project because I don't have the software, you know, and just send an Excel file but my secretary got our IT guy to install Project on her laptop so she'll print it out for me later.

Interviewer: These consultants are experts in OSS, I take it. Who are they?

Mr. Corporate: They are very qualified people.

Interviewer: Qualified in OSS?

Mr. Corporate: Well, they're more BPR and Change Management experts, actually. But that's what you really need to migrate to anything, I believe. Reengineering and change management are key.

Interviewer: So they're not exactly OSS people then?

Mr. Corporate: I heard that they're using something called Firefox to surf the Interweb. It's an OSS Interweb Explorer apparently, so they do have experience in OSS too. But the key part here is change management.

Interviewer: Um, okay. You also made a statement that with this OSS policy and migration plan, your corporation intends to be a leader in the migration to OSS within the country. However, I note that your corporation have also recently procured a considerable amount of licenses for Windows XP and Office. That is a bit of a contradiction, don't you think?

Mr. Corporate: On the contrary. To be a leader in a migration exercise, you have to have a lot of stuff to migrate from. So that is in line with our plans. Besides, we got this letter recently from some Ops Tulen people and our IT guy said that we had to do it.

Interviewer: Yes, I suppose that makes some kind of sense. One last question before we end. Have you tried any OSS applications yourself?

Mr. Corporate: Yes I have. Our IT guy installed this thing called Spybot on my laptop, because all sorts of stuff was popping up when I browse the Interweb. It's very good.

Interviewer: Er, Spybot's not open source.

Mr. Corporte: Well, our consultants say that it is.

Interviewer: Thank you for your time.

Mr. Corporate: No problem.

Photo: Roslyn Docktor

Computerworld Malaysia finally published (in the July 2006 editon) the interview with Roslyn Docktor (IBM Worldwide Governmental Programs Executive for Open Standards) during her Malaysia trip in May 2006.

I do not know when in July the article came online. Anyway, Roslyn's answers to the journalist's questions then are still correct and relevant, except that the ODF Alliance membership has now increased from the then 155 members to 275 .

Excerpt from the article:

There are numerous reasons on why governments should mandate the use of ODF, as it:

• Provides greater choice, greater freedom of action, greater cost effectiveness, greater access to innovation and greater control over the use of your documents and the intellectual property contained therein — now and in the future.
• Enables efficient interchange of information between various parts of an organisation and between organisations.
• Unleashes a tremendous potential for technological innovation to promote organisational productivity and creativity.
• Promotes value, flowing out of traditional office suites to suppliers of new innovative organisational productivity and creativity tools.

Other blog posts on Roslyn Docktor:

• yk's stuff on 15 May 2006: Innovation and Open Collaboration In ICT - The Way Forward for Malaysia
• Open Malaysia on 30 May 2006: ODF Alliance, ISO and OASIS

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:

• Proprietary software leads to too much dependence on suppliers
• Open source programmes make the governments business more transparent and allows for free access to information
• Open source saves tax payer money
• Open source strengthens the domestic information science industry

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.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Gandhi

The CIO's of Malaysian business and educational institutions sit and discuss the use of free software in their organizations. It's a very positive read as the comments by the CIO's are very favourable to the use of free software, and open standards (ODF gets a mention too) in their institutions, particularly so when one takes into account that these CIO's are from some of the more traditional business institutions (such as banks and telco's) in the country.

The Gandhi quote may have been overused by Slashdotters, but it does seems right at this juncture :-)

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.

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.

"Freeware vs Shareware vs Open Source"
Si Chen explains what are the differences between three models of "free" software, and why does it matter. Relating to the topic, I provided a Freeware Resource link where you can download freeware software. Remember, freeware is different from open source!

"Open Source Business Models and Strategies"
This is where you can find research, articles, and white papers on open source from a corporate perspective.

"OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas"
Here you can find training, tutorials, discussions and related links on OpenOffice Suite. Hopefully can help you answer some OpenOffice FAQs.

"Linux Distros Resource"
This is where you can find Linux distros and download them. Dedicated to all Linux users.

