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NEWS OF THE WEEK
Schools to adopt Open Source Subjects in Education
Medical Open Source project a finalist in Stockholm Challenge
Companies eyeing open source told to be discerning
�There is a growing demand for open source, and this program aims to enhance the skills of students in open source systems,� said Dominic Sabado, manager of the European IT Service Center Foundation (EITSC), a partner in the Philippine Open Source Initiative (Positive) program. A joint project of the Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit, a development arm of the German government; Wireless Services Asia, a private European company; and EITSC of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, Positive encourages local tertiary-level schools with CS or IT-related subjects to download and use free open source course materials developed by six partner schools. The materials include syllabuses, course presentations, laboratory workbooks, and exercises and tests developed over six months by the Asia-Pacific Colleges, Angeles University Foundation, Cebu Institute of Technology, Don Bosco Technical College, Mindanao State University Institute of Technology and the Department of Science and Technology Region 7 Open Source Computer and Security Laboratory. These materials, Sabado said, addresses a deficiency in many CS and IT-related curriculums, which focus on proprietary�mostly Microsoft�technology. Schools may register for the program and download the course materials from the Positive Web site (http://www.positive.ph), Sabado said. Because of budget constraints, the project initially developed four courses to cover the fundamentals of IT, operating systems, database management and Web programming. The six partner schools will roll out the new curriculum starting next month, and other schools are expected to follow suit later this year, Sabado told Standard Today. Positive was launched last February at the national convention of the Philippine Society of Information Technology Educators (PSITE) in Iloilo City. To encourage some 250 PSITE-member schools to adopt the open source course materials, Positive will begin a series of training sessions for faculty members in five major cities to how to integrate these into their existing curriculum, Sabado said. EITSC, which seeks to promote the Philippines as a supplier of IT and IT-related services to Europe, believes a workforce with skills in open source technologies will help outsourcing companies here capture more business. �We�re providing options,� Sabado said. �Open source is a technology platform that will have an effect on business, and if you don�t have the graduates with these skills, you�ll miss out on these opportunities.� Chin Wong From: http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=interactive01_mar27_2006 The Stockholm Challenge Award is an annual competition for the best initiatives that accelerate the use of information technology for the social and economic benefit of citizens and communities. Its objective is to help local entrepreneurs who work to close the digital divide by bringing in research communities, development organisations and strong corporate initiatives. CHITS is one of the five Filipino finalists in this year's competition. The other finalists are: the Art Experience, Project Ryan (Hot City Wireless), Rice Knowledge Bank, and Young MDG. CHITS was first rolled out in a pilot program in Pasay City. It gives doctors, nurses, midwives and barangay health workers access to data for critical decision-making. The system stores treatment history, immunization records, consultation appointments, and Philhealth membership of patients for easy organization and retrieval. It also gives an integrated view for their program frontliners, particularly those involved in tuberculosis, vaccination, maternal care, and child care. CHITS also forms part of the stream of information that begins with data collection by midwives and health workers, traverses the provincial and regional health offices, and ends with the Department of Health. It helps with policy development and decision-making processes as to what programs to roll out and what resources to allocate. CHITS was funded largely by PANASIA-ICT, a collaboration between UNDP and IDRC of Canada. The systems developed within the project context is in the public domain as free and open source software (GNU GPL). Dr. Alvin Marcelo, one of the proponents of CHITS, was selected as Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines for his contributions to the project. The CHITS web site can be visited at http://www.chits.info. The winners of the Stockholm Challenge Awards will be announced on May 11, 2006. Its web site can be visited at http://www.stockholmchallenge.se. Companies thinking of using open source software should avoid products with shaky backgrounds.
"The companies and products with shaky backgrounds -- and where you cannot see how they can make enough money to survive -- should be avoided," said Philip Howard, an analyst at United States-based Bloor Research.
Companies should also ensure that the suppliers of these solutions can provide adequate training and support. "In other words, you need a shortlist of potential vendors that you are happy to deal with and you need to mandate that the company limits itself to these strategic choices when deploying solutions," the research firm said in a white paper.
Open source refers to a software licensing model where the source code is available to users royalty-free. It enables users to redistribute and modify software under certain restrictions.
A major part of open source development is the idea of volunteers taking personal interest in the development and refinement of a project.
On the other hand, commercial software is typically sold or licensed in object or executable code. The company provides support, training, updates and similar services to efficiently use the software.
The source code may be made available to certain users through special licensing or other agreements, but is usually not distributed to the general public, and may not be copied or modified.
The paper noted that whether open source software is a strategic product is a question companies using it need to address.
DEPLOYMENT
One point is the area in which open source software will be deployed.
"Does this only apply to Linux and network servers or does it extend to application servers, databases and development environments? In each case, you also need to decide which open source products you are going to endorse from a strategic perspective," the paper said.
For the open source database market, for instance, there are MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ingres, Fire-bird, Max DB, Cloudscape, Sun DB, and HSQLDB, among others. Some are niche products.
Not all the companies involved will be able to make enough money out of these products to stay in business, Bloor Research pointed out.
"At some point in the future, the market will consolidate and a number of these products will disappear. This may not matter too much if the products are not that important to you, but it certainly does if they are strategic," Mr. Howard said.
Hence, the need to choose open source products that can survive. The research firm said users would like to see open the software adopted as strategic products.
But the vendors that are likely to be accepted as strategic partners by users would likely be the major companies. For database, for example, it is going to be IBM (Cloudscape) and CA (Ingres).
"And the same will happen in the development [Eclipse] space. That’s not to say that a few of the pure players wouldn’t make good, but it won’t be the free-for-all that some advocates of open source might like," Mr. Howard said.
He said open source is one of the licensing models and the more accepted it becomes, the more it is adopted at a strategic level, and the more it plays back into the hands of groups that dominate the industry.
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