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Malaysian Government Prefers Open Code
Suresh Gnasegarah writes "All Malaysian government technology procurement will now have a preference for open source software (OSS), under the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan. The masterplan's near-term targets includes: 60% of all new servers able to run OSS operating systems, 30% of office infrastructure -- like e-mail, DNS, proxy servers -- on OSS, and 20% of school computer labs to have OSS applications such as productivity suites installed. Looks like old Bill's scare tactic that OSS software kills jobs didn't quite work. Another victory for the open source software movement!"
Victory? While it's a step in the right direction, I think the matter is far from "victory" as the OP surmises.
harmonious design
With all these governments considering OpenSource software, is there any talk of them donating money to some of the more important projects -- e.g. KDE and other Desktop and Office oriented software that will be critical for corporate adoption. Do any of the major distros (besides this one) help fund many OSS projects? Just curious.
As far as making a real dent in software sales there... well, let's just say that I went to four or five different malls in Malaysia when I was there and not once did I see any legit software offered.
----- Wtcher Dragon, UDIC
can we get them to use firefox?
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
I've travelled much of the far east, and my experience has been that Microsoft has primarly dominated the markets. Microsoft donates huge amounts of money (relative to there economy) to forign university's which basically provides them with free Microsoft products.
I'm suprised to see a government in a developing nation pass up on the potentially huge amount of money that Microsoft would willing pump into there universities.
xoduszero
Gamblers Forum
Cost is not the only criterion here. It is a sad truth that countries which suspect/fear that the US will cut off their access to technology by issuing a Department of Commerce export notification are increasingly turning to Open Source as a viable option that circumvents real or prophesized export controls.
Does that make Open Source unpatriotic? If it is, who is culpable? Is Joe Coder a traitor because he fixed a header file macro in an Open Source project which helps to bypass US laws? Will Ashkroft send his goons to nab Joe? What if Joe lives in Switzerland or New Zealand? Will Ashkroft still send his goons anyway?
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
If open source is accepted within govt, and that governemnt starts pouring cash into specific projects, how many programmers will work for free if they see that the leaders of those projects are making money and they aren't?...it might send ripples through what we know as open and free....
ItWasFree.com - Take the mystery
Less govenment money spent on paying companies to write custom software, which is nearly always over due and over budget, is less money wasted. That means less taxes. That means more money in the hands of consumers to spend. Which means more jobs.
You skipped basic economics in school, didn't you?
-- Will program for bandwidth
It is a sad truth that countries which suspect/fear that the US will cut off their access to technology by issuing a Department of Commerce export notification are increasingly turning to Open Source as a viable option that circumvents real or prophesized export controls.
The fact that countries suspect or fear the US may be sad. Their ability to do something to reduce their exposure isn't.
Does that make Open Source unpatriotic?
If countries are preferring open source software as a way of securing themselves from manipulation from other countries they see as potentially hostile then that would make open source either patriotic or (more accurately) neutral but able to be used in a patriotic way. How could that possibly be "unpatriotic"?
They use Metric measuring units, you Imperial insensitive clod!
I don't see how governments "wasting" money on paying people to write software or do any other job is a bad thing. The government should be more than happy to spend money on commercial software if it suits their needs. Or pay people to write it for them.
It's nice that they're using OSS but pretending it's not going to result in less jobs is silly.
I pay my government to pay you for the software you write. Since the government works for me[0], why in the hell should they be allowed to pay people to write something I can't have access to?
This is a rather short-sighted argument. There's still a need for specialty software, but there is *NO NEED* to continuously reproduce the same stuff in order to preserve your job or to keep it from the people who paid for it.
Write something that doesn't already exist, let the rest of us (and other departments) benefit from it, and move on. Don't pretend like you can't work unless you're reproducing perfectly good software every day.
I mean, honestly, I can't believe you're justifying having the government *not* use OSS because it means you don't get to produce a clone of some OSS project and make money off of it. It's this mentality that keeps our government slow and expensive.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
There will be a segment of the population who will pirate software no matter what the prices may be. But let's look at the other segment of the population who are reasonable people and will buy original software if it doesn't cost them a leg and a foot.