"IGOS: Indonesia GO Open Source"
Talks about Open Source in Indonesia. The neighbouring country is starting too! Hope you can speak bahasa Indonesia well :)

• Erwin Terhumberg (Erwin's StarOffice Tango) - The Power of the Masses
  "Now, due to the recent pro-ODF decisions by the Massachusetts ITD as well as the Belgium and Danish government in addition to open standards efforts in Brazil, Malaysia, India, Germany and elsewhere, Microsoft changed the strategy."
• Stephen O'Grady (tecosystems) - Microsoft Office to Support ODF: The Q&A
  "I do not believe that interest in ODF is strictly, or even predominantly, anti-Microsoft. Do Microsoft's competitors have a vested interest in the format as a lever for loosening Microsoft's grip on customers? Certainly. But I've maintained all along that it's in customer's best interests that Microsoft compete on the basis of its implementation rather than ownership of the format. Moreover, I think that a Microsoft Office package that supports ODF would be widely adopted, and have had customers confirm that for me."
• Joe Wilcox (Microsoft Monitor) - ODF and Office
  "But I scratch my head and wonder: Why doesn't Microsoft just more directly work with the OASIS group with respect to reducing the technical issues? For that matter, if Microsoft truly wants to be "open," why not work with others to establish a truly interoperable set of productivity suite formats. If Office is as superior to other products as Microsoft contends, the file format shouldn't matter."
• Simon Phipps (SunMink) - Kicking and Screaming
  "They would also be most welcome to join the other 220 organisations in the ODF Alliance. However, the move they announced today really is the absolute minimum they could do."
• Jeff Kaplan (Open ePolicy) - Microsoft Sees a Light, as Predicted
  "It is unlikely to kill off ODF by offering a less-than-optimal plugin that must be separately downloaded and installed into Windows (though that may be MS's intention) because ODF remains the only truly open data standard, Vista raises serious backward compatibility and data privacy concerns, and plenty of customers want out from under MS's heavy thumb.."

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.

The state of Malaysian education usually draws lots of comments and opinions from everyone, more so as Generation X become parents. With the escalating costs of that piece of paper which validates a diploma or a degree, parents are now more concerned about the obsolescence of Junior's education and his employability at the end of it. It's all about the money.

Such lofty issues also occupy the concern of Datuk Seri Dr Fong Chan Onn, Human Resources Minister when he said,

the courses they studied were not the latest because the institutions had not kept up with changing technology and job market requirements.

The good minister was commenting on the 20,217 registered unemployed graduates, the majority of whom took ICT related courses in local IPTs. The minister is right in recognizing the problem, but not the cause of it when he suggests that the institutions had not kept up with changing technology and job market requirements. He does give a hint to the real cause of the problem when he refers to graduates who took certified professional software development courses under the ministry’s Graduate Retraining Scheme.

As an employer, that is the crux of the matter. Too many of the unemployed graduates are not relevant to skills requirements by companies in the knowledge economy because they are mere users of a software product or have been trained in proprietary based software languages. These graduates, and it is pushing the envelope when you call them that, lack any understanding of the principles of computer science or understand the mechanics of software engineering. Knowledge of a particular product or software suite trains you in how to use that particular product, but doesn't impart the fundamentals which are truly needed.

There is a misplaced emphasis on certified professional courses, for they are nothing more than training on a particular product. The individual would not have garnered the skils needed in analysis, design and architecture which would make his education future-proof and have the ability to withstand the progress of technology in the industry.

What I learnt during my undergraduate years at USM 15 years ago is still used by me today in software development, for the university taught me the fundamentals and not proprietary, vendor-driven certification courses. As a result, I adapt to the changing technological landscape without being made irrelevant.

The Malaysian education system, unfortunately, started off on the wrong foot by emphasising user training of software instead of engaging in teaching the fundamentals of ICT to its hungry minds. This can be seen in the SPM IT Paper, which is a thinly veiled quiz on user training of a closed source office suite. As a result, we get SPM students who may be able to use a proprietary word processor but lack the ability to write a good letter or draft an informative report. And when the vendor EOLs the product and upgrades it to a new version, their user training knowledge is lost and needs refreshment. This is certainly not a future-proof solution.

The solution to this problem lies in what we train people to do, and the knowledge we impart on them. We need to focus on a different approach to the matter, emphasizing softer skills which are technology and product-neutral in order for the graduate to be able to transition across the cycle of technology change.

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.

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.

