[ossig] Appeal of Neutral Software Approach. A rebuttal.

[Ditesh Kumar]

Yoon Kit wrote a well written rebuttal to comments by Microsoft
Malaysia's new Managing Director, Yasmin Mahmood on FOSS in Malaysia.
Re-posted below.

>From http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/09/in_the_new_stra.html

---

Appeal of Neutral Software Approach. A rebuttal.

In the New Straits Times on the 25th of September, there was an article
entitled 'Appeal of neutral software approach' written by Rozana Sani. 

In it, it was reported that Yasmin Mahmood, the new Managing Director of
Microsoft Malaysia has some comments regarding MAMPU's initiative for
the Goverment of Malaysia to encourage the use of Free and Open Source
Software (FOSS) in the Malaysian Public Sector by having a preference
for FOSS solutions. 

The Stifler

Her first claim to this policy is that it "could stifle innovation and
dampen the country's transformation into a knowledge-based economy" 

The key word here is 'could'. After all, anything 'could' happen. How
exactly having a policy to promote FOSS in Government agencies would
stifle innovation, is not elaborated and backed up with facts in the
article. This is a classic example of the seeding of 'Fear'.

On a side note, the article conveniently did not mention the fact that
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE) did not innovate for over 5 years
after the demise of its closest rival Netscape. Ironically its revival
in innovation only occured when an emerging competitor, Firefox, which
just happens to be a FOSS project, started claiming back market share.

How exactly this policy will 'dampen the transformation to a k-economy'
is also not specified. Neither is there elaboration on the meaning of
this 'dampening'. What is exactly being suppressed, and what exactly is
this k-economy? Is it that the dampening will only affect the 'local
software economy' specifically based on Microsoft Technologies?

Preferencial Policies

        "My opinion is that it [the policy] limits choice as the country
        has a software procurement preference policy" 
        

The choice may be limited, but for a good reason, as outlined in the
objectives of the policy. Proprietary software is still available as an
option, it's just that now it has to be justified with the added
benefits over FOSS solutions. 

In fact, us tax payers find that this policy does not go far enough. Our
close neighbour, the Philippines is considering an even more proactive
approach: 

        "...the bill allows the use of proprietary software in
        government only when no open source alternatives are readily
        available, or when a proprietary system is already widely in
        use. 
        
        The bill also prohibits any government agency from procuring
        technology goods and services that are locked in to or dependent
        on a single vendor." 
        

Other Governments are following suite, for example, Peru, Brazil,
Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, India, Germany and Spain to name a few.

Just for nerds, not for serious biz

        "This is different from merely promoting the use of OSS, which
        does have its place in the ecosystem such as in academic
        institutions for research, for example..." 
        

This is interesting in that she is downplaying the significance of FOSS,
relegating it to just toys torn apart to be studied in labs, with little
relevance to 'The Real World' of business. i.e. FOSS does not have
significant business value.

Perhaps a quick look at all the high tech companies who are backing FOSS
projects would suggest that FOSS does provide a good business case for
adoption. From Google and Amazon, with their large server farms running
Linux, IBM who uses FOSS projects to sell their services and hardware,
to the millions of companies who run e-commerce sites on Apache,
commanding a 60% market share. 

FOSS has significant business value, and Governments too are realising
this. Governments would be fools not to take advantage of this
technology.

The attempt to link FOSS projects as lab playthings also insinuates that
FOSS projects are lacking in quality, stability, security and support.
Commercial endevours based on FOSS developments like MySQL, RedHat,
SuSe, SugarCRM, OpenOffice amongst others show that FOSS projects meet
if not exceed the standards set by proprietary solutions. 

But yes, FOSS has a great place in academia. Not just because of the
price (zero cost) and liberal licensing, but because students have all
the source code and face no restrictions in exploring and extending.
Unlike proprietary 'Academic Licenses' which force researchers to sign
their rights away to a third party as specified by a viralEnd User
License Agreement (EULA).

User Friendly License

        "Yasmin believes a more neutral software procurement policy is
        more appropriate because a technology-neutral approach within
        the framework of a healthy intellectual property system can act
        as a strong stimulus for more healthy competition among
        players" 
        

This quote was highlighted in the article next to Yasmin's picture, so
it must be important. However to me it is a mish-mash of three points
which is at best, wrong, or at worst a deliberate attempt to confuse the
reader. Here is why I think this is wrong. 

"Technology-Neutral software procurement is good". The issue here is not
about the technology. It's about Licensing. 

FOSS projects are usually created because of a need to implement a freer
version of an already existing proprietary product. FOSS always has a
more user friendly licensing, in that us users would have the full
rights to use, modify and redistribute this newly created product. This
provides a great platform for innovation in ways the original developers
would never conceive of. 

A good example would be the Mono project. Microsoft's .NET 'Technology'
was ratified in ECMA as an open standard, free for anyone to implement.
Some hackers got together and found value in this technology but did not
like the existing but restrictive implementation of Microsoft's .NET (in
the Visual Studio range of products.) Using the open standard, they
recreated the 'Technology' under a freer 'License' in the GPL/X11. They
called it Mono, and now it can run .NET applications under Windows,
Linux, Mac OSX, *BSD and Sun Solaris. 

This is significantly more 'choice' than just Wintel, which is currently
the only platform Microsoft can offer to the end user. 

So if we were to rephrase the statement to "A more neutral software
license procurement policy is more appropriate", it's just obvious that
a software vendor would say something like that and not us users or even
a Government. 

It is only obvious we demand "A more User Friendly software licence
procurement policy is more appropriate," which is what the MAMPU plan
intends.

