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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."
I love the smell of Linux in the morning. Smells... like victory.
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Lieutenant Torvalds in Apocalypse
...can be found on the AsiaOSC Vietnam page.
There's a interesting presentation linked to from there also.
The Army reading list
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?
We had to destroy IIS in order to save us^H^Hit.
You are not the customer.
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.
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Cuong, Microsoft's Vietnam representative, acknowledges that open source poses a threat to commercial software companies. ``They give away innovation,'' he said.
.. it's like dominos.
Giving away innovation smacks of Communism. We need to invade Vietnam before this "giving away" idea spreads throughout Southeast Asia.
Soon Cambodia may start giving away innovation, and then Japan and Australia will be isolated and they'll fall as well.
My god
Where are Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger when you need them?
Nation's solution to software piracy: "Eliminate Microsoft"
Surely this will only shift the piracy to open-source applications. Why, by 2005, I'll bet there will be hundreds -- nay, thousands! -- of copies of Redhat and Mandrake circulating around Vietnam for free! And thousands of applications too! The horror!
president Tran Duc Luong announced the renaming of all citizen named Nguyen to NGNUYEN. .. ...
6E8C 8721 B3D9 5269 5A9B 1122 00C3 C03D 99A7 1CFC
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
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.
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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It will/should reduce piracy, enforce the notion opensource applications and operating systems are viable MS replacements on servers and on desktops.
One thing concerns me though.
I'm just worried that the situation will move from one form of infringement to the next.
I mean, what if GPL isn't respected? Will the Vietnamese government act? If they couldn't control the piracy in the first place, doesn't that raise any doubt with their ability to uphold the GPL?
Or, will Vietnam abandon GPL'd software for "truly free" (bsd-style licensed) software later on?
What's there to steal? :)
:)
It's given away for free. The only thing they can do which is a violation is to add to the codebase but not contribute the code added (or claim ownership of the code and then sue IBM).
I don't think having a whole country supporting an OS can be that bad of a thing.
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I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
The global war between the richest entity in the world and an invisible, omnipresent network of loosely affiliated die-hard extremists who live off untraceable sources of funding, wage a near-religious war, and threaten to topple a hegemony that has ruled for twenty years.
Yes, it's the Talinux and Osama Gnu Laden, striking fear into the hearts of Microsoft dealers and agents everywhere.
Seriously, how many such battles can Microsoft wage at once? OK to send the shock troopers to Munchen, to Costa Rica, but it's starting to become a conflaguration.
Laugh, but I predict the last stronghold of Windows will be the US, while in a few years only the rest of the world will have gratefully converted to Linux and FOSS and forgotten the dark ages of 'software license fees'.
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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.
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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?
"Me love you long time, Office 2003 ten dollar."
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.
...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 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.
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They are having lots of trouble stopping piracy because of (I guess) cultural reasons, the population simply don't recognize "piracy" as being wrong.
You don't have to guess. It's quite simple, really, and it's not because of any cultural blindness to the concept of piracy, whether or not there is any such blindness. The reason piracy is so prevalent is solely economical. The Vietnam version of Windows costs $140, while the annual per capita income of Vietnam is $2250. Given the choice, would you pay Microsoft 6% of your annual income, or would you try to get it for free? By comparison, Windows costs $300 in the US, while the US per capita income is $37600. This amounts to only 0.8% of the average American's annual income versus 6% of the average Vietnamese's. Imagine if Microsoft tried to charge the same relative prices here in the US? Relatively, it costs 7.5x as much in Vietnam, so try to think about how many people would pay, say, $2250 for their copy of Windows, and how many would steal it. And then, to combat the rampant piracy, the government would have to act in some way, and it is considerably easier to make a new regulation about open source than to start fining/jailing people for refusing to pay for something that no one in their right mind would pay for. It's ridiculous, and Microsoft should know this.
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