Published in the Manila Bulletin, 19 November 2006. House Bill 5769 was passed by the committee and presented to the floor. However, Congress ended in March 2007 and was unable to deliberate the bill. A new Congress will deliberate the bill from July 2007.
The government, in the meantime, pursues a policy of using open source to create a platform for e-governance.
The United Nations has since cited the Philippines as the 17th most ready for e-governance, out of a field of 191 countries.
Rep. Teddy Casino's House bill 5769 is a welcome surprise for many who have been lobbying for the adoption of free open source software in the Philippines.
While still a diamond in the rough, House Bill 5769 is a landmark bill that places us at the level of progressive countries like Peru, Germany, France, India, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and several U.S. States that have passed similar bills promoting the use and development of Free and Open Source Software.
When software is described as “free and open source” what does it mean?
Free and Open Source refers to a development model for making software. It is not a technology platform, as naysayers would like to call it to confuse the issues. It is a way of doing things in the Bayanihan spirit.
Open Source software is free to the community because it is the community that creates it.
This means that it is easy to distribute without worrying about complex commercial licensing fees and schemes. Second, freed of licensing restrictions in commercial software, it is easier to build upon to create for-profit services, that can be offered to the global market, earning dollars and euros.
In the Open Source model, even if the software is free, services created with the software can be very profitable. Yahoo, Amazon,Google, Apple, AOL, SUN and IBM are examples of technology leaders that have built upon open source to create globally marketable businesses.
Tech giant IBM came out strongly in support of open source software during the bill's public hearing.
Governments have also successfully built upon open source platforms t ocreate low cost systems for effective e-governance. It is the model followed by our fellow ASEAN members Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore,and Vietnam to create web accessible e-governance platforms.
TheDepartment of Science and Technology came out strongly in support of open source software during the bill's public hearing.
Use open source software, such as LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mail,PostgreSQL), to provide a way for SMEs to handle their books of account on the Web, and you've addressed tax leakages in this sector while providing a service to the small entrepreneur.
Rep. Junie Cua, Chairman of the House Committee on Trade and Industry, wondered why there is a need for a bill to promote a free, and possiblysuperior product, which by logic should be widely accepted.
Sir, first let me say that the Open Source development model IS very widely accepted. Proof of this is the Internet. 60% of the Internet’s Websites run on Apache, a free Open Source Web server. Many other Web technologies are open sourced.
The real reason for an Open Source bill is accelerate the adoption of the Open Source model and its products in the government and the education system. We need to accelerate e-Governance, we need to train millions of kids how to use computers on a shoestring budget, we need to train hundreds of thousands of programmers with code made available by the Open Source model.
But, how does the government go about adopting open source software?
First off, the bidding process for Information Technology must be technology neutral. A bid specification that says: “An Intel Pentium Computer, 2Ghz orfaster, with licensed Windows operating system, MS Office, AdobePhotoshop, and Norton Anti-Virus” is not technology neutral, because it is overly specific about the brands and technology of the requirements.
A bid specification that says “A computer rated at XX Gigaflops (orSpecMarks, or any other combination of recognized performancestandards), with a licensed graphical operating system, a WordProcessor, Spreadsheet, or Office suite capable of creating and savingfiles in an open standard format file, a Graphics editor, and ananti-virus program” is technology neutral.
Second, since Open Source software is free, it should be the default configuration of any government computer purchase. Need specific commercial software? Go ahead, buy it. Just make sure you've able to justify the expense to the Commission on Audit and tothe people.
Head over to http://osswin.sourceforge.net/ and download freeWindows software, install it, and evaluate it. Check outhttp://www.softwarefor.org/ for a ready made compilation of free andOpen Source software.
Get your free Office suite at http://www.openoffice.org/ and ditch pirated copies of Microsoft Office. Free Open Source software offers a superior alternative to pirated commercial software.
Migration costs can be minimized by following a step by step migration plan. This is the approach being taken by France and Singapore in theirOpen Source migration plan. Novell, http://www.novell.com/ has downloadable examples of migration plans, as do many other sites on theInternet.
The easiest part of IT systems to migrate are the backroom servers. The users won't notice changes and the systems administrator probably already knows how to do it.
The next easiest parts are the applications running on Windows or Mac computers. Existing computers can be used as-is, and users need only minimal retraining. I've seen high school kids switch easily betweenMS Office and OpenOffice.org without issue. Tip: Just say it's a newversion.
Atty. Teddy Kalaw, who came as a representative of the PhilippineInternet Commerce Society, also espoused his views as Secretary-General of the IP Coalition, as well as his own. Atty. Kalaw says that thePhilippines is “one of the few countries without software patents.”
Sir, allow me to rephrase that: The Philippines is one of the growing list of countries with an ENLIGHTENED Intellectual Property policy that doesNOT allow software patents. It's already been discussed in the Intellectual Property Office and they've determined that in the interest of national development, we shall follow the progressive European model.
Software patents havebeen rejected in the European parliament as rent-seeking and stifling to innovation.
The lengthy and costly patent process favors those with the most money,and not those with the best ideas. Patents protect ideas, but ideas don't run on computers. Programs, working implementations of ideas, run on computers and programs are adequately protected by copyright.
Legislators in the United States, one of the few countries WITH software patents, is asking the Patent Office to review Software Patents, following a flurry of frivolous and rent-seeking softwarepatent lawsuits, including one that almost debilitated U.S. EmergencyServices.
Many U.S. Companies, such as SUN, IBM, Novell, and Google, are licensing their patents free of charge to the Open Source community to prevent others from claiming similar patents to undermine Open Source software.
It is a common misconception that Open Source software is public domain. It is not, Open Source software is copyrighted, just like commercial software. Products or services created on open source platforms are just as well protected by Intellectual property laws. The difference is in the rights the authors grant to licensees.
Rep. Casino says Open Source is like a recipe: A closed source carinderia serves pinakbet, an open source carinderia serves Pinakbet AND gives the recipe. Why would they do that?
Perhaps because you may review the recipe and suggest a better Pinakbet, or perhaps you will quote it in a recipe book, giving the carinderia free publicity. Or perhaps the Carinderia would like people to learn how to cook so he'll have cooks to hire when he expands to the next town.
Open Source means that a program's source code, like a recipe, or a building plan, is publicly available. It can be reviewed, studied, modified, and improved by the community. It can be used as a tool to train future programmers. Code in Open Source is the same as code in Closed Source on the same technology platform.
Make Open Source ubiquitous, like theFoundation of IT for Education (FIT-ED) is working to do, and you've created future programmers for both Open Source and Commercial software.
Today's Open Source hackers will be writing tomorrow's Windows 2010.
Software piracy is no longer the the biggest problem facing commercial software publishers, it is the lack of qualified software developers. India forecasts a shortage of 100,000 skilled programmers by 2010 andPhilippine Software Industry Association created 14,000 jobs in 2005,and aspires to grow to 100,000 jobs by 2010 with industry revenues of One Billion Dollars.
That means finding 86,000 people who have had prior experience programming.
Closed source commercial software provides nothing to practice with, while Open Source does provides the tools and the knowledge.
Training programmers with Open Source software been India's model for quite sometime, and they've been at the billion dollar mark for quite some time.
