Open Source, Open Standards and Licensing: Presentation to Surabaya City Government, Indonesia

Open Source and Open Standards for government. Understanding the landscape. Done in 2006.

Transcript

1. Open Source, Open Standards, Licensing: Turning the Digital Divide into Digital Dividends Harish Pillay Red Hat Asia Pacific, Singapore hpillay@redhat.com Malang, Jawa Timur, Indonesia April 5th, 2006
2. Open Source I  Definition: The human readable portion of a computer program  Software takes two forms: the code and the executable (binary)  From the beginning, customers were provided with both – i.e., no distinction was made as to what they can get  Mis-guided business practises began to separate the two
3. Open Source II  All human endeavour is essentially open source  Physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, language, literature  If it wasn't, as a civilization, we will not have come this far  Mis-informed business practises have pushed and continue to insist on keeping the source secret, to the detriment of users at large
4. Open Standards  Standards are very important to the growth of economies  Examples such as measurement systems, power, road engineering, language, music  It is extremely important especially when using software, as both governments and corporates have to be able to get to information over an extended time line
5. Open Standards and E-governance  The ability to effectively use technology to engage with the citizens of the country  Governments do not have the luxury to choose the customers they want to deal with  Governments, as custodians of the nation's data bank, have an even greater responsibility to ensure longevity or long- life of data collected
6. The Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a dark granite stone which provided modern researchers with translations of ancient text in Egyptian demotic script, Greek, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Because Greek was well known, the stone was the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs in 1822 by Jean-François Champollion, and in 1823 by Thomas Young. The discovery facilitated translation of other hieroglyphic texts. - wikipedia.com at the British Museum
7. E-governance – data independence  Do we need a Rosetta Stone for finding out what was created in the late 20th and early 21st century?  E-governance must include a clause that mandates the publishing of the data formats of all documents that are part of the data store
8. Digital Divide ==> Digital Dividends  We need to • tackle “piracy” • lack of access to IT • ensure that the IT revolution does not bypass developing countries  It is never always about cost, it is really about being presented with opportunities  Opportunities from open source businesses are where the digital dividends will come from
9. Smoke and Mirrors using “Piracy”  Tackling “piracy”: • piracy is a symptom of supply not meeting demand • it is in the interest of the proprietary vendors to “promote piracy”, despite what they publicly state • I challenge the “piracy” police to go and raid/arrest home users • they will have some “showcase” arrests to instill fear
10. Licensing I  Licensing is a right given to a person/ company/government to use some product.  In software, there are two general models: • proprietary • open source licenses – the GNU General Public License, BSD, Mozilla Public License etc • These two models are, in general, mutually exclusive
11. Licensing II  The GPL version 2 is the license that Red Hat provides the software to customers  This allows the customer to do anything they want to the code to suit their needs  Red Hat's business model is to provide accountability, predictability, service level arrangements, support to users of the software
12. Something To Think About  August 25, 2004, the Malaysian police raided a “pirate software shop” in Kuala Lumpur  They confiscated Red Hat and FreeBSD CDs among others Photo from The Star, August 26, 2004
13. Nobel Prize for Literature  Nobel laureates for literature did not win it by just learning a language's spelling, syntax and grammar and writing a book  They had to read wide and extensively  Learning is done best by observing and copying best practices – ask any child  So, why are we debating the value of being able to read code, good code for that matter, which can only help you to write better?
14. Write Good Code by Reading Great Code  Highly recommended book that should be a required text for all developers – especially those learning to code  Translations of the book available in Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Greek, Polish – belum lagi di Bahasa Indonesia Diomidis Spinellis. Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective. Addison Wesley, 2003. ISBN 0-201- 79940-5
15. Summary  Document formats MUST be published  Open Standards is not necessarily the same as Open Source, but each helps the other thrive  The Open Document Format – an important standard to ensure that all content created will be usable and readable 5, 10, 100 years from now – visit www.oda.org (the Open Document Alliance) for details.
16. Pertanyaan? Harish Pillay, hpillay@redhat.com Terima Kasih!
17. Remember the early PCs?  They came with a built-in BASIC interpreter  What that allowed is the early users were able to start writing code  Today's “bundled proprietary OS” PCs are devoid of anything that's developer focused  But, if the system came instead with FOSS, one could learn to write software  The digital divide was created by unethical business practices and the emerging economies have 20-20 hindsight to do it right