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Vietnam Going Open Source
An anonymous reader writes "Great article today on SiliconValley.com about Vietnam's solution to software piracy: eliminate Microsoft. Government tech officials are promoting a plan that would require all state-owned companies and government ministries to use open source by 2005. And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."
...can be found on the AsiaOSC Vietnam page.
There's a interesting presentation linked to from there also.
The Army reading list
Why is a regulation like this even necessary? Why not do the traditional thing like evaluate competing solutions on their relative merits (initial software cost being only one of the factors). I could understand requiring all data to be stored by default in an open format, but a single-vendor ban is silly.
In other words, Windows and Office costs a third of your annual income. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis the per capital annual income of the US in 2002 was $30,832.
Therefore, Windows and Office would cost you a staggering $10,277. It is not surprising that piracy is rampant!
Also assuming Thailand has the same per capital annual income as Vietnam, then even when Microsoft reduced the price down to $40 it still would cost slightly a nasty $3,083 in the US.
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Nguyen is a common name in Vietnam, and GNU is FSF/Stallman's Unix replacement project.
100% complaince. Just not exactly what MS had in mind. Will it work? Well who cares. Everytime MS has to kowtow to some tiny little country by lowering the price or reducing restrictions other countries are taking notice. After munich would any decent goverment negioting a new MS contract not mention Linux? Now if the US is leaning on you to combat piracy just mention on going all open source. That should take the pressure off real quick.
This article just made my day. Thanks vietnam. (wonder if I can buy one of their pc's)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Microsoft Windows and Office cost at least $140 in Vietnam -- way out of reach for most people, where the per capita annual income is roughly $420."
In a country where the general population simply can't afford Microsoft licenses open source is a sound solution. Especially considering the anti-piracy agreements made between the US and Vietnam. They have to do something or face consequences.
I found this interesting:
" But Microsoft products are everywhere in Vietnam, and very few shell out the money for licensed copies. Almost 97 percent of the programs used in Vietnam have been illegally copied, costing Microsoft an estimated $40 million to $50 million a year."
Given that the per capita annual income is roughly $420 there is no way that the piracy is costing Microsoft anywhere near $50 million a year. This is the same kind of logic that the music industry uses to try to justify and push through draconian laws.
A company only takes a loss when they actually lose a sale not every time someone pirates their product.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Despite the comments in some of the replies, the "catfish debacle" really is an embarrassment to the US. The whole story is also worse than the parent indicates.
s h. htm
First, the Catfish Farmer's of America and other trade groups bought themselves a piece legislation that barred Vietnamese catfish to from being labeled "catfish". There is no scientific basis for this distinction, it was base protectionism.
They also engaged in a public smear campaign stating that Vietnamese catfish was tainted with Agent Orange and other absurd claims that had no basis in reality.
None of this worked. Consumers, in this case mostly large industrial buyers, bought the cheap, high quality catfish from Vietnam anyway.
This is where the story gets really despicable. The industry, at this point quite desperate, brought anti-dumping complaints to the US Commerce Department. The hypocrisy of backing legislation proclaiming the Vietnamese catfish was an entirely different species, while simultaneously claiming they were "catfish" for the purposes of the anti-dumping case not withstanding, the case went forward.
There was no evidence that Vietnamese catfish were being sold more cheaply in the US than in Vietnam (they aren't). There is no evidence that the Vietnamese Government is propping up the industry. Despite this, tariffs of 37-64% were slapped on Vietnamese catfish under the theory that Vietnam was a "non-market economy".
As someone who has been to Vietnam and met a few Mekong catfish farmers, I can tell you this distinction is a joke. The catfish farmers are small businessmen who simply have lower costs and lower profit expectations than it is possible to have in the US.
This story rises above shameful and becomes embarrassing when you consider that for years the US has been pushing Vietnam to adopt free market economics and accept US imports. It seems that we are happy to espouse free market arguments as a matter of principle so long as its in our own best interest.
The open source story is very interesting because it may be another case of being beaten at our own game. The initiative is so young it is difficult to accurately assess whether it will ever happen, but if it does work (and spreads to China, Japan, etc.) the pre-eminent position of the US within the software industry will be seriously eroded. That would be seriously bad news for US industry, government and economy, and you can bet similar anti-competitive forces would marshal to squelch such a threat despite the fact that the open source strategy would be a natural and legal response to the pressure the US has been applying to eliminate piracy.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess. Our just follow our previous pattern, if the wish backfires, cheat.
NYT piece on the Vietnamese catfish:
www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ffd/2003/0722catfi