Malaysia... FLOSS in a Southeast Asian federation (Colin Charles)

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/015jan06/features/malaysia/

Free and open software in Malaysia
by Colin Charles

Malaysia, like most other developing nations, generally has a positive
view on the open source movement. Malaysia stands out in the free and
open source software (FOSS) movement, mainly because there's a fairly
well organized FOSS movement, the media is FOSS-aware, and there's
support from the government for FOSS usage.
Beginnings

How it all began in Malaysia, is probably very much like how it began
elsewhere. Like-minded individuals meet up, they enjoy similar company
and share similar ideas. Then a mailing list gets formed. And you can
say the rest is history, right?

Not quite. The activities in almost a decade have been numerous, and far
reaching. With efforts from helping the local Thalassaemia association,
to providing schools with Linux labs, giving advocacy talks and running
open source workshops, the community has come a long way.
Why the importance?

Seeing that Malaysia is still a developing nation, trying to achieve
developed status by the year 2020, FOSS helps pave the road towards
moving the economy towards a technology driven, knowledge-based one.
Allowing one to "peek under the hood" and learn how some piece of
software works, is crucial to a nation where skills are still being
developed. It allows a nation to play a part in the international
software community, and not be dependent on 100% foreign built
proprietary software.

FOSS deployment has now been institutionalized, and the government
pushed two feasibility studies to push the open source agenda. The main
reasons cited include, but aren't limited to: reducing the total cost of
ownership, increase the freedom of choice for software usage, hence
increasing the growth of the local ICT (get acronym definition)
industries.
Bridging the digital divide

In a country where pirated software is still rampant, buying a copy of
an open source distribution like Fedora Core (4CDs) could cost more than
the average commercial OS that comes on 1CD! Pressure is being added to
protect intellectual property and reduce piracy, which all seem to point
in the direction of a boon to the FOSS world in Malaysia as more
companies take it up on the desktop.

As a bid to help more home users get cheaper PC's, the "One Home One PC"
campaign was launched a few years back that aimed to sell a full-blown
Linux PC for under USD$250. These machines came custom-configured with
Fedora Core 1, with fully working hardware, and all the multimedia and
educational software home users felt comfortable with.

FOSS also enables the locals whom aren't as well versed in English as
their counterparts to use technology (hence assist in reducing the
digital divide). In a country as diverse as Malaysia, where the main
spoken languages besides English include Bahasa Malaysia, Tamil,
Mandarin, Cantonese and a few more dialects, localization is a large
part of the open source movement.

Some of the earliest contributions to the GNOME and the Red Hat Linux
projects were from community members, in the form of localization to
Bahasa Malaysia. Key applications like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org have
also been translated in various stages. There have been others ranging
from the popular KDE to a fairly obscure tool like bison!

Where the community's at

A hub for all discussions tends to be the MYOSS mailing list[1], the
oldest surviving home for the movement in Malaysia. It seems more skewed
towards technical discussions, whereas the Malaysian National Computer
Confederation (MNCC) have an Open Source Special Interest Group (OSSIG)
that runs the OSSIG mailing list [2], that is more user focused. For
local Bahasa Malaysia discussions, the mypenguin99 mailing list[3] is
the place to be.

As open source gains more momentum, it can only be said that 2005 was
probably one of the most productive years in terms of community
development and expansion. It started with the MyOSS Meetups[4], a
regular monthly happening, where there would be up to two talks on some
form of FOSS topic. These discussions range from low level talks on
compilers, to higher level ones on podcasting the FOSS way. After the
presentations, there would be community bonding at a local restaurant,
where a lot more FOSS discussion would happen.

The MyOSS Magazine [5], started mid-2005, went up to six editions last
year, and started off as one man's itch to educate both the Malaysian
OSS community as well as the international one. Some key articles
included open source power management, developing applications with PHP,
as well as Linux LiveCDs.

Community run low-cost LPI Certification exams were run twice last year,
enabling about sixty candidates to take the LPI101 and LPI102
examinations, allowing the locals to be LPI Certified. These
examinations were proctored by "Malaysia's open source father", Dr. Nah
Soo Hoe, whom is synonymous with many local activities.

