changed:
-
=========================================================================
Malaysia: a well-organised, well-publicised, well-supported FOSS movement
=========================================================================
In a country of wide diversity -- Malaysia's main languages are Bahasa
Melayu, English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil and Hokkien -- FOSS has a
significant role to play. Not just in catering to diversity, but also in
taking this country's significant tech skills ahead. Malaysia's government
and media too has been active in promoting FOSS.
Malaysia's stands out for a well-organised FOSS movement, regular publicity
in the headlines where "Linux" and Open Source makes it to the news, and
investment by the state in FOSS. A growing number of interesting projects
are also visible in Malaysia. In addition, the significant level of
technology skills available here often reflect in the fairly matured state
of development of the FOSS network. Malaysia can gain from its superior
bandwidth availability and hosting facilities (as reflected in a number of
FOSS mirror sites available in few other Asian countries.
In August 2005, Malaysia announced its Open Source Award 2005. It says this
award of RM5000 "is to encourage the participation of local developers in
Open Source development work and the growth of more Open Source software
(OSS) projects as well as to recognise local people who are active in OSS
activities." See http://www.mncc.com.my/ictawards/oss-2005.html
An early report (from around 2000) quotes Dr. Mohamed bin Awang Lag, the COO
of the research and development arm of MIMOS, a Malaysian government
research and development corporation, saying that FOSS would allow Malaysia
to play a part in the international software community as well as reduce its
dependence on imported foreign software. He has been quoted as arguing that
using Linux on older PCs was a cost-effective way of getting computers into
schools throughout Malaysia and an effective way of introducing a whole
generation of Malaysians to computer programming. See
http://www.itworld.com/Open/4877/lw-12-malaysia-expo/
State-funded agencies have been active in supporting FOSS. For instance, see
http://opensource.mampu.gov.my/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=29
which offers a number of benefits for implementing FOSS solutions in
government. (1)
Elsewhere http://opensource.mampu.gov.my, other objectives have been
offered for FOSS deployment:
i. Reduce total cost of ownership
ii. Increase freedom of choice of software usage
iii. Increase interoperability among systems
iv. Increase growth of ICT industry
v. Increase growth of OSS user and developer community
vi. Reduce the digital divide.
FOSS challenges in the public sector have also been listed as (1) On the
technology front -- non-OSS compliant IT peripherals such as printers,
scanners and PDAs; incompatibility of data and file formats; inadequate
documentation; inadequate technical support; integration with legacy
systems. On another level, there is also an "inadequate understanding"
of intellectual property rights and licensing issues, of the benefits of
OSS and of how an OSS business model works.
http://opensource.mampu.gov.my/ informs that the Government of Malaysia has
decided to encourage the use of Open Source Software(OSS) in the Malaysian
Public Sector. The Malaysian Administration Modernisation and Management
Planning Unit (MAMPU) of the Prime Minister Department is given the
responsibility to implement this OSS Initiative.
The PC Gemilang project was kicked off in March 2004 with two models: A
RM988 PC running a Linux-based operating system and bundled with the
OpenOffice productivity suite; and a RM1,147 desktop with the Bahasa
Malaysia version of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system and Works
Suite 2004. News reports said PC Gemilang: Linux outsells Windows, Jun 24
2004 http://www.ct is a roaring success, according to the Association of the
Computer and Multimedia Industry of Malaysia (Pikom).
Malaysia's contribution to FOSS in Asia
---------------------------------------
AsiaOSC knowledgebase
`````````````````````
This was built out of Malaysia. AsiaOSC knowledgebase
is based on open source at the Asian Open Source. "It's now used as a
resource by open source practitioners across Asia, especially the country
pages which list open source activities in each country," says Will Smith.
From AsiaOSC, an Asian open source centre. It intends to include information
related to FOSS about "countries, languages, fonts, organisations, people".
It also includes a listing of Asia-based "open source conferences" and a
discussion board called FOSSCON.