For one thing, I put it to you that it is actually more expensive for a Malaysian to live in Malaysia, than an American to live in the U.S.
(well, okay, not universally true, but let's take the midwest as an example)
The average starting salary for an *US-trained* Malaysian engineer in Malaysia is about RM18,000 before deductions (US$4,736). In the U.S., an engineer starts at around US$35,000.
Basic necessities cost about the same, ringgit-to-dollar.
Cost of a Pontiac Sunfire is $10,000 (28% of U.S. Salary)
Cost of the cheapest brand-new car in Malaysia is RM32,000 (170% of Malaysian salary).
Cost of average U.S. house (this is really variable though) is US$200,000 (570% of U.S. Salary)
Cost of Malaysian house is RM180,000 (1000% of Malaysian Salary)
With all this in mind, the price of Microsoft Office Standard is US$348 (1% of U.S. Salary).
In Malaysia, it is RM1300 (7% of Malaysian Salary).
As you can see, it is understandable that a large portion of the Malaysian population cannot afford to buy original software. They're too busy paying their loans etc.
Selling software in Malaysia is mostly a corporate affair -- businesses and government are huge clients. (They have to buy original, otherwise the BSA swoops down on them). Going open-source will definitely make an impact.... the government is one of the biggest buyers of software.
End-users don't buy that much original software to start with. So they don't really figure in the equation.
It is good for OS users because, as even smaller governments start catching on, citizens *may* see that their country is using such products for such a low...."free"....cost, cafes and whatnot will switch.
Basically a chain-reaction.
OSS Software? Is that anything like Homer's BBBQ, where the extra B is for BYOBB? (the other 'B' is a typo...)
iRooster, the Mac OS X a
It's nice that they're using OSS but pretending it's not going to result in less jobs is silly.
You're wrong. We're talking basic economics wrong.
Let's assume that your job isn't make-work (like, oh, re-coding an old VMS system to use Visual Basic just because.)
If you're writing software that can be done with OSS software--which isn't by any means everything--then you might be out of a job if the government uses the OSS instead. But you would be in the same boat if some off-the-shelf software was used instead.
(My mother works writing custom software for the gov't--and even if they went all-OSS instsead of just partly-OSS, the job that they do wouldn't go away because it's so specific.)
Let's say that your job CAN be replaced. What this means is that the money that was going to pay your salary & support expenses will go to do something else. Either the government will take on a new project, or they'll cut taxes. Let's assume a tax break, for argument's sake.
When the government cuts taxes, a good portion of the business sector finds that they have more money in their budget. They might use this money to lower their prices, but odds are that among the million-odd businesses in this country, a couple dozen will use the money to start new projects. Which means hiring new people.
The bottom line? Use of OSS might cut YOUR job, or it might cut MS's profits, or it might cut someone else's job--but the total net number and dollar value of jobs likely won't go down.
Arguing "my job will get taken away" makes as little sense now as when it was robots doing assembly work.
If the work is useful, it is unique and/or custom. And open source offers more opportunities for customization than closed-source anyway.
It seems like you are arguing in favor of specialized welfare programs for computer programmers who don't otherwise offer any value to the market.
Otherwise there's no possible reason to write the same things over and over and over again. It's like having every agency in the government outsource their own national census.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
What success? And how old is that article? 5 years?
Last I heard they had decided it was going to be the biotechnology supercorridor instead, as soon as they could come up with a way to keep the same acronym so they wouldn't have to change the signs. Welcome to Biojaya, garden city. Don't eat the hyperintelligent coconuts; we need them to do our urban planning.
And three years from now it will be the Fuel Cell Supercorridor, or whatever the fad du jour is.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Let's let the industries based on re-coding the same old proprietary systems die so that new industries that can push the frontiers of computer science may be born. So long as the majority of the competent computer scientists and engineers in the world are working on new versions of Oracle, Windows, Solaris, Office, proprietary government procurement software, etc.., those new frontiers are just a dream!
Personally, I say good riddance.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
"How many people who worked on those OSS projects the government is using are getting paid by the government or at all for their involvement with the project?"