Photo: Bob Sutor

I have mentioned before the series by Bob Sutor on "Open Standards vs. Open Source" -- they are excellent pieces that put in perspective standards, open standards & open source and also the relevance to SOA (service oriented architecture).

Bob has just completed making the last two parts available on podcasts. So if you prefer listening to reading, below are the links:

Part 1: Standards -- text; podcast
Part 2: Software -- text; podcast
Part 3: Open Source Software -- text; podcast
Part 4: The Service Oriented Architecture Connection -- text; podcast

[Update 15 June 2006: see also Bob's entry on Downloading the podcasts for you to download for later playing/listening.]

Happy reading/listening!

From the title, it's clear that I'm now on the Scandinavian peninsular. Stockholm, Sweden to be exact.  Stockholm is a decent city, but it's not exactly the most exciting of cities to be in. It's summer now, and most Swedes are already preparing to go off on their vacations. Our hosts here tell me that businesses and the city will slow down during June as they go off on their holidays in 20°C temperatures, something which they look forward to in their -5°C winters. Early June is nice though, with good sun and excellent weather if you're coming from the equator.

The one thing which takes getting used to, inspite of the many times I've come across this phenomenon, is the extremely long daytime. The sun sets at 11.30pm, and rises again by 3am. Pub hopping in Stockholm is a very surreal experience when the time is 9.30pm, but the daylight seems likes its only 3pm for us from Malaysia. That didn't stop us from getting our fair share of Spendrups, Pipps and the very Irish Caffrey's. Partying and eating out in Stockholm is not cheap, even though the Swedish Kroner is about RM0.56.

It has been a very good trip so far. We've far exceeded our expectations for coming here, even though some software had to be reworked a bit. Legacy telecommunications vendors do not always follow open standards, and having access to the source code allows us to dynamically rework the protocol so interoperability is achieved. Sitting in the lobby of the First Hotel Amaranten, where WiFi access is impeccable, it took me all of an hour to get it working. One wonders though why vendors need to implement a variation of a standard after spending lots of time in developing it and pushing it through the approval process.

Our hosts were quite impressed at the speed in which we achieved this though, and I took the opportunity to explain open source and what it really meant to them. Like many mainstream information and communications technology people, they saw open source primarily from an economic perspective and not from the development strengths it gives us.

It also illustrates something I've long moaned about to the local open source community. We've got to go beyond talking about it to showing that it can be done. Oddly though, some small segments of the community seem to think that hype is what we need. One wonders whether this is driven by idealistic goals or some measure of personal glory as they strive to create foundations for things like these.The reality of the situation is that businesses and industry does not really care about religious dogma and are more concerned with more practical issues. As open source evangelists, we have to show them how it can change the paradigm in a manner which they can digest, instead of preaching about vague notions of freedom or idealism.

Bridging the chasm between the legacy notions of software licensing and development with the revolutionary changes that the open source model brings  is the key towards unlocking the impasse. In the end, if we're all speaking the same language and understand the benefits, sitting together and consuming the amber liquid (or hot chocolate, as the case may be) becomes a satisfactory experience for a job well done.

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!).

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.

As a student, Free and Open Source (FOSS) has been beneficial to me.  My understanding of programming, networking, and computing in general has been greatly increased from the usage of FOSS.  Thus I believe FOSS has been a important catalyst to my education.

(Image borrowed from Bob Sutor)

Thanks to Bob Sutor for the alert on a commentary on a FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt)  article that purports "The Dangers of Dictating Procurement". We in Malaysia know better. I can't help but be amused by the basic confusion between open standards and open source that the writer of the article, Steven Titch from Heartland Institute puts across.

As we move forward in Malaysia recognizing the value of ODF as an open standard, let us keep the case simple: ODF (OpenDocument Format) is a standard (like a "blueprint" -- as for ODF, some 700 pages of specifications, and in this case a truly open standard) -- both open source software and commercial software applications and solutions (these are software that become "products") can be designed and implemented based on the ODF standard. Malaysia will benefit from employing both implementations of the ODF standard. [1]

Anyway, it's not hard for Malaysia to understand the distinction between ODF and open source. On one hand, the Public Sector Open Source Software Initiative from 2004 is really that -- an initiative on open source software. Can the software initiative include open standards for the open source software options? Most definitely -- in fact in the February 2006 MyGIFOSS (Malaysian Government Interoperability Framework for Open Source Software), ODF is listed for choice of open source software for Office Productivity Suites.