There's an introduction to Open Source (advantages, problems faced by OSS,
legal issues and OSS, major packages, FOSS replacements for proprietary
software, common FOSS licenses, and open standards). There is a Repository
Alliance Project. Links here point to FOSS in education, in natural language
translation and processing, in distributed computing, in bioinformatics and
in healthcare.
Quote: "Aims: AsiaOSC is the Asian Open Source Centre. We aim to promote
open source software (often abbreviated as OSS) and free software, in Asia,
and to be a key resource of Asian Open Source information."
http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/page/Knowledgebase_Home.html
SOURCE: http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/page/Malaysia.html
IOSN.net
````````
Functioning out of Malaysia is the IOSN. The International Open
Source Network an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme's
(UNDP) Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) and supported
by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada. It is
playing an important role in building awareness about FOSS in this diverse
continent.
IOSN is a Centre of Excellence for Free/Open Source Software in the
Asia-Pacific Region. IOSN is an initiative of the Asia-Pacific Information
Development Programme (APDIP - http://www.apdip.net), which has been
supporting the strategic and effective use of Information Communication
Technology (ICT) for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development
in the Asia-Pacific region since 1997. Via a small secretariat, the IOSN is
tasked specifically to facilitate and network Free / Open Source Software
advocates and human resources in the region.
Its activities include a collaborative website that aims at mapping FOSS
activities in the Asia-Pacific; building a software repository; documenting
best practise; and building a bank of FOSS primers, among other activities.
Malaysia has its own magazine focussing on FOSS, or Open Source (the more
popular term in this country). Ow Mun Heng announced in early August 2005
the release of MyOSS Magazine - Edition 4 (The Penguins Are Coming Home). Os
wrote: "This is a community driven project which aims to publish monthly."
Articles ranged from those dealing with promoting FLOSS, to Palmo Linux (a
Japanised version of Linux that was created to fill a niche), and Gnome
Power Manager, and more. See http://mag.my-opensource.org
Malaysian user-groups
---------------------
Malaysian user groups based on mailing-lists or forums, have been
described as "all friendly and moderate volume (not too noisy, not too
quiet)". Links to some groups are listed below.
Malaysian Open Source interest group
http://www.my-opensource.org (Mainly technical)
Public Linux User Group (earlier Penang Linux User Group) -- knizam at
hotmail dot com http://penanglinux.blogspot.com/
Kuantan Linux User Group
Kuantan is located in Pahang state of Malaysia.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tklug/
Malaysian Gentoo Community a.k.a MyGentoo.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mygentoo/ or http://mygentoo.cjb.net
Planet MYOSS
http://myoss.bytebot.net
The Malaysian open source community speaking out.
Mypenguin99
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mypenguin99 - popular mailing
list, mainly in Bahasa Melayu.
MNCC OSSIG Mailing list
http://www.mncc.com.my/ossig/ (mainly non-technical)
IT Tutor
http://www.ittutor.net/
Malay-based forum discussing IT relevant topics & promoting FOSS
National fOSS (or related) networks (portals, sites, lists)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Malaysian Debian User Group(MyDebian)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mydebian
Malaysian Linux From Scratch(MyLFS)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mylfs
Malaysian Snort User Group
http://www.my-snort.org
Malaysian Open Source interest group
http://www.my-opensource.org
Check the active mailing list.
Mypenguin99
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mypenguin99
Has a popular mailing list
Malaysia Slackware Community
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/myslackware
Malaysian BSD User Project (MyBSD)
http://www.MyBSD.org.my
(Main project is the BSD Explorer; UNIX file manager)
MNCC 'OS SIG'
http://ossig.mncc.com.my
Malaysian Java Users Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/myjug/
Mylinux Webnet IRC Official Site
http://portal.mylinux.net.my/
Malaysian website for Linux news
http://www.linux.com.my/
BSD Malaysia - Online Community
http://www.freebsd.org.my/
Malaysia Slackware Group
http://www.slackware.org.my/
Malaysian Gnome Advocacy Mailing List
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-my-list
MNCC OSSIG Mailing list
http://www.mncc.com.my/ossig/
Open Source Competency Centre
http://www.oscc.org.my
LUGs in Malaysia
----------------
Red Hat's User Group Program
http://www.redhat.com/apps/community/LUG/southeast_asia/malaysia.html
Penang Linux User's Group
http://penanglinux.blogspot.com/
Perak Linux User's Group
http://www.plug.com.my/
The Kuantan Linux User Group (tklug)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tklug/
Kuching Linux User Group
http://www.kwhite.boltblue.net/kuchinglug/
Malaysia Gentoo user group revival.
