JJ, where is your answer on “Open Source”?
Parliament 19.10.05(7)
In his winding-up on Wednesday, the Minister for Technology and Innovation, Datuk Dr. Jamaludin Jarjis promised to give me a written answer to my query on the Open Source operating system on the ground that he had run out of time. Jarjis should have given me there-and-then the reply he had prepared on the subject but could not deliver because of time constraints. I am still waiting for Jarjis' reply four days after the undertaking.
In my speech on the 2006 Budget, I had asked whether the Malaysian Government had kow-towed to Microsoft on the the “Open Source” issue, which I had described as “another example of the government putting corporate interest above the national goal of broad-based IT literacy” when it shelved the plan to experiment with open source operating system.
This is what I told Parliament on October 3, 2005:
In his winding-up on Wednesday, the Minister for Technology and Innovation, Datuk Dr. Jamaludin Jarjis promised to give me a written answer to my query on the Open Source operating system on the ground that he had run out of time. Jarjis should have given me there-and-then the reply he had prepared on the subject but could not deliver because of time constraints. I am still waiting for Jarjis' reply four days after the undertaking.In my speech on the 2006 Budget, I had asked whether the Malaysian Government had kow-towed to Microsoft on the the “Open Source” issue, which I had described as “another example of the government putting corporate interest above the national goal of broad-based IT literacy” when it shelved the plan to experiment with open source operating system.
This is what I told Parliament on October 3, 2005:
In April 2004, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Dr. Jamaludin Jarjis announced that Mimos Bhd was tasked with creating an operating system for computers using open source software. According to NST, it is “a move that when completed will make information communication technology cheaper and accessible to all” (29/4/2004).Jarjis, where is your answer?
Microsoft holds a monopoly on operating systems for personal computers and charges expensive royalty and fees usage and upgrade. Open-source is software for which the source code (the instructions for the software) is available for distribution and modification. The modifier retains the copyright for his work, but the source code is public domain.
Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and recently Peru, among others, have been actively moving toward the Linux operating system and other open-source alternatives that can mean millions of dollars in savings. Institute of Information Technology, a Brazilian government agency working to promote digital inclusion, estimated that Brazil spent USD 1.1 billion on royalties and licensing fees for imported software programmes in 2002. According to the same source, Brazilian government agencies that have adopted free software had their costs reduced to a mere three percent of what would have been paid for proprietary programmes.
Datuk Jamaludin pointed out then that the Government wanted to look at ways to boost computer literacy among Malaysians without the burden of paying high fees. Malaysia spent about RM 7.86 billion on IT in 2003, of which RM 1.8 billion were on software. If the cost of using open-source software is 10% of Microsoft’s product, the RM 1.6 billion savings could be utilized to reduce the gap between the “information haves” and “information haves-not”.
Less than two months after Jamaludin’s announcement, Micosoft’s boss Bill Gates visited Malaysia, met with the Prime Minister and other ministers, and donated RM 10 million to some schools.
Since then, the discussion on open source operating system vanishes from public discourse. It is time for the government to reexamine the potentials of open-source and stop “kow tow” to Microsoft. Therefore, the IT policy of Malaysia must be a policy that champions “IT for All”, not favoring big corporations.
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