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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
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"?
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.
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...
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.
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.
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' . . .
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
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.