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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."
This would completely eliminate government agency piracy in Vietnam, so why do I get the feeling the BSA's equivalent in Asia isn't going to be very happy about this?
Ok so we're going all open source, who's next? OSX? OS/2? Maybe a Linux distro because it's too "proprietary?". Frankly freedom of choice, even if it is the MS route really needs to be preserved. Thoughts?
...in bed
And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."
Well, that could lose the country some contracts for companies that might want to build facilities there to assemble computers..... As much an advocate I am for open source, this sounds like a bad implementation of law.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
While I think it's good that Vietnam wants to move to open source, I think that forcing computer vendors to ship only open source products is not the way to go.
Open source is supposed to be about freedom and choice. Seems counter productive to me, to force people to use open source. If open source advocates try to encourage this kind of behavior, how are they better than Microsoft?
"A pirated copy of Windows and Office goes for no more than $10"
That's still a weeks pay for the average worker by their figures, Microsoft's greed seems inordinate expecting people to pay $140. Well, they seem to have totally priced themselves out of this market.
This is the inevitable result for most Microsoft forays outside the developed world. Add to that Microsoft's problem of having saturating the markets in the developed world and, as a public company, needing to continue an unsustainable double-digit growth rate. Add to this their market extensions into non-computing markets are lack-luster and largely failed. You have to be worried if you own a lot of MSFT stock or if you are overly invest simply due to being an employee.
Love my Panther (he says writing this on WinXP!)
JGSki
They don't seem to care about stealing from Microsoft. I doubt they will honor the GPL either.
Blar.
In October 1998, the United States announced a new Executive Order directing U.S. Government agencies to maintain appropriate and effective procedures to ensure legitimate use of software. In addition, USTR was directed to undertake an initiative to work with other governments, particularly those in need of modernizing their software management systems or about which concerns have been expressed, regarding inappropriate government use of illegal software.
The United States has achieved considerable progress under this initiative. Countries that have issued decrees mandating the use of only authorized software by government ministries include Bolivia, China, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Israel, Jordan, Paraguay, Thailand, the U.K., Spain, Peru, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Lebanon, Taiwan and the Philippines. Ambassador Zoellick was pleased that these governments have recognized the importance of setting an example in this area and expects that these decrees will be fully implemented. The United States looks forward to the adoption of similar decrees, with effective and transparent procedures that ensure legitimate use of software, by additional governments in the coming year.
Countries which convert to free software become compliant. The alternatives are converting to free software, paying millions (sometimes billions) to Microsoft, or facing trade sanctions by the US. That makes free software look really good.
The whole Special 301 process may thus backfire against commercial software vendors. Microsoft is going to have a fit over this.
Linux is the premier OSS product as far as most of the world is concerned.
It's like Coke being just another carbonated gut-rot drink, one of many, but many people generically refer to all pop as "Coke".
And for the GNU/Linux fans, sorry. Just be proud that GNU is the secret sauce of Linux. But don't expect Joe Sixpack to refer to _the operating system_ as GNU/Linux.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
They need to the the piracy rate down so they can meet previously-agreed WTO and WIPO limits. They are having lots of trouble stopping piracy because of (I guess) cultural reasons, the population simply don't recognize "piracy" as being wrong. Mandating OSS is percieved as the only realistic way of achieving the desired reduction in piracy.
Kinda ironic really, that the WIPO are basically forcing OSS onto them :-)
The U.S. could take a cue from this and eliminate social security payments by terminating the elderly.
Next, we could reduce air pollution by 99% by destroying all the cars and walking everywhere!
Progress!!
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Your average Windows user knows nothing about computers. It seems to take a few years before even basic things like "My computer", "drag and drop" and the fact that "The computer", "The operating system" and Microsoft Word are not all the same thing sink in.
I see very little difference in ease of use between a (well) pre-configured Linux computer and a Windows computer. If anything, a Linux system can be easier to use for a beginner than Windows. No virus worries, for example.
We're not talking about compiling the kernel here, just Internet, Office, mail and IM (which covers 99% of usage).
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.
It's not costing Microsoft jack, because that $40-50 million never existed. If you could have never had the money in the first place, then it's not costing you anything.
