Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Adoption in Malaysian

Education
Department of Computer Science,
Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology (KICT),
International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM),
Gombak
najmi.zabidi {at} ieee.org
najmi.zabidi {at} gmail.com

MSC Open Source Conference 2009

Abstract
Unlike a decade ago, free and open source software or here simply mentioned as FOSS is no
longer alien to the public. The deployment of FOSS whether simply the operating system lines or
applications ranged from kid’s laptop up to the supercomputers. This paper is a preliminary study
towards the institution, instructor, students attitude towards the FOSS adoption, with limited
scope to the Malaysian circumstances. Main focus of this paper is towards the Malaysian
education tertiary level.

1 Introduction
Education is a lifelong process. However, a formal education has its beginning and end point.
The result will be grades on the graduation transcript which is the evidence showing that a
person has achieve something or nothing during his study period. In order to deliver the
knowledge to the particular audience, the medium of delivering the message plays very crucial
role.

2 Reasons why educational institution should adopt FOSS

Educational institution, especially public institution received money from the government, and
government gets the money from the taxpayers, which includes the citizens. Managing financial
effectively and distribute the fund to the right target group is simply a principle of justice. [1,8]
There are many decision has to be made prior a tool or medium being chosen. Possibly those are:
1. Cost
2. Easiness of use. This will includes architecture portability.
3. Scalability. Say by default a lab having 30 computers and the actual capacity it can hold
40 computers. Scalable means the user is freely to expand or shrink the size of concurrent
users without any restriction to license and of course, cost.

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 4. No tie to any vendor. A product may reach “end of life” where its production
discontinued, or the vendor might filed bankruptcy as a consequence of economic
mishap. Having less dependent means more freedom to the users.

3 Compilation of possible subjects to be taught using FOSS

Example of subjects with the possibility of FOSS :

COURSE TYPE POSSIBLE TOOLS

C Anjuta, DevC++
(Integrated Development
Programming Environment, IDE)
C++ DevC++ (IDE)
Java Netbeans(IDE)
PHP Web programming The language package
itself, from php.net
Apache webserver

Security courses Hybrid of operating systems, • Metasploit

programming, networking • Snort
• Honeypot lines
(nepenthes,
honeyd, capture
HPC, surfIDS)
• GCC
• Nmap
• Linux/BSD as host
machine
Operating system Some element of Linux/BSD
courses programming
Thesis/Dissertation Technical/Technical writings • Latex for writing
and formatting
• Linux/BSD as host
machine
• Bibtex for
referencing
Table 1: Possible subjects with the respective tools

In Malaysia, the FOSS implementation in the education is strongly supported by the government.
This can be justified by looking at the establishment of the Open Source Competency Centre
(OSCC) under MAMPU assists the endeavor to spread the understanding of FOSS philosophy
and its technical usage in daily productivity life [6].

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4 Methodology to implement FOSS in an organization
When a new policy or technology being introduced, it is advised to start with informing the
significant impact of introducing such policy or technology. The following steps are suggested
for the successful plan for the FOSS implementation in an organization:

1. Education – this may varies from formal education (technical class, talks etc). In additon
in come in the form of posters, web pop ups, flyers, install fest etc)
2. Policy – the upper management must understand first the importance of FOSS, only then
the following education will be succeed. Policy may be ranged from strict (no close
standard email attachment for example) to the loose policy (giving options, but this may
have risk of less successful policy).
3. Process monitoring and accessing feedbacks from the target group.

5 Factors affecting FOSS execution plan

University

Student Instructor (Lecturer)

Diagram 1: Relations between university, student and lecturer entities

Challenge in implementing FOSS at the faculty

The are several identified problem in getting FOSS plan, and this need to be carefully identified
since it will determine the successfulness of FOSS-wide implementation plan.
1. Managerial decision
◦ the management usual can convinced by the cost wise savings. But, talking about
getting source code – they might not be interested.