On the other hand, when Malaysia makes an overall stand on open standards and ODF, will it allow for both open source and commercial choices of implementation of open standards or ODF? I am confident the answer is yes. The final choice made by the user to choose open source or commercial/proprietary will be based on merits.

Let's come back to the  article in question.

In agriculture, a monoculture is the practice of relying on a very small number of genetic variants, or cultivars of a food crop for commercial agriculture. In essence, what it means is that by using a very small gene pool with little variance, an agricultural blight could swing by and wipe out the entire crop as the similar genetic makeup of these crops will render all of them susceptible to the blight. This, as you can clearly see, would be catastrophic to our food supply.

A similar situation does exist in ICT, as famed security expert Dan Geer has warned. By relying on a monoculture, we're making ourselves susceptible to widespread virus attacks. Dan's warnings however have taken a new twist with the Backdoor.Ginwui virus. The twist is that the virus is carried not by an executable program, but rather by the Microsoft Word document format, and the virus exploits a vulnerability within Microsoft Word itself. What is interesting is that the same virus has no effect and is benign on other programs which read Microsoft Word, like StarOffice and OpenOffice.Org.

This is strong testimony to the fact that genetic diversity, be it in agriculture or computer science, shields us from events which could catastrophically wipe out life. With a standard like ODF being supported by both closed source programs (StarOffice and IBM's Workplace Managed Client) and open source programs (OpenOffice.org and KOffice), the genetic diversity would mean that a virus carried within the document format will not affect all users of the format but only specific users of a program.

With more office suites using ODF, there will be greater  genetic diversity. With this,  our risk to genetic viruses, greatly decreases in a multicultural world.

Thanks to Soo Hoe who described to us in the MNCC OSSIG (Malaysian National Computer Confederation Open Source Special Interest Group) group email the CNN screening of a feature on open source.  Thanks to Ditesh who informed us of the transcript of the Linus Trovalds interview, most of which CNN included in the TV feature.

I believe CNN International is screening it in Asia just one more time at 7:30pm today, Malaysia time. I just watched the 2:30am screening. (Normally I only watch live football past midnight. I was told that World Cup matches will be mostly not past midnight, luckily).

OK, Soo Hoe already described the documentary, which is definitely positive depiction of open source, so there is no controversy on the production approach like in the recent BBC's screening of "Code Breakers" (see Fouad Riaz Bajwa's views on it). Heartening to note CNN's highlighting of the open source model being adopted in non-software domains, including Wikipedia, mass customization of Lego and especially Soo Hoe's favourite, Superflex (though I'll need to look for the non-alcoholic version).

Linus Trovalds said in the interview when commenting on the Linux developers, "...At least from the developers' standpoint, nobody does it because they hate Microsoft... They do it because they love doing what they do." I can echo that for myself (basically I have not found myself hating anyone, although I have not really been tested with someone doing "bad" unto me) -- the passion for promoting openness (see banner above) is more because of my belief in it rather than the irritation of needing to debate with detractors. It's all exciting, nevertheless!

According to a report by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, software piracy in Malaysia is estimated to be 60% in 2005, with perceived losses of US$75.1 million. With the Malaysian penchant for cost reduction, the extent of piracy is believable even though the perceived loss of revenue does seem overblown. For starters, one would need to understand the main reason why piracy occurs in Malaysia.

This is largely due to affordability of software, or the lack thereof. In many cases, fully loading a new personal computer with the software needed can double the total cost of acquiring the PC. While there have been low-cost PC initiatives, including the MIT Media Lab's US$100 laptop, these usually become ineffectual when one factors in the additional funds needed to license the software needed to make the PC useful.

Often the discussion between open standards and open source is labeled "open standards VS. open source" -- which to me is as if pitting one against the other, like the UEFA Champions League Final (Arsenal vs. Barcelona) that I watched live last night.

Personally, I would put them as "open standards AND open source" because of the complementary and synergistic relationship between them. Neither is a "sub-set" of the other. Details about the distinction between, yet the value of these two can be discussed in another post, but now I would like to examine where we go in Malaysia with respect to the two.

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'...