Asian open source continues marching ahead
The calculus is simpler when you're starting from nothing. Ideas like sharing, saving and hope seem to have more meaning. (I found this little guy halfway around the world. Took me five minutes.)
Some examples:
- Filipino hospitals are looking closely at homegrown, open source software as a way to cut costs and get more done.
- A public-private consortium has opened an open source lab in Malaysia, aimed at stimulating the growth of new start-ups.
- Under-employed Indians are being told to create Joomla and Drupal templates as a quick way to make money.
The cynic will find all these stories easy to knock down. The Filipino software may be crap. The consortium may just be a way for the state to keep friends in business. The advice to the Indian may be a scam.
But not always. Regardless of what is happening behind these specific stories the fact is that sharing code can cut costs, sharing resources can spur entrepreneurship, and adding to open source projects can make you money.
All this happens without a single request to a single American company. It all happens online. Once broadband resources are in place, anyone can develop and anyone can compete.
You may be frightened by this. But these are the forces unleashed by open source and the Internet. They exert themselves 24-7.