Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PHILIPPINES
by
Caroline G. Apolinario-Lozano
Introduction
In summer of 2009, our office(iSeNS Asia) received calls from several
companies in Philippine Export Processing Zone located at Rosario, Cavite.
The calls are focused in one problem. It’s about a letter of notice or warning
which they received from the Pilipinas Anti-Piracy Team (PAPT) stating that
the use of unlicensed and pirated software is a violation of the Intellectual
Property Code of the Philippines and is punishable by up to nine years
imprisonment and a maximum fine of 1.5 million pesos. They were served a
notice to comply to licensed software within 20 days from the receipt of the
letter.
Initially, they inquired for the cost of licenses of their operating system
and other productivity tool software. However, upon learning the huge amount
of cost that they need to purchase the licenses they asked for alternatives or
other solutions. Of course, our solution to their problem is the Free/Open
Source Software (FOSS). At first, our solution is quite alien to them since
most of them are not aware that these FOSS exists and that they can use it
without license cost at all. So we have to explain to them the pros and cons
in using FOSS vis-à-vis proprietary software. Finally, probably after
comparing the training cost they will incur in migrating to FOSS and the
license cost of the proprietary software, some companies migrated to FOSS.
In my experience, people have apprehensions in using FOSS because
of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Fear in using and adapting a new technology
like FOSS. Uncertainty in the continuity of support and availability of skill set
in case of technical problems and difficulties in using FOSS. Doubt in
effectiveness, security and free license mechanism of FOSS.
I am writing this paper to provide enlightenment about the
misconceptions most people have about FOSS. For a clear understanding of
FOSS, below is a brief definition of the term, which will be the basis of the rest
of the discussion in this paper. A more complete definition can be seen in
Appendix A.
Free/Open Source Software are programs whose licenses give users
the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study and modify the
program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program
(without having to pay royalties to previous developers).
Reliability
It is not a coincidence that FOSS are so reliable. There are good
reasons why free software tends to be of high quality. One reason is that free
software gets the whole open source community involved in working together
to fix problems. Users does not only report bugs, they even fix bugs and send
in fixes. Users work together, conversing by email, to get to the bottom of a
problem and make the software work trouble-free. Another is that developers
really care about reliability. Free software packages do not always compete
commercially, but they still compete for a good reputation, and a program,
which is unsatisfactory, will not achieve the popularity that developers hope
for. What's more, an author who makes the source code available for all to
see puts his reputation on the line, and had better make the software clean
and clear, on pain of the community's disapproval.
According to the Fuzz Study, Free/Open Source Software is more
reliable. The paper “Fuzz Revisited” measured reliability by feeding programs
random characters and determining which ones resisted crashing and freeze-
ups. This approach is unlikely to find subtle failures, yet the study authors
found that their approach still manages to find many errors in production
software and is a useful tool for finding software flaws. What’s more, this
approach is extremely fair and can be broadly applied to any program,
making it possible to compare different programs fairly.
There is evidence that Windows applications have even less reliability
than the proprietary Unix software (e.g., less reliable than the FOSS
software). A later paper published in 2000, “An Empirical Study of the
Robustness of Windows NT Applications Using Random Testing”, found that
with Windows NT GUI applications, they could crash 21% of the applications
they tested, hang an additional 24% of the applications, and could crash or
hang all the tested applications when subjecting them to random Win32
messages. Indeed, to get less than 100% of the Windows applications to
crash, they had to change the conditions of the test so that certain test
patterns were not sent. Thus, there’s no evidence that proprietary Windows
software is more reliable than FOSS by this measure. Yes, Windows has
progressed since that time - but so have the FOSS programs.
Although the FOSS experiment was done in 1995, and the Windows
tests were done in 2000, nothing that’s happened since suggests that
proprietary software has become much better than FOSS programs since
then. Indeed, since 1995 there’s been an increased interest and participation
in FOSS, resulting in far more “eyeballs” examining and improving the
reliability of FOSS programs.
FOSS has gained significant market share in many markets, is often the
most reliable software, and in many cases has the best performance. FOSS
scales, both in problem size and project size. FOSS software often has far
better security, perhaps due to the possibility of worldwide review. Total cost
of ownership for FOSS is often far less than proprietary software, especially
as the number of platforms increases. These statements are not merely
opinions; these effects can be shown quantitatively, using a wide variety of
measures. This doesn’t even consider other issues that are hard to measure,
such as freedom from control by a single source, freedom from licensing
management (with its accompanying risk of audit and litigation),
Organizations can transition to FOSS in part or in stages, which for many is a
far more practical transition approach.
Realizing these potential and considering the economic crisis that our
country is facing, FOSS will surely provide a better alternative to costly
proprietary software. To achieve this, the government should encourage and
mandate its agencies, particularly the Department of Education and
Commission on Higher Education to adapt the use of Free/Open Source
Software instead of the proprietary software. This will ensure availability of
manpower skill set and lessen the hesitation to transition to Open/Free
Source Software because of “lack of Knowledge”.
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving
away the software as a component of an aggregate software
distribution containing programs from several different sources. The
license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow
distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form
of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-
publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a
reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet
without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a
programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated
source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a
preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and
must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license
of the original software.
7. Distribution of License
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom
the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an
additional license by those parties.
Notepad, Wordpad,
TheGun, EditPlus, KWrite, Kate, BlueFish, Gedit,
Text Editors
SciTE Joe
Access, dBase,
Kexi, OOBase Database
Foxpro, Paradox
Excel, Lotus123,
OOCalc, Gnumeric, KSpread Spreadsheet
QuattroPro
Visio Kivio, Dia Diagramming
PowerPoint OOImpress, KPresenter Presentation
Imendio Planner, Kplato,
Microsoft Project
MOOS Project Viewer, Project management
Manager
MrProject, RationalPlan
Evolution, Kontact, BALSA,
Outlook, Thunderbird +
Thunderbird + Lightning, Personal information managers
Lightning, Sunbird
Sunbird
Alcohol 120%,
Discjuggler, Easy CD
K3b, XCDRoast, more CD burning
Creator, Nero Burning
ROM
GnuCash, KMyMoney,
Quicken, Microsoft jGnash, MoneyDance, Grisbi,
Accounting
Money, TurboTax PLCash, CrossOver Office
with Quicken, lazy8ledger
Synchronization with Windows
ActiveSync SynCE
Mobile devices
WinEdt, TeXnicCenter Kile, Texmaker, LyX LaTeX IDEs
Veritas Backup Exec, UniSon, Veritas Netbackup,
Backup
Cobian Backup more
Dreamweaver, NVU,
KompoZer OOWeb, NVU, more Web Design
Networking
Windows apps FOSS
Description
Microsoft Internet
Explorer, Firefox, Firefox, Galeon, Konqueror, Internet browsers for the
Netscape, Opera, Lynx, Netscape, Opera, more World Wide Web.
etc.
Computer algebra
Maple, Mathematica Maple, Mathematica, Maxima
systems