The govt is just another user of the OSS project. Did you pay to use mozilla? Chances are the govt will probably contribute some money towards continued development for the software they use which is better then 99% of the other users who don't pay anything at all.
"How many people would the government have hired to build the projects if OSS alternatives didn't exist?"
None. They would have bought something.
"The US government pays businesses a ton of money to write software. I currently work with such a company. If the US government decided to use all Open Source a lot of people would be out of work."
Are you writing a web browser? An office suite? A general purpose operating system? An email client?. Probably not. The software the govt pays to write is very specific to their needs.
BTW. Last I checked nobody was entitled to a job. If your customer can get a product thats equal to or better then yours for less money they owe it to taxpayers to do so.
"The Malaysian government choosing to use Open Source has just reduced the amount of money that will go to businesses and therefore employees. Which means lost jobs and/or fewer people being hired on"
Nah. It just means more money will stay malasia rather then go to redmond. Every cent spent on MS software is one less cent circulating in your own country helping your own economy.
"I don't see how governments "wasting" money on paying people to write software or do any other job is a bad thing. "
That's because you are suckling on the momma sows teat. All that taxpayer money pouring into your company and your pocket is wonderful for you but it sucks for me and every other tax payer.
"The government should be more than happy to spend money on commercial software if it suits their needs."
Not if there is a lower cost or free alternative.
"It's nice that they're using OSS but pretending it's not going to result in less jobs is silly."
Your analytic skills need some fine tuning. Unless the govt was actually paying for development of office software and web browsers nobody is going to lose their jobs.
evil is as evil does
The US government pays businesses a ton of money to write software. I currently work with such a company. If the US government decided to use all Open Source a lot of people would be out of work.
And therefore would be free to work on other, non-governmental things. It would allow more intelligent people to do more intelligent things.
If the only thing you're capable of is porting the bureaucratic red tape to computer, then you have no future. Why waste society's resources on creating useless jobs, when these people could actually be doing beneficial things, and yet still make a living?
I perscribe the following to clear this up:
Review (or learn) basic macroeconomics; and read the works of both John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, or of those inspiring other schools of economics, as you see fit.
Oh, and by the way, get your syntax right: "fewer jobs," not "less jobs." "Fewer" takes a countable noun, and "less" takes an uncountable noun.
I still have dictionary.com open to that page...
The US government pays businesses a ton of money to write software. I currently work with such a company. If the US government decided to use all Open Source a lot of people would be out of work.
If you seriously think this is a valid argument then a solution would be for the US govenrment to pay half those people to dig holes in the ground and the other half to fill them in again. This would be neither more nor less productive than your current plan that they hire people to write software that they could otherwise have got for free.
(Before soemeone buts in with the real world that the government would need to pay people to write, amend, support open source software, please note that this would in itself contradict the premises of the post to which I was replying).
The masterplan's near-term targets includes: 60% of all new servers able to run OSS operating systems...
What does this mean exactly? Haven't seen many servers that aren't capable of running OSS operating systems. Hope they're going for something more applicable to the job than a Sony Vaio laptop.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Poor MS. Why if this continues they may actually have to concentrate on selling a good product rather then scare the customer into staying with them. I am crying for all the MS coders who will loose their jobs, ignore the hysterical laughter that is just my way of showing grief. Really.
Anyone know the travelling plans of IBM or Novell or Sun or HP?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As media solutions fall into the hands of the general populace, we can expect the "fundamental" notion of individual countries to continue to erode. There will be a strong fight against this trend, but the fact of the matter remains: the governed will always outnumber the governors. The trick is that the governed must be educated. This is the difficulty.
harmonious design
Obviously free software benefits those economies more that import software, and harms more those that export it. At least at first.
However this might later lead to them chosing the "wrong" tool, when a more appropriate non-OSS tool exists.
In the long run restrictions tend to hurt more than they help, and often achieve the opposite (like rent control or job protection).
Simple economics really.
"Not because one is open source, vs. closed source, that shouldn't matter, if the people of the government are paying taxes, it should go to the best product that does the job, for the lowest TCO."