>Not a single vendor ban, they want to raise OpenSource, not kill Microsoft.
From the article:
We are trying step by step to eliminate Microsoft,'' said Nguyen Trung Quynh of Vietnam's Ministry of Science and Technology.
>Necessary because of trade regulations that require piracy numbers to go lower. No license to purchase, no piracy.
Piracy usually means doing things not within the goverment's control so how can they legistlate something that should be legistated already?
I can still get and install Windows through piracy methods before and after, so how will this stop piracy?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
It is something unique about software that very few people get.
Hell if everyone actually paid for their copy of ms software I think they might have a huge problem in finding a bank big enough to keep all the money in.
So to answer your question MS is losing here. Just one more corner of the world where that 95% is just getting a tiny bit smaller. Is this going to mean MS is going to go bankrupt? No of course not. Don't be silly. But an MS with say "only" a 80% share is going to mean that you can no longer just assume that every one uses Windows. Oh everyone can read this Office document.
Remember only zealots want MS destroyed, or if they are windows zealots linux destroyed. The rest of us simply want to choose the best for their needs and be reasonably sure that most data can be exchanged freely between systems.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm not exactly sure which side wins here.
While pirate copies of Windows might not be the best thing that could happen to Microsoft, it is surely not good to the free software movement either. Getting a lot of pirate copies of Windows replaced with free software will be an advantage to the free software movement. You know the major problem in the computer industry right now is, that there are way too many Windows systems. There are so many Windows systems, that you more or less have to make something compatible with those. Microsoft knows that, and they make it as hard as possible to interoperate with Windows. Getting rid of copies of Windows will decrease the amount of power Microsoft has even if it doesn't immediately give Microsoft less money.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
In these cases, they need specialized, very vertical market software where there isn't a viable open source alternative. What do they do?
Write one? Or spend a little of that IT budget they just saved millions on to pay someone to write one?
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Don't compare the average of what people make in both contries than figure out the proportion. Take the incomes of all the people who own computers in both countries and do that. Then you'll realize the numbers are quite different. Why? Because most of the people in places like vietnam make almost nothing. But there are a few rich people who make a lot of money. Those are the people who own computers and who are potential customers for microsoft. In this country where possibly more than half (not sure exactly, but we'll assume for now) own computers and pay for at least windows can afford it because our standard of living is much higher.
You can use statistics to prove anything. But most of the time people just prove themselves wrong.
The real problem in Vietnam (and most other countries run by communist, oligarchical governments) is that IP laws are treated as optional...
Yeah, but would that be a problem for free software? If you talk to Richard Stallman, he looks forward to the day where we don't have any software copyright at all; until that day we have the GPL. The purpose of GPL is to keep others from putting their own licence on modified free software restricting it from use. If there was no copyright, then there would be no legal mechanism to restrict the way people use code, and thus the GPL wouldn't be necisarry. The only mechanism for hording source code would be to keep it secret and well guarded. However, the Vietnam "IP problem" is that there is rampent software copying. In a society like this which considers copying software to be sharing, not stealing, the people would not like companies that held back code, and would have no qualms with leaking that code.
The complete lack of software copyright is exactly what the FSF would like to see. GPL'd software is a step in the process; a feasibility experiment you might say. The purpose of copyright is to provide insentive for the author to create more works. If free software succeeds in displacing proprietary software, then it proves that there is plenty of incentive to create software, even without copyright. In that case copyright is unnecisarry, and even harmful to society because it limits who can use the software without justification. If it turns out that the incentive provided by copyright is necisarry, then the free software movement will never be able to produce enough software as good as proprietary software so it fizzle out or remain on the sidelines, and no one will be harmed.
Note: I did not extend my arguement to all works. Some may need the insentive that copyright provides, others may not. So Vietnam's copyright policies (not IP - there is no such thing as IP) may be bad for some industries, but if the FSF is right (which I think they are) it is not bad for software.
As all of their contracts are nullified, thousands of businesses to provide "support" for Microsoft products would spring up.
IT departments would then take a long, hard look at the other options offered to them. Novell? UNIX? Linux? Apple?
