Thai It Minister Slams Open Source

[fxm88]

"Thailand's newly appointed Information and Communications Technology Minister has slammed open source software as useless and full of bugs: "With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated... As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source." This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."

Source: http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/11/16/0323202.shtml

[george]

He doesn't understand the concept for Open Source.

[endure]

Couldn't have anything to do with his recent meeting with Microsoft, could it?

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?sh...c=92978&hl=

[Crushdepth]

So if Thai people can use open source and make money from it without paying anything, that's bad?

What a twit. He should be sacked.

[Tywais]

One word, Idiot.

[Grover]

did it break?

he has got a lot of ketchup'ing to do.

seriously, what a shame.

Edited November 16, 2006 by Grover

[ourmanflint]

Funny how senior government officials have no clue.

Nothing new here then! But what I think he means is that Thai people are somehow special and should not contribute to OS projects... like Linux I suppose.

[Thaddeus]

So if Thai people can use open source and make money from it without paying anything, that's bad?

What a twit. He should be sacked.

I don't think the Thai people making money is troubling him.

But I agree. a twit, and a transparent twit at that.

[Crushdepth]

Reading the linked article, it seems he is also an advocate of censorship and of CAT monopolising the mobile phone network. What a great idea. Not.

[samran]

actually having read the article, I'll stick up for him on most points.

1) I have no idea about open source, so no comment.

2) Censorship. He seems to be talking about stock standard censorship that you'd see anywhere. No excessive violence, porn etc etc. Pretty middle path if you ask me..

3) Merging CAT and TOT. Great idea. CAT has been made irrelevant by advances in technology. Its one purpose in life was to be the guardian of overseas communication, which is not a possible anymore. The sooner it happens the better.

4) A super government owned telco being owner of the network infrastructure. Makes total sense as it is a natural monopoly (so long as access can be granted fairly and transparently for all other telco players...shouldn't be tooooo hard with the NTC).

My take on this bloke is that he is actually cluey, and that his plans for the telco sector in thailand will mean that it heads towards international levels of standard, stucture and competitiveness.

[endure]

He's gullible. He has a meeting with Microsoft who come up with all the FUD about open source and ten minutes later he's singing from their hymn sheet. The last thing Thailand needs is to pay 300 quid for a copy of Vista when Linux can do all they need for nothing.

[tracker]

read recently that micro$0ft gave 2 million baht support for the digitation of the lumpini library which is to reopen on 14 dec or so....

a lot of new pc's with vista and office 2007.... Would that be without tea money this time?

Tell the IT minister that more than half the worlds websites run on open software... maybe he caves in

[h90]

One word, Idiot.

No most probably very smart, check his bank account.....

[rcm]

"Thailand's newly appointed Information and Communications Technology Minister has slammed open source software as useless and full of bugs: "With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated... As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source." This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."

Source: http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/11/16/0323202.shtml

Isn't Google using a fair bit of Open Source? Must be all crap then and outdated.....

" Thailand can do good source code without open source"

This statement of the IT Minister is an embarrasment ......i guess he wanted to say it isn't good because he don't know it?

I hope he gets a bit smarter as time goes......

rcm

Edited November 17, 2006 by rcm

[Simmo]

fairly and transparently for all other telco players.

Fairness.

Transparency.

Thailand.

[astral]

3) Merging CAT and TOT. Great idea. CAT has been made irrelevant by advances in technology. Its one purpose in life was to be the guardian of overseas communication, which is not a possible anymore. The sooner it happens the better.

4) A super government owned telco being owner of the network infrastructure. Makes total sense as it is a natural monopoly (so long as access can be granted fairly and transparently for all other telco players...shouldn't be tooooo hard with the NTC).

My take on this bloke is that he is actually cluey, and that his plans for the telco sector in thailand will mean that it heads towards international levels of standard, stucture and competitiveness.

I hope Samran is joking??

This minister has no idea what he is talking about. He is just a mouthpiece.

The only way Thailand will ever get a good telco network structure is through competition.