www.mygentoo.cjb.net
mygentoo has a irc or chat channel #mygentoo at irc.dalnet.org
(previously at irc.webchat.org)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mygentoo/
Malaysia Debian User Group
irc channel - #mydebian @ irc.webchat.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mydebian/
Mirror servers in Malaysia
--------------------------
Acme Commerce (qmail)
http://mailserver.com.my/qmail/top.html
Advance eHost (qmail)
http://www.ehost.com.my/qmail/top.html
AsiaOSC MYmirror
(Fedora Core, Red Hat, Open Office, Mozilla, Knoppix,
Debian packages + ISO, Mandrake ISOs, FreeBSD ISOs)
http://mymirror.asiaosc.org
Hulk Solutions (qmail)
http://qmail.hulksolutions.com/top.html
Kinta Kellas Group (openwebmail)
http://openwebmail.kkellas.com.my
Leafbug GeekLab (Apache & CPAN)
http://mirror.leafbug.org
Leakage OpenSource Mirror
http://mirror.leakage.org
Linux.org
http://www.linux.org.my
MNCC OSSIG (CPAN, FreeBSD, Xfree87, apache)
http://ossig.mncc.com.my/mirror/pub/
MyBSD OpenSource Mirror
http://mirrors.MyBSD.org.my
Uniten
ftp://mpp.uniten.edu.my
Webcraft Solutions (Apache, MySQL & KDE)
http://mirrors.webcraftsolutions.com
Individual OSS evangelist websites / portals
--------------------------------------------
HackInTheBox pro-opensource news portal
http://www.hackinthebox.org
Hafnie Open Source blog (In Bahasa Melayu)
http://hafnie.blogspot.com/
Mohd Amin - J2EE Web Development blog - Mostly about Java
http://www.cheblogs.com/roller/page/princeamin/
nmr's telnet7 open source code and articles
http://www.telnet7.net
Will Smith
http://www.willsmith.org/
Bakthiar Hamid
Zope documentation, kebasdata product.
Colin Charles
OpenOffice.org and The Fedora Project evangelism as well as
code contributions. Manager of #myoss IRC channel on irc.freenode.net and
Planet MyOSS. See his blog at http://www.bytebot.net/blog/ (2)
Dinesh Nair
FOSS evangelism, code contributions and numerous others.
http://www.alphaque.com
Dr. Nah Soo Hoe
FOSS evangelism, maintainer of MyOSS mailing list
and numerous others.
Fu Yi Chin
Co-organizer of MyOSS meetup group
Hasbullah bin Pit
Localization and translation efforts for Mozilla,
Fedora Core/Red Hat, GNOME
Jason Lim
Co-organizer of MyOSS meetup group
Jaya Kumar
Linux framebuffer driver for Arc LCD board
Kenneth Wong
FOSS evangelism, author of IOSN's FOSS: General Introduction and
FOSS: Government Policy primers.
Khairil Yusof
FOSS evangelism and code contributions.
Lee Nan Phin
MNCC OSS SIG chairperson and numerous others.
Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail
Author of Krazhbox floppy linux, gfourcc,
TrayMoon, WineCD, minicrc.
Mohammad Najmi bin Ahmad Zabidi
KDE and GNU localization to the
Malay language
Mohanaraj Gopala Krishnan
author of GUI ACL Manager
Nur Hussein
EPCKPT porting and kernel patchset, Slackware packages
and others.