It isn't like the only option is Microsoft. Yeah, it would be bad for consumers, but it isn't like people will stop writing software for an OS with such a huge installed base. For home users, I think Apple would see a *huge* increase in sales on new systems.
Where I work, at a school district, we are all PC, all Microsoft. But if they went away, we would likely switch to Apple. (Sorry Dell) Or maybe Linux if the time was right. (Better for Dell)
An interesting, if unlikely, situation. I don't really think Microsoft is going to go away anytime soon. I think it will be a slow, gradual switch to Linux as more corporate desktops start switching to Linux.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
...but they're most certainly aware that, if someone wasn't going to pay for software in the first place, they're better off if that person is running pirated Microsoft software than Linux. Because the more market penetration Linux has, the less reason there is for other people to buy Windows. So while Microsoft's estimated losses will plummet under this new plan, its real losses will rise. Funny how that works.
I'm not sure why everyone is rejoicing. The only countries that seem to be looking at this type of thing are extremely socialist or totalitarian in nature (Vietnam, China, European Union, etc.). This is a very bad thing for the American software industry (and by extension programmers.. you know, some of these companies give you a paycheck?). Commercial software is NOT a bad thing, only the abuse of a monopoly on commercial software. For example, Microsoft forcing all PC vendors to use Windows would be a bad thing. Providing excellent business productivity software like Office is a good thing. We shouldn't discourage companies from producing quality software by threatening to boycott them.
Yes, of course, that's exactly how those in power would describe (and justify) the system. What idiot would actually agree to a society where "all property is owned by an elite few by force"? By promoting the ideas of "collective ownership" and the "common advantage", those in power can polish the turd until it shines enough fool the ignorant masses. It's a simple exercise in propaganda.
I think it's pretty safe to assume that you have never been to either Viet Nam or China. If you had, you would know that a lot of American and other foreign goods are purchased there. I'll speak mostly of Viet Nam, because I know it well. My wife is a VNese-American, and my work took me to VN for the best part of a year.
What do you see on the streets of Viet Nam? Foreign motor vehicles, everywhere. Mostly Korean or Japanese, along with some European ones (chiefly Mercedes Benz) and a few American ones, including Harley Davidson motorcycles. Buy a cell phone there? It will be a foreign brand; they don't have any domestic ones. Coke and Pepsi and their assorted brands are big there. IBM, HP, and Cisco are all there, and they all sell hardware. All the other computer hardware in VN is foreign, too. There are no domestic makers. I bought my first Philips monitor there, and it was great. Philips became my brand of choice in monitors, edging out even the Japanese makers.
VN mostly exports raw materials and semi-finished products to the US, not finished products. They import finished products back.
If you want to talk about fairness, ask me about the catfish debacle. Thanks, I'm glad you asked.
Viet Nam has lots of catfish. There is a big domestic market, and they have plenty to spare, so they developed an export market, and a lot of those fish go to the United States, where they sell at a very good price. So, what happens next in the US, that great advocate of international free trade? Well, US catfish farmers cry foul, and cry it loud and long to their representatives in government.
In response, the government, that great advocate of free trade, tries to accuse VN of dumping catfish. Ridiculous. Viet Nam is a poor country, and many of the people raising and selling those catfish are themselves poor, and the rest are far from rich. They can't afford to dump. Viet Nam either has to sell a product at a profit or not even produce it. The dumping ploy fails, so guess what they try next?
They pass a law that says you can't call it a catfish unless it is a member of one of the indigenous North American catfish species, such as a Channel Catfish. The VN catfish must now be labeled as "Basa." As a fisherman and person who just tries to be fair, this makes me want to puke. I know perfectly well what a catfish looks like, and I have seen the ones in VN. They are definitely catfish. Any icthyologist could tell you the same, so I'm sure many of them are also busy staring into the porcelain aquarium.
I'm embarrased that my government, arguably the world's greatest proponent of free trade and the WTO, only wants to play by the rules it forces onto others when it feels like it. If WTO rules would ever not be advantageous to the United States, the government will cook up some scheme to make an end run around them. I don't believe they are alone in this, but as the world's greatest economic power and greatest advocate of free trade, the violations and hypocrisy seem particularly egregious.