In the case of the gov't, I think there's a stronger factor at play: Don't be a slave to a company. The biggest danger I see with using Word (for example...) at gov't facilities is that MS is a broken file format away from forced upgrades. Granted, this hasn't happened in years. If you use Office 97 today, you're not in a world of hurt with 2000 users. (Note: That's as high as I went, I don't know if O2k3 broke 97 compatibility or not.) But I do remember back in the Office 95 days the transition to 97 was horrible. Everybody had to upgrade at once or the stragglers were instantly left out. The advantage of going Open Source here is that they're not totally tied to one vendor. I'm over dramatizing the situation a bit, but it's not a risk I'd want a gov't to take.
So what exactly is my rebuttal? Well I'm not totllay against what you're saying. I completely agree that they should choose based on what their requiremenets are. I just wanted to add the 'think of the future' variable in there. In which case, some compromise is okay.
"Derp de derp."
The Malaysian gov't is happy to use OSS software if it saves them money. But any IT work done under a gov't of Malaysia contract cannot be released to anyone as it is protected by the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
Even if this OSA restriction didn't exist, the local IT vendors in Malaysia would never want the code they wrote to be under any form of scrutiny as their projects are usually failures that still result in big payouts for them.
Don't count on seeing a single contribution from Malaysia to the opensource community in the next couple of years.
This is exactly what drives me toward OSS. I want to see the change because, as it stands now, we can plot our futures on the corporate roadmaps and that sucks.
Personally, I strongly agree with you.
Blogging because I can...
Bill Gates tried to tell a soveriegn government what to do on their own soil. That's a faux pas everywhere.
in the Soviet Union, the Imperials measure YOU!
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
Probably none. The article talks about pretty standard software: office apps, DNS servers, operating systems, etc. If they didn't go Open Source, they'd have just bought it from Microsoft.
That's not really "hiring programmers" because the people who wrote Word and Windows XP have already been paid. They don't get paid more if a government buys a copy.
I'm sure they'll spend the money on something else. They're not going to just put all the money they save into a big pile and light it on fire.
I don't think Microsoft is going to fire anyone because of this. (Maybe someone in marketing or PR will be fired for allowing this to happen, but that's different.)
-- . . ramblin' . . .
I'm not sure about that particular concern. But you're entirely right to be worried.
When Linux and other Free (and Open Source) software becomes mainstream, it will be swamped by capitalists using and abusing it. The people who understand and believe in Free Software will be a minority. Even the majority of people contributing code to the Linux kernel will have different motivations from what we're used to.
Eventually, this will lead to code forks. The mainstream folks will be disatisfied that their wiz-bang DRM etc didn't make it into the software, so they'll all agree to make their own version. And they'll have the marketing to sell it. Sure, it will still be Open Source. And it will still be popular. But it won't be Free.
That's precisely why RMS is worried about the term Open Source subverting the term Free Software: the fundamental point is lost. And, hence, Open Source is destined to be nothing more than a brief break between this Microsoft, and the next one.
Even good Americans don't use Internet Explorer!
... in the Islamic countries to try and create their own economies not based on pure interaction with the west. The World Islamic Trading Organisation is partly behind these trends in a way. They are seeking to develop sustainable economies not so directly tied to non Islamic nations and concepts, such as fiat(phoney) currency and usury based banking. Free software would naturally fit into this goal, as it can be "theirs" without a single legal hassle and it's just as good and freer to use, along with eventually replacing the US dollar as the worlds reserve currency,and especially in the Islamic nations as "the" currency. They created and are starting to use the Islamic gold Dinar and the silver Dirham for this purpose. They need software, and wanting to just divest themselves from the necessity of shipping cash to redmond and other closed source places in the west, plus to encourage local production and identity, it just makes sense for them to discourage (eventually) even the use of pirated software and just go open source. It follows their goals exactly in other words. There is a transition period that will occur,of course, but eventually it will happen almost completely. MS= USA in their minds, so they know it's not in their best interests to fund them. they will take what they will take, but they have no overwhelming desitre to keep paying the west for all the "things" they need, now that they can see the non western nations are really where all the "stuff" comes from, and that they the Islamics own the bulk of the worlds recoverable energy in the form of oil reserves. You are watching what in essence is a huge divorce in progress, that is occurring in many nations. It's just now really starting to take off, I expect it to increase exponentially in the coming years.
quote "That's not really "hiring programmers" because the people who wrote Word and Windows XP have already been paid."
