FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN VIETNAM

EUROPEAN COMMISSION, OCTOBER 2013

Le Trung NghiaLe Trung Nghialetrungnghia.foss@gmail.com

Vietnam Free and Open Source Software Association

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Content

A. Government FOSS policy

B. FOSS adoption in the government

C. FOSS development

D. FOSS in Vietnam before VFOSSA's establishment

E. VFOSSA, it's role and activities

F. The Road Ahead

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A. Government FOSS Policy (1)Decision 235/QĐ-TTg in 2004 on FOSS application and development in Vietnam, period 2004-2008.

The first National Project chaired by MoST.

MoST - A vanguard of FOSS in Vietnam since 2000.

Decision 169/2006/QĐ-TTg on IT procurement, which prefer to FOSS products and solutions.

Decision 50/2009/QĐ-TTg on Management Rules for software industry and digital content development programmes, including 86 billion VND budget for FOSS application and development in a period 2009-2012.

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A. Government FOSS Policy (2)Decision 08/2007/QĐ-BTTTT issued a list of FOSS to be in use in gov. agencies: OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird and Unikey.

Directive 07/2008/CT-BTTTT on pushing up FOSS adoption in gov. agency activities with the deadlines that should be done:

(1) By 30-Jun-2009, 100% PC of IT departments and units have 4 FOSS above mentioned to be installed, 100% gov. officials to be trained to using them.

By 31-Dec-2009: (2) 70% PC in all the agencies to be installed with the 4 FOSS; (3) 70% of all the officials to be trained to using them, among them: (4) at least 40% gov. officials use 4 FOSS in their daily work;

(5) By 31-Dec-2010 almost gov. officials use 4 FOSS in their daily work.

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A. Government FOSS Policy (3)

Circular 41/2009/TT-BTTTT issued a new list of FOSS to be recommended in gov. agencies, including the 4 FOSS mentioned above and GNU/Linux Ubuntu for PC and some FOSS on server side.

Circular 142/2010/TT-BTTTT, guide on managing and using budget for IT development, including some financial rules on migration to FOSS

Circular 19/2011/TT-BTTTT, guide on applying open document format (ODF) in gov. agencies, i.e. TCVN 7978:2009 (ISO/IEC 26300:2006), for digital information posting, exchanging and storing

Official dispatch 1750/BTTTT-CNTT dated 09-Jul-2012, guide on planning IT application and development for 2013 and the period of 2013-2015, including for FOSS, which restarting all the FOSS activities in above mentioned decisions and/or circulars.

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A. Government FOSS Policy (4)Circular 08/2010/TT-BGDĐT, guide on using FOSS on education agencies, including:

Applying open document format (ODF), i.e. TCVN 7978:2009 (ISO/IEC 26300:2006), in exchanging digital education documents.

By September 2010, deployment of the 4 FOSS (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, Unikey) in all education agencies shoule be finalized.

Recomment GNU/Linux Ubuntu, Fedora… and other FOSS for education agencies

So far there is not any report about the migration process in MoET.

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B. Implementation and deployment (1)

Report from MIC, 14-Dec-2010 on implementation and deployment of the Directive 07/2008/CT-BTTTT

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Some good examples in FOSS adoption:

Provinces: Ninh Thuan, Quang Nam, Ca Mau, Dak Lak, Da Nang, Ha Nam, Lam Dong, Tra Vinh, Vinh Phuc, An Giang, Thai Binh, ...

Ministries and Agencies under Cetral GovernmentThe Office of Government, State Bank of Vietnam, …

Some FOSS activities deployed by IT Office, MoST

Propagating knowledge(www.oss.gov.vn), raising awareness, supporting FOSS community activities, …

Building FOSS Competence Center at MoST according to Decision 1605/QĐ-TTg

The first ever Workshops in Vietnam on Open Technology - Trends and Perspectives with OTF in Hanoi, Da Nang and Hochiminh City.

B. Implementation and deployment (2)

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Weakness:

Familiarity

Weak technical support from the industry and communitiesFoss Bridge, 2007, 20 VN's companies + 20 EU's companies

But in Jan. 2012 there were only less than 10 companies with VFOSSA

Almost no teaching and learning FOSS in Universities

Lack of local human resources inside the agencies

Policy - not strong enough, with no sanctions

At the same time, to deploy MS Office & OpenOfficeMay 21, 2007 the Government signed contract with Microsoft on MS Office

Budged allocation, not in time, not enough as planned

No time for the coming year planning as needed

No voice of the communities, not yet VFOSSA

B. Implementation and deployment (2)

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Strong:

FOSS solutions are available and varied, can replace the proprietary ones, examples: Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, … on client side, and a lot of them on server side.

FOSS communities increasingly growned, both in quatity and quality, ready for the support to meet the needs of the gov. agencies.

B. Implementation and deployment (3)

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C. FOSS DevelopmentBefore 2012

Almost no entity develops FOSS in the right way

Very popular: taking code, localizing - customizing - closing it, no upstreaming

Universities seem to not be a vanguard on FOSS

Exceptions: September 2007, Vietsoftware company joined and contributed to Asianux

In 2010, HanoiLUG's upstreaming to Ubuntu with VN's keyboard software

iWay contributed to Fedora community

No one knows exactly about theory of FOSS development process - model

Turning point: some FOSS publications from Linux Foundation in late 2011 and January 2012, report from CENATIC in 2010 and series of OSS Watch's articles translated into Vietnamese.