The reasons the United States has trade deficits with Viet Nam, China, Japan, Taiwan, and a host of other places, include simple economics (the United States is rich and things are relatively expensive; Viet Nam is poor and things are dirt cheap, so we can afford to buy their stuff a lot more than they can afford to buy ours), and the fact that US companies voluntarily "outsourced" (a code word for "screwed American workers and the U.S. industrial base by sending their jobs and our manufacturing capacity overseas") production of practically everything they sell to China and other countries with low labor costs. No foreign government, democratic or otherwise, bears any blame for this; it was entirely voluntary. Go into a US store and try to buy some electrical or mechanical appliance that wasn't made in China. In the event that you should succeed, try to find one that was made in the USA. You will almost certainly fail. If it was made here, it was probably onl
Excuse me, but may I say WTF?
Since when is the EU "extremely socialist" or "totalitarian in nature"? Since when is it even a country?
In fact, as you seem have written off most of the planet with that throwaway statement, let's move on and look for more of the same...
This is a very bad thing for the American software industry (and by extension programmers.. you know, some of these companies give you a paycheck?)
Hmmm, except maybe all those programmers who aren't American, who maybe might benefit from the new market in OS customization and development that was just opened up.
Commercial software is NOT a bad thing, only the abuse of a monopoly on commercial software.
You can't just assert that and wave your hands around in a "pfft! it's obvious!" manner, you'd have to back that position up.
Sounds silly, but the person who started this whole free software thing was in fact American, and has pretty convicingly argued from first principles that in fact proprietary software (which I assume is what you really meant) is a bad thing. I'm not saying I agree with him, just that if you want to be taken seriously you should tell us why proprietary software is not a bad thing.
We shouldn't discourage companies from producing quality software by threatening to boycott them.
Presumably they wouldn't be boycotted if people were 100% happy with what they produced and had no complaints.
What is this about?
The Vietnamese government has a problem with software piracy indeed, but they're trying to do something about it by encouraging open-source software, which is a perfectly legal (and human) way of producing and releasing software...
- They are NOT saying:
"Fuck the US, fuck the West, let's copy M$ software like nobody has copied before."
- They are NOT violating any international rules of trade by encouraging open-source software.
And then you come around, calling them greedy communist dictatorships. *confused*
Do you actually want to FORCE Vietnamese people to buy M$-software? Then here's a hint for you: a trade embargo on Vietnam might not be the right way to do it.
(P.S: boy am I crazy to reply to a troll like this)
"Hell hath no fury like a hippo with a machine gun."
I'm embarrased that my government, arguably the world's greatest proponent of free trade and the WTO...
I'm sorry, but you've bought into the propoganda of the US and the WTO. "Free trade" has never been anything but a weasel word along the lines of "bipartisanship." What the person who says it really means is that they want things to go their way, and they want a nice word to demonize their opponents who don't knuckle under to their demands. The WTO basically exists to ensure the continued dominance of the Western world over the rest of the planet. Just look on their increasing emphasis on intellectual property laws which only benefit rich countries like America, Japan, and the European nations at the expense of Africa and South America. Particularly, look at the WTO's opinions on medical patents and patents on genetically engineered organisms. The only honest areas for debate in the WTO are when the G8 countries disagree over something, like Europe's refusal to accept GM food, Japan's rice tariffs, and America's steel tariffs.
The WTO is nothing but an undemocratic avenue for the industrialized world's major business interests to foist treaties on us that must be turned into laws like the DMCA or the EUCD.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The problem is, while the rich countries' labor force is much more efficient relative to poorer countries, they are not as efficient as their wealth suggests (again relative to poor countries.) In a world of completly free and fair trade, you Americans can't possibly ask half the wages you now get. That is doubly true for Europe. It goes without saying rich countries won't give up their relative wealth just because. Restriction of trade is one of the more humane ways of keeping it that way, all alternatives -short of actually making rich people as productive as they should have been, IMHO an impossible feat- involve some sort of destruction of competitiveness of others. Sabotage, terrorism and outright war are time proven ways of doing that.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Umm, don't look now, but that was indeed one of my points: they are not quite outright banning the sale of VNese catfish, but banning the use of the word "atfish in connection with the product has hurt their sales a lot. I hope I'm not wrong in assuming you read the article, but perhaps you noticed that nowhere in there does the government of Viet Nam say they are forbidding MS to sell its products. Indeed, under the trade agreement, they may not do so. They are, however, promoting open source software, both for its own benefits and because it's the only realistic way to curb piracy. MS will get the reduced piracy they want, just not in quite the way they want it.
