strange symphonies

FOSS Capacity in Malaysia

April 25th, 2007 by aizatto

As normal per my blog, I ask a lot of rhetorical questions. Basically a large rant. At least thats what I think my blog is. Would explain its low page rank.

So a few days ago I gave some suggestions on improving ICT education in Malaysia, well with the suggestions, it can encompass more than just ICT.

But lets keep this post focused just on that, ICT.

A few fridays ago, during my presentation on Ruby at UiTM, I was asked how many Ruby developers, were in Malaysia. Myself, I know less than ten.

The sad truth is, there is (the perception of) no capacity. Not just Ruby, but how about other things? Ruby on Rails, Zope, Plone, Python.

I parenthesized “the perception of” above, because a LARGER problem is that there are a lot of FOSS pockets out there, which need to work together. The potential is there, but they are hard to find.

In reality, capacity is not a specific problem to FOSS. As there are always numerous reports on the low quality of ICT graduates coming out of Malaysian universities.

But then again, FOSS is just a subset of the available technologies out there.

The lack of FOSS capacity is harming is more than you think. Because there is demand for it. There exist people who believe that FOSS technologies are better than proprietary ones, and not a few. Quite a number at it. But if there is no one to provide it, then they have to look at non FOSS options, and we are shooting our selves in the foot.

So we can rant all we want about the low quality of graduates in Malaysia, but if you don’t do anything then well…

The people who do try to solve the problem about Education, will look like heroes. Be it for good or bad reasons.

How to build capacity Locally?

Note: This doesn’t even touch about actually developing software.

LPI

Getting people recognized in Malaysia with Linux skill sets will help ensure that quality people exist in Malaysia. That is why FOSS-SM helps to provide LPI certification. Get yourself certified boy! Kudos to Ditesh and Dr. Nah for their valiant efforts.

Evangelizing

This can be done at events such as the PCFair or your university or school event or anything. On hours, off hours, at work, at school, newspapers, at the playground, where ever and when ever. Well now it seems to be a bit too much. Almost like a preacher.

But the word needs to get out, but at the same time try to be pragmatic about it. Does a certain FOSS feature not fill in the required niche? Then maybe, just maybe FOSS isn’t the best solution for that scenario.

Evangelizing can be done in many ways.

Linux By Examples is a blog that regularly puts up tips for those cryptic commands, plus you can learn many new things.

But also regularly blogging can be helpful for judging how the FOSS scene is progressing along in Malaysia. This is why we have a Planet for the community, to see what everyone is doing, and what new projects they are working on.

The OpenMalaysia Blog also carries forward the FOSS front, but at the moment with an interested towards Open Standards and the Open Document Format.

It helps to do what you’re interested in. And I hope its FOSS related at least.

Local Projects

Have some time to spare? Commit yourself to one of the many local projects.

Commercial Support

Do you provide commercial support for FOSS? Then get yourself listed down. This not only helps to increase your publicity, but helps gives us a list of people to call in for projects.

Write Case Studies

I bet all of you have successful deployments of FOSS in Malaysia. No matter how small or big it is, it needs to be heard. So write some for us. Helped give some single mums some ICT training? Blog it!

Meetups

Attending Meetups help to build the community, but participating and contributing back helps even more. Kudos to all the people who have helped in the past.

Clubs

Actually there are a lot of clubs out there. The problem is that they are dormant. They need to be active, and more than just a bubble in Malaysia. Props goes to the teams at MMU and UTP with their recent event at their IT Fair.

See the list of college and university clubs.

It is more than just software

To some of us, it is more than just software. But more to the ideology that knowledge and information should be shared. So to those of you coming from the Creative Commons side, or the Free Culture side, then we must work together.

Conclusion

But all of this can’t be done without resources. People have commitments, an a few people can’t run the show themselves. They get tired, they get weary, and they get burned out. They are only human. So do raise up your hand, and help us.

Ubuntu has done a great job of listing how how you can get involved in the community. This is not even locally, but internationally.

I hopefully plan to pick up the book Life Long Activist, after a recommendation by Richard Stallman. Why? Because I’ve been burnt out before. Sadly I tend not to pick up books.

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