That's it in a nutshell. Closed source efforts like from MS are exactly like the music industry wanting to charge full price for extremely cheap to almost free (to them) copies, forever and ever, and to mandate it by law and coercion. It is unsustainable foolishness. People in the rest of the world and in the rest of the jobs out there get paid by producing new work, not by re selling the old work over and over and over again. The handwriting is *indeed* on the wall when it comes to this. That's one of the main reasons open source even exists now, because it was such a ripoff to try and even get and use closed source in the first place. Look at what a brain like Linus had to do just to even be allowed to program in the direction he wanted to go! that's the lame closed source industry's fault right there, they were so greedy they couldn't even see it. Open source allows people to be creative, and to share their creativity with others, to use as they see fit, for pleasure or in their other "real" business. Closed source pricing (leasing, no sales allowed mostly) guidelines have been the industrys attempts to fleece the market place for decades now, and not only that, they managed to wiggle in universal acceptance of no warranties on top of ridiculous prices that occur over and over again as new "forced upgrades" have occurred. That entire nutso attitude and business model is changing,and those who cling to the past will be hurt the most.
And if you read the article, you would see that the Malaysian government has stated:
If open-source software is better they will use it; if proprietary software is better, they will use it; if there is little to choose between them, they will prefer open-source because of all the other (economic and strategic) advantages that this brings.flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
The poster asks:
Does that make Open Source unpatriotic?
In large part, that depends on your definition of patrriotism.
The US was born from and originally dedicated to rebellion against undue authority. Now, on a global basis, the US government attempts (somewhat successfully) to BE the undue authority. This course of action is not in the interests of the typical American, so there's a compelling case that anything frustrating those aims of the US government is, in fact, far more profoundly and genuinely patriotic than the mindless drive for Empire.
-- I could tell right away that she was impressed with my HUGE Slashdot Karma.
... themselves-and others, under orders, and under the influence of societal and religious and governmental brainwashing. Hmm, Seems like I have seen that before... hmm, did they speak arabic?? Lemme see if I can remember... oh ya, I do!
Nope. They spoke 'merkin near as I recall.
What you are implying is over simplistic and not exactly what I was saying. I will attempt clarification. They are adopting open source for all the same reasons anyone else is, PLUS, by adopting it, it helps them to get independent.
In-dependent, they are tired of being de-pendent.
What you said, is true of them to a certain degree in the past, but now they know there is no future in remaining dependent and as economic colony states of the west. Of course they will do their best to trade to their advantage now, who wouldn't?, because they have been taken advantage of for a long time. Most of the nations in the muslim world have had weird rulers foisted on them going back to the turn of the last century, they are just annoyed with the western influences on their culture and on their lands and in their economies. They see no need any longer to just sell their raw resources for piddling low profit, when they can trade it for a lot more, and develop domestic industries. And all their populations need real employment as well, you expect them to ignore that? They can also look at geopolitical reality, they just saw the US take over the second largest oil fields in the world, and the largest concentration of fresh water in the middle east(do NOT forget that part in the iraq war, even though hardly anyone ever mentions it), both critical for nation building and for advancing their own nations. And they can add the sums same as everyone (except for most lusers who depend on the 6 o clock news and their brokers for data),and they know the oil will run out soon for all practical purposes,within the next generation, they can see as oil drops below peak and as demand quadruples in the next 15 years they need to do something about that reality, so they are entering a crash program of modernization, all over. any nation that doesn't will either suffer greatly or be forced into becomeing a looter nation, same as the US has become. For most purposes, that's what the US is now, a looter nation, we are dropping any pretense of manufacturing anything except for war and police/paramilitary *things*. These other nations can clearly see what's coming for them.
