Vietnam: 100 percent open source by 2010?
Market research firm Gartner recently surveyed enterprises throughout the world and found that 85 percent are using open-source software.
Using open source for isolated applications, however, is not nearly ambitious enough, according to the Vietnamese government, which is now setting a target of 100 percent open-source adoption within the government by December 31, 2010, according to a policy paper (Word document) issued by the Vietnamese government and reported by VietNamNet Bridge.
To get to that 100 percent goal, Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications has mandated that open-source software products such as the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, as well as Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail software and Firefox Web browser, be installed on all government machines, starting with IT departments, by June 30.
Open source is not new to Vietnam, which has been promoting open-source adoption since at least 2004, as Network World reports, within its universities in an effort to develop its local software economy.
This thinking is consistent with advice I've given before in Russia: the best way to develop a local software economy is to keep the software local, rather than shipping rubles (or dong, in Vietnamese currency) back to the United States.
Regardless, this is a very ambitious project by the Vietnamese government. It will be interesting to track its progress and to place bets on how long it will take to get a Microsoft operative on a plane to try to change Vietnam's mind on the matter. I think it's likely that someone from Redmond is already sitting in a bureaucrat's office in Vietnam, making a plea for Windows.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
From gnucash (finance), openoffice.org (documents), netbeans (development), qemu + kvm (virtualization), pidgin (IM), firefox (web browser), gimp (graphic editor), and kaffeine (movie player).
Still... 1. I would call it more of an ambitious goal. 2. It might even drive the % of linux usage above the 1% mark. 3. I don't think they gave themselves enough time to accomplish their goal. 4. Given the high sotware piracy rate in that country which reflects a lack of respect for following rules, I don't think they will achieve their goal.
It currently shows linux usage below 1%. If you find any statistics you deem relevant, you are free to post them. As for you being in that 1%, there's nothing wrong with that. If you like linux (as noted by your post), then have fun. I enjoy windows which give me just as much right to post the same 'I'm using such and such OS" as you did.
move away from vendor lockin
I'm sorry but isnt open source still provided by vendors such as Ubuntu, Red Hat and Suse? If they pay for support of these OS's, arent they still paying for an OS? What I'd like to see in a future article is a TCO that shows how much they actually saved from this endeavor. My guess is that creating the glue to bind the various disparate components together from multiple development communities (each with their own agenda) will likely undermine the value proposition.
If I need support, fixes, or upgrades for any Linux distro I am not 'locked in' to the original vendor, I can go to a number of people for such support.
If I need support, fixes or upgrades for Windows I am 'locked in' to Microsoft because only they have all the information required.
As for the 'glue', that's what Red Hat, Canonical, Novell and others do. There is no 'gluing' needed at the user end. What do you think people are paying these companies for, a download server, fancy logo and a couple of desktop wallpapers?
OSS licenses are all about property rights. You idiots don't even understand simple concepts.
Ever read the GPL for instance? It is wrapped around copyright law. It doesn't circumvent it.
Seriously, how do you moron remember to breathe?
Dude. Open source is about making computing a respectable science like math or physics. How much would we be advanced if it was forbidden to use a calculus or the E=MC2 formula because they were copyrighted? Open source is about not reinventing the wheel everytime but allowing others to "stand on the shoulders of giants". It is more linked with Enlightenment than Communism.
This one sentence from v3 suggests to me that patent property rights are not honored:
"Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version."
This make the code non-free and nullifies the purpose of the GPL.
That clause is a guarantee that once code has been contributed that patent claims cannot be used to circumvent the GPL, beniffiting from others' free work without ever having to contribute back like some sort of parasite. If you're contributing to a GPL project you are freely allowing others to use your work on the same terms you have been allowed to use theirs. If you're not willing to do that then no-one wants your contribution.
If someone doesn't want to grant indemnity to all people using code they have contributed to a GPL project then they're missing the point of the GPL and SHOULD NOT CONTRIBUTE.
Furthermore. NO-ONE IS FORCING ANYONE TO CONTRIBUTE.
Here is a another quote from the GNU GPL version 3:
"You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program."
If you have intellectual property in the form of a trade secret embedded in the source code, you are giving all parties the right to copy it and disclose your trade secret. Please tell me where I do not understand. Do you have any protection over a trade secret once it is published and read by everyone in open code?
I wish that it would be possible to have an open discussion with you MSSlayer without you immediately labeling everyone that you disagree with as a moron or clueless or whatever. The purpose of a blog is to exchange information. Disagreement and difference of opinion is not a bad thing, but it needs to be based upon specific information and not general unsubstantiated attacks.
Why, is yet another internerd writing as though the GPL were being forced upon people at gunpoint? It's entirely optional. No-one has to contribute. No-one has to grant anyone indemnity with anything.
If you don't like GPLv3, you are still free to use the software without it affecting you. JUST DON'T CONTRIBUTE if it bothers you that much.
Are you frikken kidding me?
You think anything in code is a secret? A good programmer can run any software and copy that feature, even without reverse engineering.
I would love to have a intelligent discussion with you. However, you have never posted anything intelligent, or even slightly informed.
Educate yourself and come back here.
Another quote from GNU GPL V3:
"You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance"
I am interested in copyright protection that requires someone to accept my terms before they can receive or run a copy of the program, especially if somebody else has modified it and is now distributing it. The reason relates to another section of the GNU GPL version 3 relating to downstream recipients:
"10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.
Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties with this License.
An ?entity transaction? is a transaction transferring control of an organization, or substantially all assets of one, or subdividing an organization, or merging organizations. If propagation of a covered work results from an entity transaction, each party to that transaction who receives a copy of the work also receives whatever licenses to the work the party's predecessor in interest had or could give under the previous paragraph, plus a right to possession of the Corresponding Source of the work from the predecessor in interest, if the predecessor has it or can get it with reasonable efforts.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it."
If I have not charged anything for it anyway, but if the government of Vietnam has now modified so that it presents reports in Vietnamese, Chinese and other Asian languages with some other small modifications so that it avoids being a complete copy, what rights do I have after they have modified it? I am not a lawyer, but it would seem that my copyright is not worth much.
The rest of us will be too busy getting million of lines of code in return for our meagre contributions to care about EULAs or whether someone in some other country can use our code without paying us.
You must know nothing about advances in encryption. Go back to playing computer games.
- by ITRebel January 11, 2009 1:50 PM PST
- My friends,
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- by odubtaig January 12, 2009 10:24 AM PST
- Sorry, US law doesn't apply to me because I'm in one of the hundreds of other countries that aren't the USA.
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(30 Comments)In higher end business applications, more advanced encryption is a very effective security measure. Are multi-billion dollar corporations really going to spend time breaking your encryption code? However, if you are thinking about breaking encryption in one of your computer games, maybe you need to be bit more familiar with what the courts are now ruling about open sourcers who have broken encryption codes in the process of reverse engineering. This recent article by a Cornell University Law Professor reviews these recent rulings and is subtitled: "A Looming Ice Age for Free Software Development". This law professor suggests that these court rulings will have a chilling effect on any open source development that is based upon breaking proprietary code and trade secrets.
Here is the link:
"http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/cornell-law-review/upload/CRN504Hwang.pdf
I wouldn't want you to spend time in prison for not being aware of the law :).
Oh Vienna.