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September 13, 2008

It is widely reported that Asia is currently in a mass adoption wave of open source technology.

And the overall benefits of innovation will soon happen, following this new wave in two to three years, according to some open source vendors in that region.

Following recent remarks made by MySQL co-founder, David Axmark, on Asia's lack of contribution back to the Linux and open source community, fellow industry spokespeople were decidedly more optimistic about Asia's role to play in the open source model.

Arun Kumar, director of support services at Red Hat, said that open source first has to be taken up broadly by both enterprises and governments as the first step. This is one thing that has happened in the West, which saw innovation coming out from the community after mass adoption, he said.

"You need three things to kickstart a thriving open source community: mass customer adoption, government support and education," he said, where the government needs to provide support in the form of being an adopter itself and endorsing open standards from the getgo.

On average, Asia is about two to three years behind the West in this respect, with the more "advanced communities" in the region such as India lagging by some 12 to 18 months, said Kumar.

"Overall, open source is very much an open standard simply because your code is published. Endorsing open standards gives the industry a vote of confidence from the government," said Kumar.

Recently, France was mentioned by some trade publications for its contributions to the open source system, and for its thriving industry. Kumar highlighted the French government's support of open source through offering tax incentives, and handing out software to high school students.

Kumar added "France is an example of a country which went open format, and did not just adopt one application but supported an entire industry. The biggest impediment to growing open source services is funding. Governments have to stimulate growth with funding, and they will see startups mushrooming."

"We believe that awareness in Asia is already very high. Global adoption of Linux is reaching, if not already, at critical mass, and this naturally impacts Asia," said Moiz Kohari, v.p. of engineering, open platform solutions group at Novell.

Overall, large enterprises also have a huge part to play in driving the open source industry. Once adoption happens, this creates the market for developers to come and set up a business upon, added Kumar.

"The tendency to play safe" for many CIOs here remains a "major challenge" for open source adoption, Kumar said. "Often in the private sector, IT decision makers are hard pressed to embrace open source due to the large amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt that has been created and still exists in the marketplace."

But the trigger for enterprise adoption is interoperability. Citing Oracle's support for Linux, SAP's endorsement of Novell's Suse Linux distribution and Novell's partnership with Microsoft, Kumar said major software players have shown they are ready to support Linux in Asia, which will help boost customer confidence in taking up open source technologies.

"At times, it’s natural that they go the safe route, with companies and brands that they’re comfortable with," he said. Red Hat's Kumar said a "mindset shift" is often required as well for individual users, when moving from proprietary software to open source.

Source: Red Hat.

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