Vietnam embracing open-source products
Nation's solution to software piracy: `Eliminate Microsoft'
By Ben Stocking
Mercury News Vietnam Bureau
HANOI - Carefully, quietly, Vietnam is plotting another revolution.
This time its foe is not a foreign army with a global reach, but a foreign corporation whose reach extends worldwide.
``We are trying step by step to eliminate Microsoft,'' said Nguyen Trung Quynh of Vietnam's Ministry of Science and Technology. Quynh and other government tech officials want Vietnam to be on the cutting edge of an international movement to embrace open-source software -- products that can be downloaded from the Internet for free and perform the same tasks as Microsoft Windows or Office.
The initiative is Vietnam's solution to software piracy, a rampant problem that threatens to derail the country's economic aspirations.
Vietnam implemented a trade agreement with the United States in 2001 that requires the government to bring down the piracy rate. And the government also needs to do that to meet its goal of joining the World Trade Organization by 2005.
Microsoft Windows and Office cost at least $140 in Vietnam -- way out of reach for most people, where the per capita annual income is roughly $420.
The economic logic of using software that's free is hard to resist, and more and more countries seem willing to take a chance on it. China, Japan and South Korea recently announced that they will work together to develop an open-source alternative to Microsoft.
Open source is especially appealing to developing countries such as Vietnam, which see it as a way to help close the technological divide that separates rich and poor nations.
Only 2 million of Vietnam's 80 million people have computers and, of all the countries where Microsoft maintains an office, Vietnam is the smallest market.
But Microsoft products are everywhere in Vietnam, and very few shell out the money for licensed copies. Almost 97 percent of the programs used in Vietnam have been illegally copied, costing Microsoft an estimated $40 million to $50 million a year.
``Piracy is very serious and widespread in Vietnam,'' said Tran Luu Chuong, a university professor who is helping devise the country's open-source policies.
Even government officials have been known to use illegal software. There's a shop right next door to Vietnam's Ministry of Trade that does a brisk business selling illegal software, movies and music. A pirated copy of Windows and Office goes for no more than $10.
Microsoft's chief representative in Vietnam, Ngo Phuc Cuong, spends much of his time lobbying for better enforcement of intellectual-property laws -- a task that can be as frustrating as an inbox full of spam.
``People don't perceive pirating as stealing,'' Cuong said. ``Sometimes they tell me very proudly, `My boy can copy your software very easily!' ''
People know they can use the pirated products with impunity. And they have grown comfortable using Microsoft, which, in its illegal form, has dominated the market here for years. So getting them to switch to open source won't be easy. But bureaucrats at the Ministry of Science and Technology are determined to try.
Open-source plan
They are promoting a plan that would require all state-owned companies and government ministries to use open source by 2005. And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them.
The prime minister is expected to take up their proposal this fall.
To get young people comfortable with the free software, the government plans to distribute computers to 5,000 schools nationwide next year -- all of them equipped with open source.
``We are trying to tell people what open source is, how to use it and what the benefits are,'' said Chuong, the university professor.
Chuong and other open-source advocates also maintain that open source is more secure than Microsoft, an advantage that is very appealing to the security-conscious Vietnamese government.
Microsoft argues that its products are just as secure, more reliable and worth the money. ``We can afford to reinvest and keep innovation going,'' said Cuong. ``And we have a whole network of support around the region. If fixes are necessary, we are here.''
Open source is so named because the codes that programmers use to write it are available for anyone to inspect on the Internet. It is part of an international movement -- as much philosophical as technological -- whose proponents believe that no corporation should stand between a computer and its user. A community of academics and idealistic computer programmers develop the open-source products online, collaborating to improve them.
The United Nations Development Program, which sees open-source software as a way to strengthen Vietnam's technology sector, has been encouraging the government to pursue it.
``They are quite serious about what they're doing,'' said Vern Weitzel, Web manager at the UNDP's Hanoi office. ``They've put in a lot of effort at the policy level, and this is quite encouraging.''
Young, but powerful
The open-source movement is still young, but its advocates predict it will eventually turn the software industry upside down. ``You cannot stop it,'' said Jordi Carrasco-Munoz, an economic adviser at the European Community's Hanoi office. ``Members of parliaments around the world are going to ask, `Why are we paying millions of dollars for Microsoft licensing fees when we can get a substitute that's just as good for free?' ''
The main open-source tools are Linux -- a free alternative to the Windows operating system -- and OpenOffice, a free alternative to Microsoft Office, with word processing and spreadsheet programs. Two Vietnamese companies have recently developed Vietnamese versions of both, and the country's two biggest computer assemblers are already loading open source onto all their new machines.
``We can't totally sweep out Microsoft,'' Quynh said. ``But we hope that new users will start using open source.''
Before Vietnamese versions of OpenOffice and Linux were developed, open source was just an abstraction here, said Carrasco-Munoz. ``Now you dump this CD on your computer, you install it, you reboot. Bye-bye Microsoft!''
Cuong, Microsoft's Vietnam representative, acknowledges that open source poses a threat to commercial software companies. ``They give away innovation,'' he said.
Microsoft recently slashed its prices in Thailand, offering a Windows/Office package for just $40 after the government there announced plans for promoting open source. But Cuong said the company doesn't plan to cut prices in Vietnam -- at least for now.
``We're willing to talk about a reduced price to the government based on their commitment to using legal software,'' he said. ``We encourage the government to lead by example.''
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