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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
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
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. .. ...
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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.
"Me love you long time, Office 2003 ten dollar."