Malaysia Towards K-Economy Vision

It's a hard time now. Economic recession causes many factories retrenched their workers especially in the electronic sectors. Fortunately, orders from oversea are increasing again for electronic products which is good for the players in the industry.

In the IT sector, government has to spend millions if not billions of ringgit every year to pay for proprietary software. This is due to the fact that public administrations are using proprietary solution (Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office). Government servers also are deploying Mirosoft products.

I believe steps must be taken to reduce the spendings so that the money can be used to finance other public needs.

There are many alternatives in the market which are free and more reliable. Linux and BSD are very popular among open source fans. Linux is arguably the most popular free open source operating system. OpenOffice is a popular alternative for Mirosoft Office suits for office productivity.

Of course courses are needed by officers who never use these software to ensure their productivity. After they are being familiar with the interface, then, in the long run, proprietry products are only needed in mission critical environment. Government can save a lot by adopting free and open source products in the long run. Again, I said, in the long run.

It's not an overnight task though. It needs time to train staffs. A lot of money would be spent for training courses alone. But, the outcomes are promising to get rid of being depended on closed source software in the long run.