From 2012 up to now

Some FOSS projects is on the right way: bogo, OpenRoad, NukeViet …

Some big cities to use FOSS for eGov. applications (Hanoi, Danang, HCM City)

Still very primitive on some FOSS project's aspects: legal, licensing, management, community building, … (from OSS Watch recommendations to UK Government)

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D. FOSS in Vietnam before VFOSSA (1)2004-2006

The World: Linux 2.4.x, OpenOffice 2.x, Ubuntu, Fedora, LiveCD...

HanoiLUG born in fall 2004 (more than 10 founder members)Organized FOSS activities, members in some cities & provinces

VN's SFD Team since 2004, DFD, FOSS events in Unis

GNU/Linux training courses (almost free)

MOST project: Localization OOo/LibO, Ubuntu, gnome

Viror Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, OOo/LibO, …

2007-2011

Communities: Ubuntu-VN (>20K members); SaigonLUG, HueLUG, NukeViet (>20K members), FedoraVN, Asianux, …

No official representative organization!

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Community Contributions

FOSS localization (MOST project)Some community projects

Sponsor from MOST (since 2008): OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice (~ 100%): Ubuntu, Gnome, …

Contest “Creative Summer – Students develop FOSS”GsoC inspiration, since 2009, Lead by VFOSSA since 2012

Discover, promote FOSS developer young talents: University students

Promote, disseminate FOSS applicationsLocal teams SFD (since 2004)

Training courses on Linux, OpenOffice, ...

FOSS events at universities

D. FOSS in Vietnam before VFOSSA (2)

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E. Vietnam Free & Open Source Software Association (VFOSSA) (1)

Member of Vietnam Association for Information Processing (VAIP)

Since 7th VAIP Congress (12/2011)

VFOSSA 1st national congress (14/1/2012)

Objectives and Visions

Official organization representing vietnamese FOSS communities on behaft of VAIP

Representing FOSS communities for advisory and consulting activities on FOSS policies for the Goverment

Contribute to the government project “Vietnam-strong country on ICT on 2020”

Non-lucrative organizationProtect communities legal interests

Promote, disseminate the utilisazation and development of FOSS in Vietnam

Build FOSS communities any where possible in Vietnam, mainly on Education's sector

Integrate to the international FOSS communities

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E. Vietnam Free & Open Source Software Association (VFOSSA) (2)

Structure

A Board of Director and 7 committees, span to 3 regions of Vietnam: (1) Legal & Policy; (2) Training; (3) International relations; (4) Technical consulting & support; (5) Community building; (6) Promotion & dissemination; (7) Administration.

Activities 2012

Community development Seminars, conferences for universities - FOSS@University Roadshow 2012 - raising awareness on FOSS & IPR

Organize FOSS events: SFD, DFD, Ubuntu - Fedora installfests, Community Space for freelance developers, …

VFOSSA Portal at http://vfossa.vn/

IT Contests with support from MoST: MHST (Creative Summer) like GoSC, IT Olympic

Collaboration with MIC, MoST: FOSS's Policy consultancy and advisory, FOSS National conference

Regional and International FOSS communities and asociations: OpenRoad, VietOpenStack

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E. Vietnam Free & Open Source Software Association (VFOSSA) (3)

VFOSSA members - companies 2012

NetNam (http://www.netnam.vn)

VietSoftware (http://vietsoftware.com)

Vinades (http://vinades.vn)

iWay (http://iwayvietnam.com)

InetSolution (http://www.truthinet.com.vn)

EcoIT (http://www.ecoit.asia/)

Magento VN, Joomlart (http://magentovietnam.com)

Lạc Tiên (http://lactien.com/)

...

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E. Vietnam Free & Open Source Software Association (VFOSSA) (4)

Activities 2013

Focusing on EducationSeminars, conferences for universities - FOSS@University Roadshow 2013 - raising awareness on FOSS & IPR: in about 20 Unis

Hot Topic: Cyber Security and the Trends toward migration to FOSS

National conferencesOn e-Government; FOSS usage in Public Sector; IT Development & Collaboration

Advisory to some projects with FOSS elementse-Government FOSS-based projects of big cities: Hanoi, Danang, HCMC, ...

Companies developing FOSS for Public Sector

MIC policy on FOSS

Organize FOSS events 2013 SFD, DFD, MHST 2013, IT Olympic 2013

Seminars – Workshops of FOSS Communities: OpenRoad, VietOpenStack, Fedora, Mozilla, NukeViet, Koha, ...

A lot of activities, the most succesfull FOSS events ever in Vietnam

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E. Vietnam Free & Open Source Software Association (VFOSSA) (5)

VFOSSA 2013

> 60 founder members

21 companies and community groups

The most active association in VN

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F. The Road Ahead

Major Goals

Continue with the activities that VFOSSA has been doing so far

Raise fund through FOSS/OT training work (FOSS center)

Focus on some critical issues to learnFOSS development in a right & sustainable way: philosophical, legal & organizational aspects

FOSS-based security and cyber security solutions

FOSS/OT business models (How to make money from FOSS/OT?)

IPR, OER and FOSS/OT in Education in Vietnam

Community Building Experience Exchange

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Thank you!http://vfossa.vn

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