By mandating a procurement preference for Open Source Software (OSS), the Malaysian Government IT and Internet Committee (GITIC) is clearly at the forefront in the world’s growing official support for the Penguin and its allies. Significantly, GITIC’s bold procurement policy has teeth. Near-term targets for government purchases call for 60% of new servers, 30% of office infrastructure and 20% of school labs to make the switch by next year!

Doubtlessly, the farsighted leaders of GITIC have perfectly practical reasons for permitting less than total and immediate adoption of Linux and OSS. But without intending any disrespect for GITIC, we must ask the question, “why compromise on OSS at all?” Here’s a fearless and unrepentant promotion for 100% OSS adoption.

The WTO Play

Just for argument’s sake, let’s estimate that the hold of OSS on the Malaysian economy is approximately 5%. This leaves a healthy 95% for proprietary software. Apparent ubiquity from a single vendor is why proprietary software has been called a “monoculture”. But with Malaysia’s 63% piracy rate, as estimated by the BSA in 2003, the “real” market share of legitimate monoculture products drops to around 35%. Also note that the BSA estimates Malaysian piracy costs the monoculture about USD $129M per year.

Therefore, the corrected ranking of software vendors in Malaysia is: Pirates - 59%, Monoculture - 35% and Penguin-culture - 5%.

The Malaysian government’s master plan for OSS states that, everything else being equal, preference will be given to OSS solutions. The problem, however, is that the master plan also presumes that the procurement of proprietary solutions may frequently offer more advantages than disadvantages. But let’s look at one big disadvantage of continuing down the path of proprietary software procurements. Consider that, if the OSS target percentages are actually followed, then the allowances made for obtaining 40%, 70% or even 80% proprietary solutions across procurement categories will continue indirectly to pump up the attractiveness of proprietary products to the pirates who already control 59% of the software market. The only sure way to starve the pirates is to eliminate the value of what they steal. China has understood this clearly in it’s approach to satisfying the anti-piracy goals of the WTO by establishing its own strong Penguin preferences. In Malaysia, a complete and immediate halt to the procurement of proprietary software in government programs also would eliminate the incentive to use additional pirated copies in these same programs. If practiced in both official and civil society, 100% OSS adoption would completely solve Malaysia’s, and Microsoft’s, piracy problems. Forever.

Saving Money

There are more benefits as well. Let’s now make the simplifying assumption that support and services for infrastructure based on either OSS or proprietary solutions are non-zero but also are essentially equal. Then, if Malaysia chooses OSS everywhere, not just in government, we can calculate from the BSA piracy loss studies that the country could save as much as USD $204M (the 2003 estimate of the cost of 63% pirated licenses plus 37% purchased licenses). Revenues of this scale - almost $1B when adjusted for purchasing power parity - can provide a large economic incentive to the Malaysian government to jump start the savings process. A developing economy surely needs this kind of money.

So governments everywhere, especially those in developing economies, should mandate a preference for OSS in procurements that embraces target adoption rates of 100%. As shocking as this proposition may be to some, it strengthens the government’s WTO compliance and provides precious hard currency saved from unneeded licenses. Piracy would be gravely wounded and eventually could be eliminated as entire economies free themselves from the shackles of proprietary software. The only down-side is that today’s top software practitioners may have to find new ways to make money from services and support instead of monopoly lock-in.

O’Reilly’s Open Source convention (OSCON) in Portland followed by LinuxWorld in San Francisco were like star spangled siblings each celebrating the visionary sparkle and practical promise of Open Source.

Each sibling sported a distinct personality. OSCON pulled in the gurus and hackers of the Open Source and Free Software community while LinuxWorld attracted the giants of the computer industry rejuvenated by new markets opening up to Open Source.

“Changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators”

At OSCON, the more cerebral of the sibling conferences, Tim O’Reilly singled out new transformative technologies that are catalyzing the future. To a crowd fond of sandals and Apple iBooks, O’Reilly talked about social networking applications like Orkut and Friendster, online book and music brokers such as Safari, iTunes and Amazon, as well as other services which have become integral parts of everyone’s online life – Google, Mapquest and eBay. The seamless integration from the handheld to the server makes the Internet the platform for this participatory universe. As if to lead by example, blogs and wikis were part of every facet of OSCON – with developers, speakers, and journalists reporting the details of their immediate experiences and reactions at the conference simultaneously and wirelessly to the world.

Igniting Innovation

At LinuxWorld, the sibling wearing the suit, corporate leaders still seemed to remember the fundamental tenets of open source – community and innovation – in passionate keynotes from Matt Szulik, Red Hat’s CEO, and Nick Donofrio, IBM’s Senior Vice President for Technology and Manufacturing.

Szulik emphasized the importance of reform in US patent law to protect the spark of continued innovation. In addition, he argued for the necessity of economic sharing by US companies to grow the global technology market. Szulik also remembered, with great pleasure, his hour long meeting with President of India APJ Kalam earlier this year, where Dr. Kalam talked of his goal of boosting education in India with open source software. Szulik noted that US schools lag far behind in doing the same.

In his keynote, Donofrio proclaimed that Linux and open source software development are igniting the spark of innovation “like no other thing in computing has done before”. He pointed to the importance of industry, government and educators working together to maintain this flame of creativity. Donofrio’s widely reported statement that IBM will not use patents against Linux drew mixed emotions from a wary open source community but he challenged other vendors to follow IBM’s example.

Patent Warfare

Like IBM, HP and Red Hat addressed the patent issue and warned against hostile vendors who were stockpiling thousands of patents to use against Linux and open source software. In an interview at LinuxWorld, Szulik voiced great concern that patent warfare by Microsoft could lead to choking of new technology and inhibit the growth of Linux. The threat of litigation and copyright infringement combined with arsenals of patents would stifle the creativity of every knowledge-creator. Separately, Martin Fink of HP warned that potential liability from US DMCA laws, which govern protection of copyrighted multimedia content, forced HP to bundle proprietary DVD software with its new, otherwise open source, Linux laptop.

Building New Markets

Despite their different personalities, there was a lot of optimism at both events. In this growing world of suits and sandals running on collaboration and innovation, new companies – MySQL, Zend, Zope, Red Hat, Ximian (now part of Novell) – as well as old companies – HP, IBM, Sun – and foundations – OSDL, Mozilla, Apache – have become OSS stars. With undiminished idealism, some look to writing top notch code, others look to making serious money and all look to changing the world order through open source software. So what’s wrong with that? Join the party and make a change too.