Hasannudin Saidin

Nanchang, China mandates Linux

An interesting snippet of news swung by my RSS reader the other day.

Authorities in the southeastern Chinese city of Nanchang are requiring all local Internet cafes to replace their Microsoft Windows XP operating systems with a Chinese-made system, Red Flag Linux, according to officials and Internet cafe owners.

An official with the Nanchang Cultural Discipline Team, which oversees the roughly 600 Internet cafes operating in Nanchang city, said the new operating systems were mandatory. "We have already started installing the new software in all Internet cafes. All of them must have this new one," the official said.

While one may wonder if the main motives behind this move are less than noble for open source, given that it is after all mandated by the Nanchang Cultural Discipline Team, which sounds ominously like big brother. Nevertheless, this signals a growing move towards bringing open source desktops closer to the end user and to students.

If something similar were to be done in the town of Wuhan, for example, where there are many universities and colleges, you would be assured of a generation of graduates all well versed in using Gnome or KDE on the desktop. This would be a skill they would take to their jobs and to their homes, thereby further propagating the use of open source desktops.

While the mainstream media and the technology rags have stopped talking so much about open source adoption and its encroachment into the enterprise, I see a silver lining in this. It is not because open source is no longer the flavour of the day, but because it has become so common, it is no longer novelty news. The ubiquity which we have long sought, has finally arrived, one would say.

This however does not mean that the fight has ended. In fact, it should intensify, as with the economic recession looming, the battle for enterprise IT dollars will become much more closely fought. With its lower TCO, open source based solutions have a growing edge. We need to be cognizant however that complacency can only hurt the inroads we have made into the enterprise. We must strive to continue delivering higher quality systems and applications to stem the tide of proprietary software.

On the local front, it does seem like MDeC is now beginning to embrace open source within MSC companies and to promote those from within that stable who are open source companies. While this is laudable, I have been down the same path with them before, and that more or less fizzled out as MDeC lost interest. I wonder if they will have the staying power this time around, and have learnt the lesson of the past that it is the community which builds open source. A stronger and more open engagement initiative would be strongly welcomed.

MSC companies should also take the opportunity open source provides and use that to jumpstart their businesses in the software industry. Why reinvent the wheel, when there are perfectly good wheels you can take and modify to build the systems you need to deliver your customers ? Why forsake a global community of developers, users and testers who will assist you in doing just that ?

With the release of Android and Google's entry into the 3G/GSM handset market, even mobile communications is now open source ready and capable. I wonder if this will be taken advantage of, and Android based systems with its potential of harbouring thousands of third party applications will supercede the iPhone as the coolest handset to be seen carrying.

Time, and the effort and innovation required, are the only things which will tell on this.

Piracy of a different kind

Courtesy of Slashdot, I discovered that the popular guitar tab site, OLGA has shut down again. The reason given was that the publication of the tabs constitute a copyright infringement, and a DMCA violation. In other words, the people who create guitar tabs of songs are guilty of reverse engineering[1]! Never mind the fact that most of the tabs are awful to begin with.

I used to play the guitar rather badly[2], though the fact that I can play at all is no mean feat considering that I'm tone deaf. However, because I am tone deaf, tab sites are extremely useful to me. Now, it seems that using those tabs can be considered condoning copyright violation (in the US, at least) and is therefore a form of piracy.

Way weird! Heh heh henh heh, hmm heh hnnh heh ... [3]

What has it got to do with Malaysia? Nothing really. Or rather, not yet anyway. But it won't be a stretch to say that someday it will affect Malaysia, due to the "harmonization of intellectual property laws"[5].

So, where will it end? Can't do tabs, can't do lyrics. Maybe, eventually singing along (no matter how badly) will also constitute a violation?

Before long, all we can do is listen to songs, but we can't remember  the lyrics, can't try to work it out on our own instruments, can't change the format to ogg or mp3s. They should really start looking into making different kinds of musical instruments and patent those (e.g. 7-string guitars, say), so that songs can really become proprietary and would therefore "ensure that composers and songwriters will continue to have incentive to create new music for generations to come."

As an aside, I wonder what Lars Ulrich's opinion on tabs is.

[1] I may be wrong on the actual violation. It may not be reverse engineering but something else. Haven't read the DMCA since it's not directly relevant to me and Malaysians in general (yet). The DMCA thing was mentioned in a lawyer's cease and desist letter to another tab site, as shown here.

[2] I stopped playing lately because the missus said that the neighbours are considering a class action suit on me for undue duress and extreme aural and mental torture.

[3] I would like to categorically say the transcribed laugh/giggle above is not a copy of Beavis & Butthead's laugh. If it was, I may have violated the DMCA[4], for all I know. So it ain't anything like that.

[4] If I was an American citizen, which I ain't.

[5] There's lots of links for this. Googling gives this .

Rights? What rights?

So, this one day, I had a nostalgic fit and wandered off to Tower Records to get a few Iron Maiden CDs. One of the albums I bought [1], Death On The Road, had a notice at the back cover, saying:

This disc may incorporate Copy Control technology.  Copy Controlled discs are designed to be compatible with CD audio players, DVD players and PCs with OS Windows 95, Pentium 2, 233Mhz, 64MB RAM or higher.  This technology prevents the consumer from making digital copies.