Just look at the way the mobile phone network has grown and prices have plummeted

with the competition between AIS, DTAC, Orange and others.

It was Orange who broke the conspiracy between AIS an DTAC to prevent phones being used

on a different network. Before that the two networks had a strangle hold on prices. I remember

18K baht for a basic phone..........

As prices drop availability to the average man increases, which can only be a good thing.

Even the noodle lady has a mobile phone today.

Open Source is already eating away at the Microsoft monopoly, which can only be good.

Bill Gates is holding Windows users to ransom, the way the phone companies used to.

The growth of the Internet in Thailand is severely curtailed by the monopoly that CAT has on the international links.

[Plus]

Orange had locked their phones for far longer than either Dtac or AIS. I think it was Dtac that started it as their launched their new, rebranded service a few months before Orange.

Having one 3G network and leasing it to operators is not a bad idea. Having offered a choice of building your own 3G or leasing, all them would go with leasing as investment costs are prohibitive and payoffs are unclear. There's no visible demand for 3G, it's driven by hardware vendors, not consumers.

I don't understand his comments on Open Source at all. Maybe he is speaking from Thai experience with Open Source that quite possible produces tons of buggy, useless programs and consumed billions of baht in development.

Things like Pla Dao Office suite.

[Reinter]

He doesn't understand the concept for Open Source.

Absolutely incredible.

This is the ICT Minister.............

Edited November 17, 2006 by Reinter

[rcm]

He doesn't understand the concept for Open Source.

Absolutely incredible.

This is the ICT Minister.............

In particular this portion was stunning

"On the subject of open source software, he said the current government plan was a case of the blind leading the blind, as neither the people who are in charge nor the people in industry seem to know the dangers of open source software."

He's got no glue ...... i hope he changes his Position soon . It can not be of any benefit for Thailand if his "visions" are followed.

rcm

[Rinrada]

He doesn't understand the concept for Open Source.

Absolutely incredible.

This is the ICT Minister.............

In name only ......not ELECTED so does wot hes told by the Bobs at the top

[cdnvic]

At Panthip.... everything is open source

[Crushdepth]

At Panthip.... everything is open source whistling.gif

Maybe the buggy useless software he was referring to was Windows?

[sting01]

actually having read the article, I'll stick up for him on most points.

....

My take on this bloke is that he is actually cluey, and that his plans for the telco sector in thailand ........

I do agree on that part of your post. Yes the guy seems to be cluey, myabe more than both of us think.

For all the rest I totally disagree, but it's personal opinion.

MSOffice is a great software, it's a de fact standart. But what about OOo (openoffice) that not only is compatible MSoffice but also compatible with other offices (some who are not existing but still in use in many places)? Make money? Ask Sun microsystem who package and sell (yes Sir , S E L L ) StarOffice, that is simply OOo + Sun logo?

Free software does not mean price = 0 necessary. Any soft release under the GNU can be sold by anyone, as long as you package it (burn a CD is enought) and you find moron ready to buy .... ooooooooooooops I mean find happy campers ready to buy. Better you clients will not have to wait you deliver a patch , as the source is acessible someone will have already done it.

Do not misunderstand me, I use XP (that I consider better than Linux for a normal use, even if I am a former member of Linux dev team). But imagine the source of XP being free, we would not wait the updates, they would have been realized since a long time.

How to make money? Well, take Mysql or postgreSQL, the DB are free, but if I run a critical application who use them, I will hire people from there to optimize the server, the queries, maybe on a regular basis. I will pay for real knowledge, not just because I have to spend my money. That is the phylosophy behing the free softwares.

About porn on the net, and other censorship, well the discussion exist since a long time, it's like racism or other deviance : Being tolerant, should we have to tolerate the untolerable or should we have to be came non tolerant ourself to protect our tolerance? PErsonaly I consider porn website should display pictures tonly totheir members, and the member ship should be kinda expensive. People love to waste money on sex, why not take advantage of it?

[sting01]

Orange had locked their phones for far longer than either Dtac or AIS. I think it was Dtac that started it as their launched their new, rebranded service a few months before Orange.

