Comments on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Asia-Pacific Consultation
9-11 February 2004 Kuala Lumpur

Onno W. Purbo

I am be very much biased by my experiences in Indonesia in building the community based Internet infrastructure that mostly based on Linux / Open Source Software.

I use Linux myself, most of my books is around Linux & the Internet technology. My & Indonesian ICT basic background can be read in Digital Review Asia Pacific.

I have some of the ideas and the answers, but would be of interest to hear others.

To be frank & honest

"In Indonesia, it would be very difficult for open source software to compete with US$3 Microsoft CD in some CD stores"

Things get worst, as the police would be happy to receive US$10 per visit to the computer stores. Some of them are even unofficially received monthly payment.

I got the impression that most basic arguments would traditionally be around low cost and open source. Let's face it; such arguments would likely be effective mostly for those that have to abide the law, such as multi-national listed companies and government offices.

We need more than just low cost, open source, free software (FOSS) to win the heart of the public at large in the Indonesian ICT societies.

Low cost & open source argument is only effective to attack the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg, public at large and small-medium enterprises they are mostly "untouchable" by Microsoft and law enforcer.

Unfortunately, ability to win the heart of the public at large will determine the success of free and open source penetration.

We need to carefully identify the strength of free and open source software and tune it into the need, the solutions needed by the public at large. Win the heart of the public at large, through their real need. Give the public at large the real solution.

Things get difficult as we need to carefully crafted the tactical action in winning the public heart, so that
1.	The process must have high & large impact.
2.	The process must be sustainable.
3.	The process must be self-finance and low cost.
4.	Not to disturbed any society's natural process. Any disturbance will likely lead to an artificial public's adoption of the open source software.

Unfortunately, donor's funding, government pilot projects if not carefully crafted will likely to disturbed the society's natural processes in open source software adoption. Thus, will likely lead to an artificial adoption of open source software.

It seems to me that most policy & regulatory people assume that all the people will abide the law and be a good citizen, never pirate software etc. Not surprising to see that most of the initiative will likely be based on the above assumptions. Unfortunately, in Indonesian reality, the real condition is far from being a good citizen. Thus, in reality, forcing the people to abide the law and set a tactical plan based on such condition will likely not effective.

Quite a number of FOSS consultancy meeting asking for a roadmap / path / change management plan that suitable for FOSS adoption. A roadmap tuned to the real condition of the country.

The typical roadmap will likely be started from
•	Zero knowledge, and transform them into
•	User of FOSS, and some may transform into
•	System administrator of FOSS, and some may transform into
•	The programmer of FOSS
Each stage may require different approaches; though all are basically knowledge sharing, awareness and education processes. It’s an art to be able to do it in large scale, sustainable, self-finance and not disturbing the society's natural adoption process.

Depending on who facilitates the transformation processes, it seems we basically have two main paths
-	Formal (government path or top-down approach)
-	Informal (community path or bottom-up approach)
Formal government approach through regulation and law enforcement for sure will likely to speed up the process. However, in a distorted law environment a top-down approach may be a very slow process. A community based self-finance bottom-up approach may be a much faster process and sustainable for open source software adoption in the long run.

Large mass / market place would be one of the key factor in a successful implementation of a bottom-up community based roadmap. Such bottom-up approach can be easily implemented in a country with large population such as Indonesia.

Example of top-down approaches:

-	Government decision to use FOSS as part of the national curriculum.
-	Would be nice if the government could set a policy to open source their software & forcing all government offices to use open source and having a trickle down effect to the societies.
-	Public money should be spent for public goods and public infrastructure, and open for public audit / inspection. All source code should be available for public usage.
-	Enforcing an open standard for all formats; and should be no cost & free licensing of the format.
-	Intangible benefit of open source software, which is not obtained by proprietary software.

Practical examples of bottom-up approaches.

Transforming the zero knowledge into user of FOSS:
-	Free talkshow, seminars at schools. Most of the students at schools would likely be interested in hacker stories and some small demo on how to crack as system with a little bit of flavour on network security. Being a hacker is a ideal character for most young people and would immediately attract their interest into Linux & Open Source software.
-	Media coverage, articles in newspaper, radio talkshow, and television talkshow. A US$25/article is a common / standard fee to write IT articles in various Indonesian magazine/newspaper.
-	Internet based mailing lists for IT beginners in various topics. The mailing list must be created and run by the community. A good example of it is majalahneotek@yahoogroups.com and pcplus@yahoogroups.com. Both mailing lists are a community mailing list of two (2) major Indonesian IT magazine, namely, Majalah Neotek and PCPlus.

Transforming the user of into system administrators.

-	Encourage university students to write books on various Linux system administrators. It is good for the students as they’ll receive US$500 royalty. It is good for the publisher, as they need good manuscript to be published.
-	Run 8 hour session road-show on various topics of Linux administrators demo. Cost US$3-5/participant to attend such demo. 500-1000 participants/session would be normal in a city. Many vendors would be of interest to sponsor such demo.
-	Internet based mailing list for system administrators in various topics. The mailing list must be created and run by the communities. Example of it is Tanya-jawab@linux.or.id.

Transforming the system administrator into programmers.

-	Create a community based  & self-finance servers for programmer & university students to test their code. An example of it is groups.or.id, a collection of servers. Detailed story on groups.or.id can be found in Digital Review Asia Pacific 2003 or http://www.groups.or.id (in Indonesian language).
-	Internet based mailing list to learn how to do the programming in various topics. The mailing list must be created and run by the communities. There are a significant number of Indonesian programmer mailing lists at yahoogroups.com. Using “Indonesia programmer” key word can easily search it.
-	For advance programmers and system administrator that has quite an influence on public at large and the commercial sectors, it would be easily to find donation equipments to be used in their development purposes.

Some of major comments / suggestions for IOSN (www.iosn.net)

-	To be honest, I hardly heard about IOSN in the Asia Pacific. It has the potential to make a good contribution to the Asia Pacific ICT society. I think we need to do something about it.
-	It would be great if IOSN would like to facilitate open source knowledge sharing activities in the Asia Pacific. Knowledge sharing can be in a form of hosting the softcopy of articles and books generated by various AP countries, disseminate the knowledge in a form of Web and CD-ROM, hosting various mailing list discussion groups on FOSS.