Ow Mun Heng
MyOSS Magazine editor
Yoon-Kit Yong
Author of C# Object Persistent Framework
#MyOSS-ers (in alphabetical order)
----------------------------------
This is a list of regulars on the #myoss IRC channel on irc.freenode.net
- alphaque (Dinesh Nair)
- aizatto (Aizat Faiz)
- dcmwai
- ditesh/ditesh|cassini (Ditesh Kumar)
- drbyte/bytee (Colin Charles)
- El-Lotso (Ow Mun Heng)
- filex (Jason Lim)
- geekOOL (Lee Chin Seng)
- jayakumar/flatronf700B (Jaya Kumar)
- kaeru (Khairil Yusof)
- kenw (Kenneth Wong)
- kenmin (Ang Kian Meng)
- lowks/platypus/razorclaw/RedFartShinobi (Low Kian Seong)
- mypapit (Mohammad Hafiz bin Ismail)
- ObiWanKenobi (Nur Hussein)
- prabu (Prabu)
- rids (Faizal)
- takizo (Paul Ooi)
- yky (Yoon Kit Yong)
SOURCE OF ABOVE:
http://www.iosn.net/country/malaysia/malaysian_foss_contributors
Malaysian FOSS contributions
----------------------------
ADOdb
ADOdb is a database abstraction library for PHP. It currently
supports an amazing number of databases and is among the most popular
database abstraction library available for the PHP platform.
Aria ERP
ARIA development began in the fall of 2002 due to a growing
dissatisfaction with the development cycle of NOLA. ARIA is based off NOLA
from Noguska and you can easily switch from NOLA to ARIA without any change
in the database, as they are from the same source code. Since ARIA currently
enjoys an almost nightly development track, it has far fewer bugs.
C# Object Persistent Framework
The C# Object Persistent Framework (csopf)
is a project which has a goal of making development of business software as
rapid and as maintainable as possible. The philosophy is to create a
framework which is very developer oriented, to create clean, obvious and
readable code. It also lets the developer develop software, with database
administration handled automatically.
gfourcc
Identifies the codec used in AVI files (\*.avi) and allow the user
to change the FourCC description code (like fourcc-changer in Windows).
Useful for people working with Microsoft AVI file. A Linux clone of AviC
fourcc changer tool.
GUI ACL Manager
The GUI ACL Manager tool provides a GUI interface to help
in the management of Access Control Lists for files. It was designed to be
used as a script from within Nautilus but can also be independently from the
command line by passing it a filename. It was built using pygtk.
Krazhbox floppy linux
KrazhBoX is a small-sized GNU/Linux distribution
targeted for users who need a quick and small rescue disk for their
GNU/Linux (and possibly other) operating system. KrazhBoX can also be use to
prepare a computer for operating system installations like partitioning hard
disk, formatting them with new a filesystem, activating the boot active
partition and many more! KrazhBoX supports common filesystem for GNU/Linux
such as ext2, ext3, ReiserFS and Minix as well as other filesystem (FAT,
FAT32, NTFS, and ISO9660).
Lazy Installer
Lazy Installer provides a comprehensive installation script
for qmail and relevant add-ons. The script installs qmail with patches for
security and functionality, vpopmail, IMAP, ezml, qmailadmin, vqadmin tools
as well as MySQL backend support.
m0n0wall
m0n0wall is a project aimed at creating a complete, embedded
firewall, router, traffic shaper (QoS), captive portal and VPN concentrator
software package that, when used together with an embedded PC, provides all
the important features of commercial boxes (including the ease of use) at a
fraction of the price (free software). m0n0wall is based on a bare-bones
version of FreeBSD, along with a web server, PHP and a few other utilities.
The entire system configuration is stored in one single XML text file to
keep things transparent. m0n0wall is probably the first UNIX system that has
its boot-time configuration done with PHP, rather than the usual shell
scripts, and that has the entire system configuration stored in XML format.
minicrc
A command-line-interface application that produce various crc
checksums (crc32,crc16,crc-ccitt,bzip2 crc) on files and validates them.
Useful for fast file verification but not validation against intentional
tempering.
PicoBSD
PicoBSD is a one floppy version of FreeBSD, which in its different
variations allows you to have secure dialup access, small diskless router or
even a dial-in server. And all this on only one standard 1.44MB floppy. It
runs on a minimum 386SX CPU with 8MB of RAM (no HDD required!).
