[ossig] The Edge article: "Much ado about nothing"

[Ditesh Kumar]

Editorial of sorts from The Edge regarding JJ's speech.

Note the comment from CompTIA.

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4 Dec 2006: Much ado about nothing 
By Lee Wei Lian 
Email us your feedback at fd at bizedge.com

Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Datuk Dr Jamaludin Jarjis
added fat to the fire over a recent proposal by SIRIM Bhd to adopt a
specific format (open document format) as a Malaysian format. In a
statement made on Nov 22, Jamaludin endorsed technology neutrality in
government procurement, which could be seen by some quarters as a
much-needed correction to earlier policies that favoured open source
software over proprietary, all things being equal. 

Some statements in particular may have raised hackles within the open
source community while soothing the fears of proprietary software
boosters. "There has been a lot of negative reaction towards open source
from the IT market," said Jamaludin. "It's about choice, let the market
decide." 

Michael Mudd, director at computer industry association CompTIA in Hong
Kong, said in a letter to netv at lue2.0: "CompTIA also believes that
[Jamaludin's statements] now result in a level playing field and mark
the start of software platform democracy in Malaysia. This is healthy
for the Malaysian software ecosystem as it encourages innovation and
competition for a technology-neutral approach." 

However, Dinesh Nair, a proponent of open source software, says
Jamaludin's statements should not be construed as a change to the
official policy that the government has been using all along. "The
policy has always been technology neutral and picking the best
technology for whatever purpose it is to serve. And, in cases where two
competing technologies happen to be equal, and if one is based on open
source in this case, the idea is to opt for it simply because the source
codes will be in the hands of the government." 

In the article below, he goes on to outline the benefits he feels could
be gained from adopting open standards as national standards.