Speaking of lawlessness, the United States does indeed try to have different rules for different countries, such that it gets an advantage over them in trade, and WTO agreements be damned. The rules they make, without regard to the WTO, may not be different for every country, but the application of them certainly tends to be so.
Tragic lack of freedom? Generally speaking, the only lack of freedom people have in VN is freedom to oppose the government, or more precisely, to oppose the form and philosophy of the system of government. People have freedom of religion, reasonable freedom of speech on non-political matters, they can start businesses and become wealthy if they are succcessful, they have freedom of travel, and despite what you seem to have been told, they are not required to always live in the region where they were born. That doesn't mean they can move anywhere -for example, getting a residence permit to move to already overcrowded Ho Chi Minh City would be very difficult, I should think - but it doesn't mean they can't go somewhere. It should also be noted that there is good reason to restrict migration to HCMC and Ha Noi, apart from overcrowding. Viet Nam is still mostly an agricultural country, and they quite simply need people to stay on the farm or that part of the economy will be devastated. I know you didn't want to there on this point, but since you raised it - seemingly because your original argument holds no water at all - I felt it necessary to go there anyway, because your claim contained such misinformation and disinformation. I know many people in Viet Nam with whom I can speak frankly. None of them are ideologically communists, and only one is a member of the party, and that membership is for mostly economic reasons and because his father is a party member, so he is kind of expected to also be one. It helps him to get better jobs in much the same way that being a Mason helps people do better in business in some places.
How can you accuse me of impartiality when it is you who is railing - while ignorant of the facts of the matter - against the governments of China and Viet Nam, when they generally follow international trade laws better than the United States does. Hmmm, maybe you didn't RTFA after all?
This may have little to do with free trade as oppose to viable and sustainable policy. In simple term, as the government and people's use of computer increases, they do not want a M$ to come in at some later stages and demand million of $ for the software which they could not afford in the first place.
Unfortunately, I think that in enforcing such a strict regime of software, they may end up making M$ the COOL thing to have and a new symbol of wealth within personal computing. Hence the new Merc of computers are the ones running M$ OS/app.
The countries looking at Free Software are the countries in which the price of labor is so low that it is cheaper to pay someone to fix Free Software than it is to purchase proprietary software.
Basically these countries are poor (primarily due to their past economic policy choices), and they are looking for an inexpensive way to create a computing infrastructure. Free Software is basically a sure thing in this type of environment. Heck, there are plenty of countries in the first world that are looking at Free Software to save cash. In places like Vietnam where labor is so ridiculously cheap there is no way that Microsoft can justify their premium prices.
Basically, Microsoft is simply failing to be competitive in these lower-margin markets. Vietnam can't afford to pay Microsoft (or Sun, or IBM, etc.), and so their best bet is to take the excellent body of Free Software and put their own (inexpensive) hackers to work on it.
It's the Free Market at its finest.
The difference is that this mandate is based on simple economics. Vietnam can't afford to purchase the commercial software they are currently using, and they can't get into the WTO unless they seriously curtail their use of pirated software. Vietnam didn't have any choice but to go with Free Software.
In a country where the average income is under $500 a year it simply makes good economic sense to fix Free Software so that it does what you want over paying for expensive commercial software licenses.
In short, this migration is not based in politics. Microsoft (and the other commercial software vendors) really didn't leave Vietnam much choice.
Seems to me that much of open source development is done outside of the US anyway, especially in Europe. Hell, Linux was a Finnish export!
What is the inverse of the Matrix?