Going back to 2003, Malaysia hosted its first FOSS conference, dubbed
FOSSCON, where internationally acclaimed speakers like John "maddog"
Hall and MySQL's David Axmark presented keynotes. These talks were well
received, and since then, Malaysia has played host to Paul "rusty"
Russell of Linux kernel fame, as well as Richard Stallman, who came not
once but twice, to preach about free software.

But it's not just advocacy the community is good at. ADOdb, the famous
database abstraction library for PHP, m0n0wall, the complete embedded
firewall/traffic shaper/router, and e-HRMS, the web-based human
resources managed system, are all open source projects run by
Malaysians. Both ADOdb and e-HRMS have won the Excellence in ICT Awards
[6], Open Source Software category, run by the MNCC. For more projects,
the Malaysian FOSS Contributors [7] list would serve as a more complete
resource.

When the community isn't doing serious work, they can be found hanging
out at #myoss on the Freenode IRC network, or writing blogs, syndicated
at Planet MYOSS [8].

As Ditesh Kumar, local FOSS Developer and a member of the community puts
it: "We hope to continue to build the momentum in 2006 and continue to
build the local community via empowerment activities and knowledge
dissemination."

The government strongly behind it all

Two main organizations that have government backing, that are highly
into open source, would be the Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic
Systems (MIMOS) and the Malaysian Administration Modernisation and
Management Planning Unit (MAMPU). They both came up with independent
open source roadmaps and paved the way for open source within the
country; the MAMPU Master Plan coming out the stronger of the two.

MIMOS has established an open source R&D group [9] for a few years now,
whom incidentally organized FOSSCON 2003. They maintain a knowledgebase,
called the Asian Open Source Centre (AsiaOSC) [10], where there exists a
community server, including mailing list services and a mirror of open
source software. Local workshops are held, and extensions to
OpenOffice.org including the help files have all been translated into
Bahasa Malaysia.

MAMPU have created an Open Source Competency Centre [11], and an OSS
Master Plan [12], that has been accepted by the Malaysian Government and
paves the way for the future of FOSS in Malaysia. The plan takes action
in time periods, and in the first two years, simple tasks like e-mail,
web browsing and use of office software should migrate to an open source
solution. In the next two to five years, there should be an accelerated
adoption, where databases should be migrated along with usage of LDAP,
etc. Currently, Malaysia is at its first 0-2 years, laying the
foundation for the early adopters.

While not a local government agency, the International Open Source
Network, an initiative of the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP-APDIP), started its roots in Malaysia, before moving to Thailand.
They are a body that helps the local FOSS movement within means and
endorsed Software Freedom Day, providing a calendar for upcoming events,
as well as a lot of information about FOSS in Malaysia [13].

What about businesses?

Businesses that circle around the FOSS arena tend to be in education
(via training and certification), systems integration, application
development and consultation. In a later issue, I will cover ISVs, and
the local FOSS business scene.

I hope this is a fairly broad guide to the open source movement in
Malaysia, and if there are queries, comments, brickbats, and the like,
please give us some feedback. [14]

About the author

Colin Charles is a consultant, author, and student who's involved in the
OpenOffice.org and Fedora projects. He now works for MySQL AB as a
Community Engineer. He has an affinity for Fedora/ppc. Besides tinkering
with computers and other electronic gadgets, he has interests in
bowling, cycling, chilling out and watching movies.

[1] http://my-opensource.org/lists/myoss/index.html
[2] http://www.mncc.com.my/ossig/
[3] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mypenguin99
[4] http://myoss.iosn.net/
[5] http://mag.my-opensource.org/
[6] http://www.mncc.com.my/ictawards/ictawards-2005.html
[7] http://www.iosn.net/country/malaysia/malaysian_foss_contributors
[8] http://myoss.bytebot.net/
[9] http://opensource.mimos.my/
[10] http://www.asiaosc.org/index.php
[11] http://opensource.mampu.gov.my/
[12]
http://opensource.mampu.gov.my/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=34
[13] http://www.iosn.net/country/malaysia/
[14] http://www.redhat.com/magazine/feedback/to_the_editor.html