Vietnam is leading move away from Microsoft to open source

Subject: [vnforum] Vietnam is leading move away from Microsoft to open source
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 05:23:39 -0800 (PST)
From: kenneth phan <kenphan007@yahoo.com>

*** VIETNAM FORUM ***

Dec. 4, 2003, 12:19AM

Vietnam is leading move away from Microsoft to open
source
San Jose Mercury News
HANOI, Vietnam -- Carefully, quietly, Vietnam is
plotting another revolution. This time its foe is not
a foreign army but a corporation whose reach extends
worldwide.

"We are trying step by step to eliminate Microsoft,"
said Nguyen Trung Quynh of Vietnam's Ministry of
Science and Technology. Quynh and other government
tech officials want Vietnam to be on the cutting edge
of a movement to embrace open-source software --
products that can be downloaded from the Internet for
free and perform the same tasks as Microsoft Windows
or Office.

The initiative is Vietnam's solution to software
piracy, a rampant problem that threatens to derail the
country's economic aspirations.

Vietnam implemented a trade agreement with the United
States in 2001 that requires the government to bring
down the piracy rate. The government also needs to do
that to meet its goal of joining the World Trade
Organization by 2005.

Microsoft Windows and Office cost at least $140 in
Vietnam, way out of reach for most people, where the
per capita annual income is about $420. Meanwhile, a
pirated copy of Windows and Office goes for no more
than $10.

The economic logic of using software that's free is
hard to resist. China, Japan and South Korea recently
announced that they will work together to develop an
open-source alternative to Microsoft.

Open source is appealing to developing countries,
which see it as a way to help close the technological
divide that separates rich and poor nations.

Only 2 million of Vietnam's 80 million people have
computers and, of all the countries where Microsoft
maintains an office, Vietnam is the smallest market.

But Microsoft products are everywhere in Vietnam, and
almost 97 percent of the programs used in Vietnam have
been illegally copied, costing Microsoft an estimated
$40 million to $50 million a year.

"Piracy is very serious and widespread in Vietnam,"
said Tran Luu Chuong, a university professor helping
devise the country's open-source policies.

Even government officials have been known to use
illegal software. A shop next door to Vietnam's
Ministry of Trade does a brisk business selling
illegal software, movies and music.

Microsoft's chief representative in Vietnam, Ngo Phuc
Cuong, spends much of his time lobbying for better
enforcement of intellectual-property laws, a task that
can be frustrating.

"People don't perceive pirating as stealing," Cuong
said. "Sometimes they tell me very proudly, `My boy
can copy your software very easily!' "

People know they can use the pirated products with
impunity. And they have grown comfortable using
Microsoft, which, in its illegal form, has dominated
the market here for years. So getting them to switch
to open source won't be easy. But bureaucrats at the
Ministry of Science and Technology are determined to
try.

They are promoting a plan that would require all
state-owned companies and government ministries to use
open source by 2005. And they would require all
computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with
open-source products installed on them.

To facilitate co-ordination regarding the introduction of OSS SW in Vietnam

Subscribe to OSS:

Subscribe | Unsubscribe