The Electronic Human Resource Management System (e-HRMS)
The e-HRMS is a
web based HR management system. Currently it supports an extensive employee
database, full featured electronic leave system, workflow driven document
circulation system, tabular and graphical reporting and multi user system
and role based access.
Traymoon
TrayMoon is a system tray application that display the moon phases
and the Hijri dates. It is a fully open-source software under the terms of
the GNU General Public License.
WineCD
WineCD is a system-tray application that helps to eject and close
cdrom/dvdrom tray programmatically.
Miscellaneous projects
----------------------
A group of computer geeks using freely distributable software and
communicating via the Internet puts together an e-community system on a
shoe-string budget. Using the tools of the Free Software/Open Source
community, The Malaysian Open Source Group has assembled for The
Thalassaemia Association of Malaysia an online social community for
Thalassaemia sufferers and their families. See
http://listproc.ucdavis.edu/archives/reticulum/log0005/0007.html
For querying alexa.com: Will Smith Offers a PHP-based page which allows you
to easily query Alexa.com to see which web sites are getting lots of
visitors recently. http://www.willsmith.org/shares/alexahelper.php
Tuxhealth: Around 2003, Will Smith created a plugin called 'Tuxhealth' for
the Mozilla browser. It allows you to easily see what operating system and
web server software the remote site uses. Says he: "I use it to spot who is
using open source, and who is not."
Time-line of FOSS growth in Malaysia
------------------------------------
- August 2002: The Malaysian Government has stated a commitment to FOSS, and
moves are underway in some Government agencies to migrate.
- November 2002: Selangor State Government gets itself FOSS training.
- October 2003: Malaysian Venture Capital (Mavcap) invests RM18-36million to
create cluster of open source companies.
- October 2003: BCB bank using GNU/Linux extensively.
- February 2004: IIUM's student registration database, described by
Computerworld
- February 2004: RHB Bank and others, described by MIS Asia Magazine
- May 2004: Linux World Expo in Malaysia: Where Open Minds Meet. Linux World
Expo in Malaysia 2004
- June 2004: Public Sector open source webpage launched
http://opensource.mampu.gov.my/
- August 2004: Malaysian base operating system derived from FreeBSD launched
by Triance http://www.triance.com.my
Other Links
-----------
- http://www.axs-host.com
Hosting Provider for OpenSource and Business
- http://opensource.bytecraft.com.my
Source of simple Linux Shell tutorials and ICT news links
- http://www.thevaultmagazine.com.my
Online magazine focusing on the business of IT and New Economy in Malaysia
and South East Asia, has an open source section. dead link 27-10-2004
- http://www.myenvolution.com/portal/index.php
eNvolution CMS Content Management System in Malay.
- http://www.php.net.my/
Malaysia PHP Community in Malay
- http://www.phpnuke.com.my/
Malaysia PHP-Nuke Community in Malay
- http://mynuke.info
Malaysian FOSS and Nuke User
- http://mercumaya.net
FOSS hosting solutions for SME businesses.
- http://skcc.forumer.com
Dual language forum discussing various topics including GNU/Linux.
- http://www.geocities.com/linuxmalaysia
Articles in Bahasa Melayu about FOSS and Linux.
- http://www.xoopsmalaysia.org
Malaysian XOOPS Community
- http://www.nota.com.my/
Get GNU/Linux books and notes and others FOSS at cheaper price
- http://www.triance.com.my
Operating system derived and developed from FreeBSD and Linux base in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
- http://www.mymambo.org
Mambo CMS in Malay
- http://www.bigsatellite.net
Building the largest database of freelancers in Malaysia.
Malaysian Open Content and Open Access Links and Resources
----------------------------------------------------------
Malay language wikipedia (encyclopedia)
http://ms.wikipedia.org (GFDL license)
OpenOffice.org Training Notes
http://training.bytebot.net/ (Creative Commons license)
OpenOffice.org Full Training Manuals (for openoffice v1.1)
http://opensource.mimos.my/?main=mimos/OO-manual (GFDL)
Links
-----
See the IRC channel #myoss on irc.freenode.net.