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 2. Learning curve
◦ senior/veteran professors, whom used to their status quo may find using FOSS tools
as counter productive, pointless and too brave to be maverick. Hence the challenge is
to at least getting their apprentices have freedom to work on their project/research
using FOSS tool, or in addition become the developer of FOSS projects.
3. Philosophy
◦ once may sees the FOSS ideas is utopia, too idealistic. By that the FOSS folks must
be able to structure a proper plan for the awareness campaign.

6 Contribution vector for the FOSS policy in tertiary level

The managerial effort alone may not be very successful if the target audiences do not response
either with executing the policy or at least by giving feedback.

Active target group

• Active as the developer and organization
In one example, the students of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) advocate the usage
of LaTex by publicize their work in GoogleCode and let the code in FOSS license. This
effort later will assist the university's student to use LaTex while following the
university's thesis format [3]. Even IEEE and Springerlink put their Latex format online,
so that the writer can adhere with the regulated format for publications [3,4].

• Active as the word spreader

In the other sense, it is possible for the normal user without the technical background to
assist the implementation of FOSS in their university's community by :
1. Becoming a committee of FOSS events
2. Donate money for FOSS movement. This financial contribution needed especially
for event mentioned previously or for an event that being called as “installfest” .
This is where the organizer may provide free CDs containing FOSS package to
the public. However due to the improvement of network connection speed
nowadays it may become less popular as the prospective users may be able to
download the software by themselves.

• Active as the policy maker

The policy maker may consist of technical people (active developer, technical
contributor) or non technical people (management people, public relation specialist,
people with negotiating skills) or the hybrid of both. The cohesion of technical and non-

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 technical people may be needed especially in order to lobby the stakeholder towards the
successful plan of the FOSS wide implementation.

Enforce policy, monitor

Policy Maker Target Group

Give feedback, provide contribution, execute

Diagram 2: The role of the Organization/Policy Maker versus the target group

Passive target group

The passive follower may just execute the university's plan or in our case by becoming
FOSS user and provide feedback if needed.

7 The Effectiveness of FOSS Awareness Campaign

We did distribute short survey through online survey form to tackle various background of
instructor from different local institutions, but given the study period is rather period, we cannot
make a concrete conclusion towards our finding.

In some cases we encounter the level of awareness of FOSS is rather low and we can simply
conclude that this university need to enhance more FOSS awareness campaign, especially to non
computer science faculty.

8 Online resources for FOSS solution in academia

One way for the community to contribute back to the rest of the world is by looking
retrospectively towards their capability and focus on their strength. Several websites assist on the
FOSS campaign, putting possible action plan and policies towards the applicability of FOSS in
the education system. For an example, an organization called as OFSET ( Organization for Free
Software in Education and Teaching) is hosting a website at http://ofset.org . Also, Free
Software Foundation Europe putting several e-magazine at
http://fsfe.org/projects/education/tgs/tgs.en.html.These e-book project however seems abandoned
for almost 5 years now.

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9 Sample FOSS solutions in Kulliyyah of Information of Communication
Technology (KICT)

As for our case in KICT, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), we managed to
implement the following FOSS software lines for our daily usage. Among those are:

SOFTWARE PURPOSE
Claroline Online course repository. Students and lecturers are heavily
rely on this software for slides uploads and class
announcements.
Squirrelmail Online mail user agent. Lecturers depending on this software
given they are away (traveling) from their own computers .
(This explained by self own PC usually has Thunderbird, or
Microsoft ™ Outlook.
Fedora Linux For classes which possibly using it, such as computer
networking/administration subjects
FreeBSD Operating system for email server and web server
Debian Linux We implement this Linux distro towards our SUN machines
which use Intel architecture, later we convert them into thin
client machines for the purpose of paperless meeting. With
this we no longer print bulks of meeting's documents since
these documents are accessible through sharing.
Rock Linux The KICT's Centre of Collaborative Technology (CCT) [11]
latest project is to participate in national grid computing
project. We have 3 dual core computers and scalable n
numbers (which, at the moment of this writing is equal to 8
CPUs) of single core computers interconnected for this
project. Real time status of these machines can be viewed
online via [12].
Bloodshed Dev C++ C++ teaching. For introductory course we still use Microsoft
Windows ™ as the host operating system.
Octave A FOSS version of Matlab. Being used for Calculus subject.
Weka For data mining subject
ClamAV For email server's antivirus
Spamassasin For email server's anti spam solution
Apache httpd Kulliyyah (faculty)'s webserver
Netbean/Eclipse For Java programming subject
PC^2 Programming competition's real time code and result