For further information please visit http://www.emimusic.info

At which point, my reaction was, "Huh?"

I bought the 2 CD collection anyway. Went back and slotted the CDs into the laptop and ripped it into MP3s (because there aren't any Ogg enabled Nakamichi head units on the market). Apparently, the Copy Control thing is rather useless (ineffective, rather) on non-Windows machines. Fancy that.

Now, the thing is, in Malaysia there aren't that many people who'd make any noise with regards to DRM attempts. Why is that, though, I wonder?

Similarly, in Malaysia there aren't that many people who'd be pissed off with Microsoft's WGA (see earlier post). Why is that?

Personally, I think it's because we are swimming in pirated software, music and videos. And because of that, we are accepting controlling technologies and initiatives (think DRM, Trustworthy Computing, software patents) because we have *no idea* what our rights are.

In that sense, we are like lambs to the slaughter, really. Organisations and companies can provide crippled hardware, software, music, videos, regulations and legislations and we'd take it all in because we don't see any difference in how we obtain hardware, software, etc.

Then, one day when all the necessary technology and regulations are in place, the plug gets pulled. There'd be a real crackdown on illegal CD/VCD/DVD producers, the Low Yat Collective (software division) will be raided, the dude with the old Russian submarine containing his production line (parked offshore) will be caught.

Then what?

No use crying about fair use and the right to listen to music you've paid for on any device you like.

No use complaining about not being able to install the same copy of Windows on your new PC, even if you've sold the old one off.

No use appealing to the authorities to let you sell the software you've developed because the patent it allegedly infringes is stupid and shouldn't have been granted anyway.

Rights? What rights? We've giving it all away.

[1] I also bought another one, Edward The Great, a compilation which didn't have Copy Control. I also wanted to get three of their albums which the guy at the counter said isn't available because they're satanic or something like that -- but that's another story for another place.

Genuinely Advantageous (to be Malaysian)

On the 25th. of April 2006, I found myself surprisingly proud (more than usual, anyway) to be a Malaysian.  Because, on that day, The Star newspaper had a front page article saying that Microsoft are launching the  Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program. In The Star's in-Tech supplement, a longer  article followed which explained more about the WGA program.

Why did I feel proud? Well, the WGA was launched in five countries first, which are: America, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and ... Malaysia. We have arrived in the world stage, my countrymen. I say this because, right after reading it, I asked someone this question:

Which is the odd one out, and why?

The two most useful answers given were:

1. USA -- because it's not part of the Commonwealth.

2. Malaysia -- because it's not a predominantly English speaking country.

(A slightly snottier answer I got is: Malaysia, because it's not one of the  OECD countries)

The point I'm making is that, for reasons known only to Microsoft, we are lumped into the same category as the other four nations, which arguably have a much lower piracy rate than us.

Having said that, in the past two-odd months that WGA was launched, no one's made much noise about it here, so I reckon we really do have a lower piracy rate that I originally thought. Either that, or the Low Yat collective have managed to get the cracks in on the new PCs they're selling and the existing pirated XP users have also done the same.

However, there's a new rumour now that Microsoft will be turning off copies of XP without WGA installed. Man, I hope that the rumour is true. Because it'll be interesting to watch what happens.

Btw, according to Microsoft, the WGA initiative is, "aimed at protecting its customers and partners from counterfeit software." *snigger*

So that's why it phones home and why Microsoft (allegedly) misrepresents what the WGA is in order to get people to install it.  And that's why WGA wasn't initially launched in China, Vietnam, Brazil or India, too.

Piracy (again)

In an earlier entry, Dinesh mentioned a report by the International Intellectual Property Alliance which stated that the software piracy rate for Malaysia is 60%. This number was taken from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) Global Study, the latest of which can be found here . With the publication of the study, Techdirt made a piece  saying that it is "Bogus Stats As Always".

Techdirt wasn't the first to analyse the BSA study. The Economist wrote an article about the 2004 study, titled, "Software Piracy: BSA or just BS?"  (subscription required), questioning the validity of the study and the methodology used. The gist of it is that there are some holes in the methodology and assumptions made, leading people to question on the accuracy of the piracy rate.

Apart from the piracy rate, there is also the question of whether the losses incurred from the piracy are real numbers. This is because the reasoning for the loss calculation can be considered rather wishy washy.

Anyhow, read the reports carefully and try to figure out yourselves whether the studies are any good.

The reason that I mention all this is because in my opinion, the piracy rate for Malaysia as published in the reports/studies are totally inaccurate. In fact, I believe that the BSA underestimated the piracy rate in Malaysia. It should be much higher. I have arrived at this conclusion using the tried and tested methods of guesswork and anecdotal evidence. The following is how I got to this conclusion:

Piracy

According to a report by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, software piracy in Malaysia is estimated to be 60% in 2005, with perceived losses of US$75.1 million. With the Malaysian penchant for cost reduction, the extent of piracy is believable even though the perceived loss of revenue does seem overblown. For starters, one would need to understand the main reason why piracy occurs in Malaysia.

This is largely due to affordability of software, or the lack thereof. In many cases, fully loading a new personal computer with the software needed can double the total cost of acquiring the PC. While there have been low-cost PC initiatives, including the MIT Media Lab's US$100 laptop, these usually become ineffectual when one factors in the additional funds needed to license the software needed to make the PC useful.