The following is adapted from the slides of a presentation I gave yesterday on how the Thai software industry can benefit from open source. I think a more important problem is how the country as a whole can benefit from open source, but that wasn't what I was asked to talk about. Also note that the objective here is not to help open source but to help the Thai software industry. I think most, if not all of this, is applicable to other countries at a stage of development similar to Thailand's.
Application platform
- Applications need server platform, including
- OS
- Database
- Web server, framework
- Open source server platform is at least as good in quality as proprietary platforms
- Platform does not compete with local software industry
- Using open source on the server does not require users to move away from familiar Windows desktop environment
- Virtualization enables applications built on fully open source application platform to be deployed on Windows
- Trend towards web-based applications, where everything is on the server
- Avoids cost of platform software licenses, according to business model
- Licensing software: users save cost
- Appliance, software as a service: producer saves cost
- Licensing issues
- Software as a service: no issues
- Licensing software: must keep separation between proprietary and open source parts (no linking)
- Appliance: must make some parts of source code available to customers
- Mixed strategies also possible (e.g. Oracle on Linux, PHP on Windows)
Development tools
- Traditional strength of open source
- Java-based IDEs (e.g. Eclipse, NetBeans)
- Written in Java, but support many kinds of development in addition to Java, e.g. C/C++, Web
- Several companies adopting Eclipse as base (e.g. Nokia)
- Main advantage compared to Microsoft is no lock-in to Microsoft application platform
- Cost not the key issue: Microsoft makes development tools available to ISVs at low cost
- Collaboration tools
- Open source community has evolved exceptionally effective collaboration tools because
- it is highly distributed
- it only adopts process to the extent that it actually delivers results
- Proprietary tools expensive
- Key tools
- Version control (CVS, Subversion, Mercurial)
- Issue tracking (Bugzilla, Trac)
- Open source community has evolved exceptionally effective collaboration tools because
Education and professional development
- Participation in open source projects builds skills that universities often fail to teach
- Communication, especially English language
- Cooperation
- Working with large programs
- Modifying existing programs as opposed to creating new programs
- Opportunity to work with world-class developers
- Helps career of individual developer by building personal brand
- Opportunity to get work overseas
- Improves chances of getting into good US graduate school
- Builds highly motivated developers with world-class skills, who wish to pursue technical career
- Useful both at student and professional level
- Should emphasize participation in existing, successful, international projects
- Be highly selective about starting new projects
- Successful, large open source projects could help build image of sponsor organization or Thailand generally
- But very difficult to create a really successful, large open source projects
- Choose area where no open source solution is yet available; opportunities still exist
- Need to choose projects that can benefit rather than compete with local software industry
- Individuals must choose projects they are passionate about
Embedded software
- Hardware sales provide well-understood business model
- Trend to Linux as OS for embedded systems
- Increased power of embedded devices
- Need for strong networking capabilities
- Opportunity for electronics industry to move up the value chain
Fully open source business model
- Product is fully open source
- Possible for small company to achieve large market share because of
- No licensing cost
- Contribution of open source community
- Examples: JBoss, MySQL
- Business model based on support, consulting, training
- Not an easy strategy
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