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 submission usage

Table 2: Software used with the respective functions

We admit in some courses proprietary software is preferable since the learning curve is an issue,
and since it is a well known tool which being highly regarded in industry hence it was being
chosen, that is, Matlab.

10 Survey of FOSS in usage in class

We conducted two types of survey to two different target group, unfortunately due to time
constraint; only to limited number of respondents responded to our survey. These target groups
are:

1. Students
2. Instructor (lecturer)

Response for the student's survey

We distribute emails, link to questionnaires (via add URL in Facebook, for example) and host the
survey online by using online survey provider. This is to increase the chance of getting more
respondents and getting the questionnaires answered.

QUESTIONS RESPONSE

Understanding of FOSS It is free and open

Comfortable with FOSS in usage in class Yes

3 best FOSS tools Ubuntu, Open Office, Firefox

FOSS is better than proprietary? Depends

FOSS advocate Lecturer's and self initiative

Contribution to FOSS? Yes

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FOSS license that you familiar GPL
Willingness to license the final year project No
in FOSS license

Table 3: Questions responded by student

Response for the lecturer's survey

The following table shows the results of survey from lecturers. Six respondents responded to the
questionnaire.

QUESTIONS RESPONSES
Subjects System Analysis and Design,Multimedia Technology, Final
Year Project,IT Security, Calculus, Numerical Computation
and Data Mining
Method to implement FOSS Student pick topic by themselves, using it to draw UML
in the class diagram (system analysis). Use octave for calculus
Student's response Okay and the students know what they do. For calculus, the
prefer to use Matlab instead of octave.
Work submission For system analysis, multimedia technology and final year
enforcement project – they were enforced to submit work using FOSS. The
(Yes/No) rest are not.
FOSS better than No difference for system analysis,multimedia technology and
proprietary and data mining. FOSS is preferred for IT Security and Final
(Yes/No/No difference) year project. While for Calculus, FOSS is suitable for
undergraduate.
Will use FOSS for next Yes for all subjects
semester
(Yes/No)
Provide manual/Ask student All subjects require them to search online
to search online
Contribute/User All are users

Operating • Non Free OS+ Free Application – Multimedia, IT

System/Application Security, System Analysis, Data Mining
• Non Free OS+ Non Free Application – Final Year
Project (this however contradict with the work
submission above, perhaps the respondent misread the
questionnaires)

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 • Free OS+Free Application – Numerical Computation
and Calculus

Table 4: Response from lecturers

11 Recommendations

From the previous sections we have outlined our findings and surveys hence we conclude them
into different fundamental ideas. As conclusion we recommend the following outlines:

1. Lesser software expense means hiring more lecturers

According to Timothy[5], she suggested that the money saved from the use of FOSS can
be later channeled to hire more teachers. Looking at the future Malaysian tertiary system
for example, by having autonomic decision by the university, the institution can hire more
lecturers as well. This will improve brain gain campaign that our country has started all
this while.

2. Lesser software expense means funding more research.

Our suggestion may be an addition towards the point sparked by Timothy. The university
academic staff may use the excess fund towards research, thus contributing back to the
mankind benefit. The question is, whether current policies allow such flexibility? And
does flexibility hurts?

3. Research output licensed under FOSS umbrella, why not?

As one of our survey respondent suggest, though a person is understand about the license,
and currently is using FOSS, he/she might not decided to license his/her work under
FOSS license. This may be caused by several reasons. As outlined by [9] , putting work
under FOSS license may not prevent the developer from making money.