Now they have the internet in all those nations now, and travel is common. Whether that will mitigate some of the more radical islamic tenets remains to be seen. You would hope so, but I think the US invading iraq set that back-completely borked it- for another generation, if it ever comes back at all. The young people in those nations were gradually becoming more secular and westernised, now they are returning to islamic fundamentalism, because they see no practical future for them with the anglo/us/israeli axis of maximum profits and command and control as their future-and who would? There's nothing in it for them other than what they have had for a long time, a 1-2% ultra rich transnational based series of puppet governments, or rule by nutjob fundies. The best they can do is to try something different, and that would revolve around developing their own economies, starting with more practical use and savvier trading of their oil and national labor pool, and developing their own currencies based on what they value-gold and silver instead of western bankers created out of thin air pieces of debt paper, and to use their oil better, which they are starting to do. For instance, saudi arabi is still the big dog with oil, but also is putting the most into solar energy and in advanced water desalinization. Malaysia is heavy into developing industry and manufacturing. Pakistan is developing a huge engineering base, and so on.
Don't expect them to live in the past any more than you do in other words, they may be different from you, but collectively they aren'
Malaysia had (perhaps still has, too lazy to google) a white elephant project called the "Super Multimedia Corridor" that was suppossed to be a hub of High Tech development and innovation (with things like housing for higtech employess with broadband internet, nevermind Malaysia is a country with stringent censoship).
One of the advisors for this project was a certain Bill Gates. That they are turning around like this has a huge impact since they must be ignoring "advice" (i.e. FUD) from Gates whose opinions just 5 years ago were regarded as gospel.
This my friend, is BIG news in Malaysia for sure, one of the biggest exporters of computer related stuff in the world.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Everybody's right. The issue is that costs and benefits are distributed unevenly.
"[XYZ] will eliminate jobs."
Answer: "[XYZ] will eliminate your jobs, but will drastically reduce our costs and benefit society as a whole."
[XYZ] is:
That's not a multiple choice question. There are winners and losers in many technological trends. The Luddites were right, in a way: they were losing their jobs, and someone else -- not them -- benefitted. It was a simple win-lose scenario, resolved in the case of the Luddites by mass hangings and other forms of repression.
There is no simple "solution" for the losers of any such trend. Innovation is usually the answer, except that it is a long term solution to a short term problem, meaning losers will continue to lose for a while. Career change is not easy: financial barriers exist where class barriers did earlier. Have you priced a college education lately? I guess the real answer is to grin and bear it.
Our company is heavily adopting open source software as I believe many others are, we are using SAMBA 3.x as our PDC/File Server, FreeBSD as our Firewall/NAT/Router/Traffic Shaper, Another *nix machine in the DMZ as Tomcat/mail server, OpenOffice.org as the productivity suite for the Windows machine, Thunderbird as the mail client and so on.
As mentioned above piracy is predominant here, the main reason being cost, as a poster above explained the cost for many things here is higher than Europe or America (if you use economies of scale not a direct currency conversion). Cars are expensive, housing is reasonable, food is cheap, technology stuff is average, software is EXPENSIVE. Most SME's here don't have domains, they are still using workgroups as the cost of Win2k server is prohibitive (The salary per annum for an average employee). Pirated software is easy to get (within every decent sized housing area there is 2-3 places you can go) and cheap ($1-2USD per CD). People do buy orginal software, but usally only larger companies and people who want to play online games (for example Warcraft III you need an original, unique CD key to play on Battle.net).
People are finally realising using pirated software is bad, and that licenced software is too expensive to be economically viable and as open source awareness spreads these are becoming more realistic alternatives. As far as I know many small companies are adopting Linux and OSS software packages or at least conducting some kind of testing/integration. There are quite a few Open Source advocates and groups/mailing lists here:
- OSSIG
- MyOSS
- Planet MyOSS Community
- ASIAOSC
- Alphaque
- IOSN
From what I know the state of OSS looks good here, there are regular conferences, meetings and things going on towards the advancement of open source usage in the Malaysia I.T. community. (P.S. frist psot as a non-AC)-------------
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