Having one 3G network and leasing it to operators is not a bad idea. Having offered a choice of building your own 3G or leasing, all them would go with leasing as investment costs are prohibitive and payoffs are unclear. There's no visible demand for 3G, it's driven by hardware vendors, not consumers.

I don't understand his comments on Open Source at all. Maybe he is speaking from Thai experience with Open Source that quite possible produces tons of buggy, useless programs and consumed billions of baht in development.

Things like Pla Dao Office suite.

Unsure if it was Pla Dao , but I do remenber a soft who took away OOo source, repackaged it as an original thai soft (OOo had an asian release already) and tried to appear on the market. IT was 3/5 years ago.

I also remenber one day in Pantip they were selling an 'official' thai Linux relase without Tux (but with another animal). while spoken withthe seller, I learned Linux was in fact an original thai concept, and as the whole concept was pirated by the west they were trying to diffuse it on their own ....

I do suppose both were costly and at the end were wasted money.But both were knda a perversion of the main concept of the free software (I hated to not see Tux with the originla thai Linux)

[samran]

3) Merging CAT and TOT. Great idea. CAT has been made irrelevant by advances in technology. Its one purpose in life was to be the guardian of overseas communication, which is not a possible anymore. The sooner it happens the better.

4) A super government owned telco being owner of the network infrastructure. Makes total sense as it is a natural monopoly (so long as access can be granted fairly and transparently for all other telco players...shouldn't be tooooo hard with the NTC).

My take on this bloke is that he is actually cluey, and that his plans for the telco sector in thailand will mean that it heads towards international levels of standard, stucture and competitiveness.

I hope Samran is joking??

This minister has no idea what he is talking about. He is just a mouthpiece.

The only way Thailand will ever get a good telco network structure is through competition.

Just look at the way the mobile phone network has grown and prices have plummeted

with the competition between AIS, DTAC, Orange and others.

It was Orange who broke the conspiracy between AIS an DTAC to prevent phones being used

on a different network. Before that the two networks had a strangle hold on prices. I remember

18K baht for a basic phone..........

As prices drop availability to the average man increases, which can only be a good thing.

Even the noodle lady has a mobile phone today.

Open Source is already eating away at the Microsoft monopoly, which can only be good.

Bill Gates is holding Windows users to ransom, the way the phone companies used to.

The growth of the Internet in Thailand is severely curtailed by the monopoly that CAT has on the international links.

No...I'm not joking astral, but at the same time, I think you misunderstand me.

I'm all for competition, and for fair competition, which is why the NTC is so important.

Firstly, CAT. It needs to be disbanded and the international gateway needs to be opened to competition so international communications costs can plummet.

If CAT can't be disbanded, it should be merged with TOT...this is the likely outcome...and once done, they should be another telco like any other.

The problem is in thailand, like all telco networks, is that there is a lot of infrastructure that competiors need to use, and this infrastructure is usually owned by the former state monopoly, in this case CAT and TOT.

It doesn't make sense for a competitor to build duplicate infrastructure, nor does it make sense from an overall economic prespective. To have two phone cables, phone exchanges etc running side by side just doesn't make any sense. So a mechanism, or an access regime in the economic regulatory parlance, must be put in place so that competiors are granted equal and fair access to the common infrastructure that everyone needs.

This access regime can be overseen by the NTC, ensuring that TOT/CAT grants equal access to all players, and that as the owner of that infrastructure, that TOT/CAT doesn'tn grant itself preferential access and terms to itself, to the detriment of competition.

[tracker]

I saw the article and comment being posted on slashdot.org. A website read all over the planet about opensource. So I assume that the "knowledge" about the thai minister is known planet-wide right now. Quite an achievement.

Actually, if the government promotes self-sufficiency, and you inviting M$, isn't that just the opposite???

Go on companies, and government, invest in foreign goods, so later you have to update, throw away the still good functioning hardware, because the "good foreign import" cannot run on that anymore....

Self sufficiency would be a linux version, opensource, all optimized for thai language, not depend on foreign input, with thai students and coders keeping it in track with the todays hardware and demands....