4. More campaign
Our survey also suggested that there were loopholes in the FOSS campaign, where we
found an instructor whom involved in technological driven subject (engineering) is not
exposed to the FOSS philosophy, at all, though lecturing programming subject. We might
suggest current programming textbook putting licensing subsection as a part of the
syllabus, as an addition for the technical intensive topics. It will not help the students
aptitude towards programming, but does help them exposed towards the philosophy.

5. Development with open standard

The term “open standard” was not emphasized here since it is not the focus of this paper.
But given the faculty members and students are about to develop new invention,
academically “open standard” will sure help the rest of the world. Perens in [10] stated
the clear philosophy why a project need to have embrace the open standard. From our
view, either student from Engineering or Computer Science background need to be

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 comprehend with this idea since they are the ones who will create new gadgets, new
software, new protocol and so on. The recent obvious debate is the openness of Open
Document Format (ODF) versus OOXML by Microsoft.

6. Reduce the risk of abandoned project

Research project that was being done during undergraduate years, or postgraduate may be
abandoned once the student leaving the school. By putting his/her work online and
release the code, somebody else might lend their helping hands and continue the noble
work. The university's administration should be comprehend on this benefit and work on
proper procedure to make it happens. Suggestion on this issue is also outline in [8].

7. Government enforce FOSS training

Young, energetic lecturers may response positively towards FOSS, by the assumption that
learning curve is the main issue. However the root of solution is a strong policy towards
the FOSS implementation, which can be supported by training and awareness. Though
centralized training organized by MAMPU is already ongoing, the population distribution
may not be able to cover the rest of lecturers which located far from the training centre.
So the suggestion might be a “training the trainers” throughout the country which can be
done in any university's lab. This is also mentioned in [7].

12 Problems expected and discussions

1. Given a student involved in a final year project which involves development, who will
own the copyright?
2. Given a student never use university's access (buy his own hardware, his own Internet
access) will the university own the copyright?
3. Should the university control the license?
4. Why opt to use FOSS license, and why not?
5. How the university and students able earn money while making the developed project
FOSS'ed?

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REFERENCES
1. Stallman R., “Why schools should exclusively use free software”,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html (accessed on 18th May 2009)
2. http://code.google.com/p/utmthesis/
3. http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/pubservices/confpub/AuthorTools/conferenceTemp
lates.html (accessed on 18th May 2009)
4. http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-72376-0 (accessed on 18th
May 2009)
5. Timothy D.H, “Open Source in Education”, http://portfolio.umaine.edu/~hartt/OS%20in
%20Education.pdf (accessed on 15th May 2009)
6. Ishak, AR,
http://www.oscc.org.my/documentation/oig/oss.implementation.guidelines.pt3.rahim.pdf
(accessed on 15th May 2009)
7. Bruyninckx H. et. al, “Free Software in education: advise, vision and proposed action
plan”,
http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/ict/english/free_software_in_ed_Flemish_Community_adv
ise.pdf (accessed on 21st May 2009)
8. Stallman R., “Releasing Free Software if you work at a University” ,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/university.html (accessed on 18th May 2009)
9. Stallman R., “Selling Free Software”, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
(accessed on 18th May 2009)
10. Peren, B., “Open Standards Principles and Practice”, http://perens.com/OpenStandards/
Definition.html (accessed on 19th May 2009)
11. http://www.iium.edu.my/cct/index.html
12. http://rocks.grid.iiu.edu.my/ganglia/

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13 About the author

Muhammad Najmi Ahmad Zabidi was born in Teluk

Intan, Perak and currently working as an academic
staff in International Islamic University Malaysia,
(IIUM) Gombak since 2005. Previously he was
working in Byte Craft Sdn Bhd, an open source
industry pioneer from 2003-2005. He was educated
in IIUM with Bachelor of Management Information
Systems (2000-2003) and Master of Science in
Computer Science from Universiti Sains Malaysia
(USM, 2006-2007). He is the translation coordinator
for KDE localization project to Malay language, an
academic member of Anti Phishing Working Group
(APWG) and a member of IEEE.

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