Jakarta, (ANTARA News) - Indonesia and other countries in Asia and Africa are determined to strengthen their commitment to using Open Source (OS) software instead of licensed software which was mostly being monopolized by big companies, a research and technology official said.
The resolve to use OS software would also be reaffirmed in an Asia-Africa Conference on Open Source (AAOS) to be held November 18 to 19, 2008 in Jakarta, Prof Dr Engkos Koswara, a senior advisor to the research and technology minister, said here Thursday.
"Twelve countries including South Africa, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Iran, Japan, Austria, the US and Germany have confirmed their participation in the conference. The participants themselves will have different professional backgrounds as they are academics, observers, members of the OS community," he said.
Among the foreign participants in AAOS would be Jaijit Bhattacharya from Sun Microsystem India, Aslam Raffee from South Africa's Science and Technology Department, Van Hoai Tran from Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology of Vietnam, and Kazuhiro Oki from the Center of the International Cooperation for Computerization.
Local participants to come to the meeting would include Onno W Purbo, Zaenal Hasibuan from the University of Indonesia, Bernhard Sitohang from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Communication and Information Minister Muhammad Nuh, and Indonesia's Open Source brand ambassador Betti Alisjahbana.
Koswara said the forum would be held based on a recommendation from the Asia-Africa Conference in 2005. At the time, the conference discussed the implementation of knowledge-based information which was meant to overcome digital discrepancies in growing countries in Asia and Africa.
Moreover, the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva also recommended the holding of AAOS. In fact, WSIS had drawn up a Plan of Action for sustainable development and the freedom of growing countries to implement IT open Technology such as Open Source software, Open Protocols and Open Hardware.
Koswara said he believed that development of Open Source in countries in Asia and Africa was proceeding well. However, he admitted this was the case with licensed-software or proprietary such as Microsoft Windows.
In fact, Koswara said, about 90 percent of the world community was still using proprietary.(*)
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