Planet MYOSS: The Malaysian Open Source Community Speaks
http://myoss.bytebot.net/
LUGS
----
Penang Linux User Group
:City: Penang Web Site: http://members.tripod.com/penanglug/
:Contact: N/A
:Email: plug@msa.dec.com Click here for more information If you have any
:queries: pluginfo@msa.dec.com.
Pertubuhan Pakar ICT Malaysia
:City: Kuala Lumpur Web Site: http://www.mysig.org.my/
:Contact: Sekretariat
:Email: sekretariat@mysig.org.my Click here for more information
FROM http://glue.linuxgazette.com/taxonomy/term/161
Kumpulan Pakar ICT Linux Malaysia
Submitted by linuxdotmy on Sun, 02/27/2005
- 05:19. English | Malaysia http://www.geocities.com/linuxmalaysia
linuxmalaysia@gmail.com Kuala Lumpur * Irregularly.
PinCenter Linux User Group
Submitted by msn_murty on Sun, 10/17/2004 -08:25. English | Malaysia
Penang LUG
misLUG
masliza20
Linux Malaysia
Johor Linux User Group
linuxmalaysia.my
Klang Valley Linux Users Group (KVLUG)
Penang LUG list
Penang Linux User Group
Penang Linux User Group (PLUG) Membership List
Name PLUG Status Title Company
Government initiatives
----------------------
On July 17, 2004 The Star (Malaysia) reported that all Government technology
procurement would henceforth have a preference for open source software
(OSS), under the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan
made available to the public on that day. Said the mainstream newspaper, "In
what was its strongest show of support for OSS, the Government's masterplan
calls for policies to be put in place in several areas, including
procurement, that would favour such software. The masterplan has been a
topic of debate among ICT companies, local and foreign, that supply goods
and services to the Government."
MIMOS Open Source R&D Group: One of the government-supported ventures, MIMOS
"strongly believes in the philosophy of Open Source and is currently moving
towards increased adoption of Open Source policies". MIMOS says it believes
the Open Source business model will ensure the protection of intellectual
property, prevention of monopoly and progress of technology for the benefit
of all.
MIMOS's Open Source R&D Group comprises of the Asiaosc team, National Policy
team and Localization team. The Asiaosc team focuses on creating a hub of
information about open source in Asia, and project MIMOS's open source
activities throughout Asia. National Policy team focuses on secretariat and
chair of steering committee. Its localization team focuses on ensure key
open source software available in BM, especially for digital divide
community
See http://opensource.mimos.my/?main=mimos/mimos-oss
Malaysia-related software on Sourceforge
----------------------------------------
World Xiangqi League
The World Xiangqi League (WXL) was the largest online
Chinese chess community on the Internet, with a Malaysian link too. It
claims to have over 100,00 members and servers in US, Beijing, Taiwan, Hong
Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. All the WXL source code is being archived as
free software. http://sourceforge.net/projects/xiangqi/
MalaysiaLinuxDoc
This project is to develop education software for Malaysia
Linux Documentation. Project proponents say this software will be build with
PHP and it will base from the lessons from each level of classes. This
application will ran on network, web base concept.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/java2d/
MyBSD Malaysia Project
A project to "mainly develop some open source
software for UNIX or windows9x." Still under development: BSD File Manager
(File manager for UNIX, fully tested on FreeBSD; nice GUI seems like
Windows9x. Written with http://sourceforge.net/projects/malaysiabsd/
Malaysia Athena Server Emulator
ragnarok athena based server emulator
tranlated in Malaysia's languages http://sourceforge.net/projects/mathena/
Projek OpenSource Budakdegil:
Membina sebuah pusat informasi dan komunikasi
mengenai OpenSource untuk rakyat Malaysia.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/borak/
FOSS education
--------------
Shin Adsys Sdn. Bhd. is a Malaysia based company which sees itself as having
a "high profeciency in Computer Applications, Software Engineering for
automation design, instrumentation, software and system integration
solutions provides Linux traning in collaboration with Linux Learning
Centre, India". http://www.linuxlearningcentre.com/malaysia.php
Other pointers
--------------
Dinesh Nair <dinesh@alphaque.com> points to http://www.iosn.net which has a
short listing of individuals involved in Open Source in Malaysia, at
http://www.iosn.net/country/malaysia/malaysian_foss_contributors He adds:
"Hop in to our irc channel, #myoss on irc.freenode.net. We're usually there,
though not all conversation is around OSS. It can get pretty ecclectic at
times as well."