Arrr, ye maties!

"... within the framework of a healthy intellectual property system ..."
is a statement which seems out of place. Unless of course it was
purposely inserted to insinuate that any other approach does not respect
Intellectual Property Laws. 

All the FOSS Licenses depend on established International Copyright
Laws. If the users of FOSS software do not comply with the requirements
of the Licenses, their right to use the software is automatically
revoked. So implying that FOSS is unhealthy to IP Laws is misleading.

Lower prices dampen competition!

"... [neutral policy] can act as a strong stimulus for more healthy
competition among players." Looking at the current world developments,
FOSS adoption by users have provided a strong stimulus for more
competition amongst players. 

This healthy competition has brought benefits to the end users who now
enjoy better features, innovations, services and at more competitive
prices. It now forces incumbents to prove and justify their worth. So
the inclusion of this policy would have certainly driven negotiations to
the advantage of the Malaysian Government, and that would hopefully mean
better savings in our Tax Dollars.

Sorry ... I wasn't here... can we discuss that again?

        "She hopes to engage in discussions with the relevant
        authorities to understand the thinking behind the current
        software procurement policy and come to a solution that would
        create a win-win environment for all relevant parties" 
        

It is not necessary to try to re examine this policy. The rationale for
the policy in itself is easy to understand. As stated in the MAMPU's OSS
Objectives: 

      * Increase choice of software usage 
      * Increase interoperability 
      * Increase capability to maintain and support software 
      * Reduce total cost of ownership 
      * Reduce vendor lock-in 
      * Increase security and 
      * Enforce Sovereignty 

Each of the points are clearly highlighted and elaborated in the paper.
The other fringe benefits would be that there will be more user rights,
it makes better use of Government Funds, it still builds the local
software economy, and it even reduces the outflow of Malaysian monies to
a foreign economy. It is an extremely far sighted policy and thoroughly
for the benefit of Malaysian citizens.

Pirates deserve less.

        "With Malaysia recently categorised as a 'large emerging
        economy' by MS HQ ... intends to grow the business here at the
        rate benchmarked against other countries in the grouping which
        include Brazil, Russia, China and India." 
        

I thought the 'Large Emerging Economies' or E7 were China, India,
Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico. Malaysia hardly has a
large enough potential economy to belong in this group. Or are the
similarities within this group due to the high Piracy Rates as declared
by the BSA, where all of which are over 60%? 

Or is it because these markets were offered with the cut down version of
Windows XP, called Windows XP Starter Edition? This is the localised
version which has severe artificial limitations to the detriment of the
end-user's experience, namely only 3 applications can run with each
opening only 3 windows. There is no support for workgroup networking,
only works in low end CPUs, and has a 256MB limit on RAM. It's truly a
disaster in the making. 

It is no wonder then that these emerging markets are continually
exploring FOSS alternatives which do not impose these arbitrary
restrictions. India has a huge community of FOSS advocates, China has
its own Linux distro called Red Flag Linux, Brazil is very pro FOSS and
Malaysia of course has a preference to FOSS policy.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother...

        "... the third goal is to make Microsoft 'more Malaysian'
        sharing the same objective of building the nation towards a
        knowledge-based economy, Yasmin said this is to fulfil
        Microsoft's role as an accountable and responsible corporate
        citizen." 
        

The term 'knowledge-based economy' is a rather nebulous term. Ask
someone what it means and it will probably be completely different to
what another person thinks it is. In the case of Microsoft Malaysia, it
would probably mean an economy which would support a good License
Reseller market, and the training of IT professionals specific to
Microsoft's products. 

What us Malaysians really want in a 'Knowledge-Based' Economy is a
self-sustaining ICT industry which has a framework for innovation,
growth and development. Meaning that we should encourage the means of
creating and supporting our own solutions. 

Her aims of being a responsible corporate citizen is laudable. It's
great that she has that intention for us Malaysians, however I hope that
MS Msia does not follow in the footsteps of MS USA which has been
convicted of monopolistic practices both in the US and in Europe.

Ah, fresh meat ....

        "Investment will be focused on human capital development - this
        covers those who are starting to go to school, all the way to
        those who graduate." 
        

The 'Get them while they are young' strategy has been successful with
Apple in the past, where a whole generation of students would come out
reluctant to use anything other than Macs. Unfortunately this works only
for economies which can afford the full retail prices of the OS's. 

But fortunately for us, the philantropic works of Mark Shuttleworth has
spawned a distro called Edubuntu which is tailored for the classroom.
The fact that it is based on FOSS solutions means that when the student
leaves for real work, she will not be shocked in having to pay the full
price of what she has been using all those years. Countries all over the
world are now using this distribution for schools to great success.

Investigative Journalism in Malaysia.

All in all I found the article bad. Either the subject was wrongly
quoted, or because it was crafted as such to purposely spread doubt, I
just had to comment on it. I do hope that I do not come off as some
fanatic. I have tried to put across references to back up my counter
points, and if I have made any errors, please comment and I will correct
it. 

Articles like this in mainstream papers would certainly be more
productive if there was more balance in the reporting, with good
research justifying the points claimed. 

Not that I'm in a position to tell what Ms. Yasmin should do, after all
she has over 20 years in the IT industry and far more experienced than
I, but it is still her first few weeks in her new position and jumping
into a topic as far reaching as FOSS is a significant challenge.
Learning up the concept of FOSS and its effects on developing economies
like Malaysia would definitely be beneficial to her in this job. I just
hope that her reference material does not just come from this site!

She has a duty to do a job, but she also has a higher duty to be a
Malaysian and to do what is right for our country. 


yk.