The thai open office initiative being a nice example. I hope this minister gets backfire from his "spoken knowledge", so he might learn something usefull.

[Richard-BKK]

I also remenber one day in Pantip they were selling an 'official' thai Linux relase without Tux (but with another animal). while spoken withthe seller, I learned Linux was in fact an original thai concept, and as the whole concept was pirated by the west they were trying to diffuse it on their own ....

Linux a Thai idea, this is a good one. There are a few Thai Linux distributions, mostly they repack already existing software packages and combine that to a Linux distribution.

Linux SIS (SchoolNet Internet Server) and Linux TLE (Thai Language Extension) are examples of this.

[Lummers]

Is this guy for real - I was under the impression that the thais feel strongly about promoting open source principals - You just have to go to Pantip Plaza to see all the wondefully priced software!!

Maybe he was makeing the right noises to try and apease Microsoft

Oh and who is the idiot saying that MYSQL is free

MySQL is not free - go and look at their download site and read it carefully!!!

As for Microsoft source code - A number of years ago when the beta release of NT was produce the shipped NT for a bargain price with full source - I think this offer was only available to registered developers I wouldnt be suprised to hear that this has been repeated with later versions.

Edited November 21, 2006 by Lummers

[h90]

actually having read the article, I'll stick up for him on most points.

....

My take on this bloke is that he is actually cluey, and that his plans for the telco sector in thailand ........

I do agree on that part of your post. Yes the guy seems to be cluey, myabe more than both of us think.

For all the rest I totally disagree, but it's personal opinion.

MSOffice is a great software, it's a de fact standart. But what about OOo (openoffice) that not only is compatible MSoffice but also compatible with other offices (some who are not existing but still in use in many places)? Make money? Ask Sun microsystem who package and sell (yes Sir , S E L L ) StarOffice, that is simply OOo + Sun logo?

Free software does not mean price = 0 necessary. Any soft release under the GNU can be sold by anyone, as long as you package it (burn a CD is enought) and you find moron ready to buy .... ooooooooooooops I mean find happy campers ready to buy. Better you clients will not have to wait you deliver a patch , as the source is acessible someone will have already done it.

Do not misunderstand me, I use XP (that I consider better than Linux for a normal use, even if I am a former member of Linux dev team). But imagine the source of XP being free, we would not wait the updates, they would have been realized since a long time.

How to make money? Well, take Mysql or postgreSQL, the DB are free, but if I run a critical application who use them, I will hire people from there to optimize the server, the queries, maybe on a regular basis. I will pay for real knowledge, not just because I have to spend my money. That is the phylosophy behing the free softwares.

About porn on the net, and other censorship, well the discussion exist since a long time, it's like racism or other deviance : Being tolerant, should we have to tolerate the untolerable or should we have to be came non tolerant ourself to protect our tolerance? PErsonaly I consider porn website should display pictures tonly totheir members, and the member ship should be kinda expensive. People love to waste money on sex, why not take advantage of it?

You think much too difficult.

He met before with microsoft.

Got his xx.000.000 Baht on his bank account in Switzerland.

Than he is 100 % sure Open Source and Linux is evil, bad, making Thailand going down and even Terrorists and murder are using Linux.

Forget about all the technical or economical explanations.

If Red Hat gives him xx.000.001 Baht than Microsoft is evil.......

There is no other explanation. Else it is not necessary to go commercial OR Open Source. They can exist parallel.

[h90]

Maybe he ban Linux at Pantip now!

Only pirated microsoft CDs are allowed to sell.

Is this guy for real - I was under the impression that the thais feel strongly about promoting open source principals - You just have to go to Pantip Plaza to see all the wondefully priced software!!

Maybe he was makeing the right noises to try and apease Microsoft

Oh and who is the idiot saying that MYSQL is free

MySQL is not free - go and look at their download site and read it carefully!!!

As for Microsoft source code - A number of years ago when the beta release of NT was produce the shipped NT for a bargain price with full source - I think this offer was only available to registered developers I wouldnt be suprised to hear that this has been repeated with later versions.