Acknowledgements
----------------
Thanks for these links to: http://www.asiaosc.org/enwiki/ and also Dinesh
Nair <dinesh@alphaque.com> for inputs.
(1) These are listed to include avoiding vendor lock-in; accessing a product
that is global in its spread, royalty-free, non-exclusive and offers a
perpetual licensing; getting the benefits of free source code and
version-control management software; thorough testing; better software
security; configuration management (on platforms used and the ability to
choose your compiler); the offer of platform-neutral computing; wide options
in porting; the ability to work on software modifications, enhancements and
testing; adequate documentation released with source code; and the
possibility of benchmarking and performance tuning. As the
opensource.mampu.gov.my site puts it, "With the available source code, for
the first time, organisations now have the capability of having complete
control over the entire development cycle. There is no vendor equation in
this and therefore eliminates the potential of accepting vendors' optimistic
delivery dates."
(2) This close-up profile of a young FOSS evangelist from Malaysia gives an
interesting insight into the profile of who makes up the growth base of FOSS
in this region: "My name's Colin Charles, but I've assumed the nickname byte
or drbyte on IRC; as a result, there are quite a number of people that refer
to me as byte. I am now, twenty years of age. Malaysian, living in
Melbourne, Australia now..."
Charles has been a lead programmer for the effort to bring the Fedora
version of GNU/Linux to PowerPC chips. See references to his work at
http://bytebot.net/media/ibm-power.html This Malaysian programmer-consultant
is a contributor to the Fedora Project, a community-supported FOSS
project sponsored by Red Hat Linux to build a complete, general-purpose OS
exclusively from free software.
In the Fedora Project. Colin has worn many hats in his day-to-day
participation, from management of the Fedora mailing lists, to wiki work, to
testing, to advocacy. The depth and breadth of Colin's contributions has
placed him "in the forefront of the Fedora community" said the Red Hat
Magazine, in an interview.
He said in an interview, "I do migration consultation, anything to do with
OpenOffice.org or Linux, and currently am camping in China doing software
development. Oh, and training."
He has been working "a lot" on the PowerPC tree for the Fedora Core. The
tree is open at http://fedoraproject.org/fedorappc/
Explaining his background in FOSS, Charles says, "(I got started) back in
the day, I had a 486 DX4 75MHz laptop, and while it ran Windows 3.1 fine,
Windows 95 came out not long after. With 8MB of RAM it was chugging right
along, but there was some disk corruption within the first week and it
cheesed me off. Getting Linux in Malaysia was hard to do, back then, as we
had no Cheapbytes. The local Cheapbytes equivalent sold CDs for around RM35
(thats USD10 now), and that was a lot of money for a young student who got
an allowance of RM5 a day. But with supportive parents and all at home I not
only got all the resources I required, but also another computer (P233MMX)
came not too long after."
Asked why he continues in the Fedora project, Charles replied, "Continue?
Because there's hope in the project. It has novel aims. And the community
(really, there is one) is great. For developers (wanting to get started, my
advice is), start contributing packages to the Extras repository. Be active
on Bugzilla (fedora.us), and you will get some packages included after the
lengthy QA process. Otherwise, start helping out with the documentation
project. Or the News Updates. Do advocacy pieces for your daily newspaper.
Join in Fedora marketing. There's many ways to help, while we get the other
infrastructure and leadership bits sorted out. You just have to know where
to look." See http://bytebot.net/media/rhmag-interview-dec04.html
