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Kaeru's Blog
Personal views and updates mostly related to FOSS
Local Meet: Capacity building and Marketing
Only 7-8 turned up. Much talk about marketing and an install fest, but I feel the issues are still the same. Very small active community. While the community is large, the active community isn't. Similar issues is lack of commitment and also thoughts on marketing.
Warning: Rant.. skip to capacity building and marketing if you're not Malaysian
More on commitment. I gave up a Friday night with my wife, and a UNDP reception for this, because Jason Lim aka Filex announced and organized it 2 weeks in advance. That's how things work in the rest of the world. You commit to something early, plan for it and stick with it. Not make changes at the last minute. Similarly if I had earlier events booked on that night, then I wouldn't have been able to attend this myoss meetup.
I'v seen this Malaysian attitude again and again. The last one was the RMS talk where people wrote about coming, then didn't show up. Until that changes, I personally feel, that any community activity will always be limited. We are still a community of what is somebody doing for me, not what can I do for the greater good. Even the simple act of confirming for a 2 hour social event appointment 2 weeks in advance, is too tough a task for Malaysians. Imagine if this was a larger event, where Filex might have booked a large room and refreshments and nobody turned up?
Capacity building and marketing
As for marketing and capacity building, they are partly related. For the short term, I think the lack of marketing by FOSS companies is because demand is now outstripping supply. So at the micro level, this isn't being pushed much, however as I'm removed from this situation, I don't feel that I'm qualified to talk on this too much. Somebody running a local open source business is better suited to give their views.
On a macro and long term level however, steps are being addressed. Without capacity (ie skilled workforce) it is difficult to employ FOSS solutions. This can be addressed via providing free training materials for end-users and for system administrators. Additionally SMEs need to be aware of who to hire to help support and maintain their Linux servers and software. At least there needs to be a minimum professional skills standard standard that SMEs can look forward to. Students and IT professionals also can now know the skill sets and recognized certification that they should aim for. IOSN here is working with LPI as well as the FOSS community to help provide affordable certification as well as free training materials. Look forward to more on this soon from IOSN.
WiFi security and IIIMF
Getting my notebook, not only resulted in more work done while commuting, but also a host of new things to learn regarding WiFi and IIIMF input methods.
I successfully got my Intel 2100 WiFI adapter to work and connect to Airzed successfully. There is a nagging issue that I haven't pinned down yet, which is that once a connection has been associated, it stays there and I can't seem to get it to connect to another network. Since S3 suspend works, I don't like the idea of rebooting just to reset a wifi connection. This bugs me, and will get further attention soon.
This leads to WiFi at home. I was thinking of getting a DLink 520+ PCI card on Friday to add to my firewall, but this plan has been delayed yet again, due to changes in plans to grab it from a shop in Low Yat. Since my wife's Vaio died, she's been using my desktop. So I need to setup a wireless access point at home, so I can work somewhere else and still have access to my desktop/devel server without lugging a long ethernet cable around the house.
After a quick read of bsdairtools it's obvious that WEP is not going to cut it, what with all the open ports and liberal security options on my internal home network. Additionally, I figure since I'm on the top floor and and top of a hill, why not share my bandwidth too?
So the WiFi plan at home is to have the AP on a different subnet, and a firewall rule that will allow dhcp, dns and ports 80, 443 open via a transparent proxy (another thing that I need to get up and running). Additionally I will also need to setup an ipsec gateway from my notebook to the internal lan. With some basic IPFW rules to block and shape the traffic, this doesn't look to be too difficult. Setting up ipsec for the first time, should take a bit longer than normal, although there is a lot of info on the net. This should be an interesting community experiment.
Finally IIIMF and what the heck is it? Basically it's a multilingual Unicode input method framework to replace XIM. I've been happy so far with gtk-input, although I'm now facing some quirks with it with gaim, as well as problems with openoffice. With my wife using my desktop more, I'll need to use a better system and IIIMF is it. It's already in the ports, so it shouldn't be too hard to get up and running. I'll report back soon on my success/failure at getting it to work with Japanese and Korean.
Regional updates, LPI and MOSIG
Tantalizing bits on what's going on at IOSN, affordable LPI certs for Malaysia and Malaysian Open Source Industry Group.
On work front, a lot of good news. The Join Inspection Unit, a UN body charged with reporting on UN adminstration and management, is currently doing a report on FOSS usage in the UN system. They met with IOSN to learn more about the impact that we are having regionally and internationally with regards to raising awareness of FOSS as well as how FOSS concepts such as openness, knowledge sharing and international collabaration.
This is followed up by plans to make IOSN a global UN task force for FOSS. Additionally we continue to work in the region. We hope to expand IOSN's resources by collabarating with ASEAN governments to provide additional support via regional government collaboration to increase open source use and development.
Of course, this means that MS and their hired lawyers the BSA have stepped up their FUD campaign. The point is, if Linux and Open Source is as bad as they say it is, why are they so afraid of it? They even spent the time to write an 11 page.. yup.. 11 page letter in response to IOSN. Well since nothing is closed at IOSN, we will put this letter up in the open, and let the community give their views.
Further news.. for Malaysia, we now have an LPI proctor in Dr. Nah. If you are a Linux trainer, you can use the free LinuxIT LPI training materials to provide training and actually organize with Dr. Nah to have your trianees sit for an LPI paper exam for possibly as low as RM100 per paper. This is of course also open to the general public, so if we can organize an exam day and location, system admins can sit for Level 1 and 2 exams.
I will be posting a more formal notice later in myoss/ossig to provide more information for trainers and training centers, as well as all you Linux heads who want to get certified. Incidently similar setup is being done in other South East Asian countries. Stay tuned.. the days of not being able to find trained and certified Linux staff will soon be over.
Formation of Malaysia's Open Source Industry Group is in works also, so if you're a small shop, soon you will no longer be alone in pushing OSS solutions.
We're Malaysia's next open source generation, and it's now on our shoulders to take it mainstream. Malaysians have been accused of being complacent and apathetic. Let us, the FOSS community prove that wrong and get things going!
Ditesh has already started a list of Malaysian contributers and if you are providing FOSS services, you should contact IOSN or Ditesh to be added to the list.
First entry on IOSN blog
Moving blog to IOSN
Due to uncertainties with the status of my server, I've decided to move my blog and articles over to IOSN.
