32212668 free and open source software foss adoption in malaysian education osconf09 mosc2010

8/8/2019 32212668 Free and Open Source Software FOSS Adoption in Malaysian Education OSCONF09 MOSC2010

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Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Adoption in MalaysianEducation

Department of Computer Science,

Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology (KICT), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM),Gombak

najmi.zabidi {at} ieee.orgnajmi.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 nolonger 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 studytowards the institution, instructor, students attitude towards the FOSS adoption, with limitedscope to the Malaysian circumstances. Main focus of this paper is towards the Malaysianeducation tertiary level.

1 IntroductionEducation 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 theknowledge to the particular audience, the medium of delivering the message plays very crucialrole.

2 Reasons why educational institution should adopt FOSSEducational institution, especially public institution received money from the government, andgovernment gets the money from the taxpayers, which includes the citizens. Managing financialeffectively 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. Cost2. 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 concurrentusers 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 productiondiscontinued, or the vendor might filed bankruptcy as a consequence of economicmishap. 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 TOOLSC

Programming

Anjuta, DevC++(Integrated DevelopmentEnvironment, IDE)

C++ DevC++ (IDE)Java Netbeans(IDE)PHP Web programming The language package

itself, from php.netApache webserver

Security courses Hybrid of operating systems, programming, networking

• Metasploit• Snort• Honeypot lines

(nepenthes,honeyd, captureHPC, surfIDS)

• GCC• Nmap• Linux/BSD as host

machineOperating systemcourses

Some element of programming

Linux/BSD

Thesis/Dissertation Technical/Technical writings • Latex for writingand formatting

• Linux/BSD as hostmachine

• 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 philosophyand its technical usage in daily productivity life [6].

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4 Methodology to implement FOSS in an organizationWhen 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 suggestedfor the successful plan for the FOSS implementation in an organization:

1. Education – this may varies from formal education (technical class, talks etc). In additonin 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 thenthe following education will be succeed. Policy may be ranged from strict (no closestandard email attachment for example) to the loose policy (giving options, but this mayhave risk of less successful policy).

3. Process monitoring and accessing feedbacks from the target group.

5 Factors affecting FOSS execution plan

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 identifiedsince 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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University

Student Instructor (Lecturer)



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 isto at least getting their apprentices have freedom to work on their project/researchusing 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 responseeither 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 usageof LaTex by publicize their work in GoogleCode and let the code in FOSS license. Thiseffort later will assist the university's student to use LaTex while following theuniversity'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 toassist the implementation of FOSS in their university's community by :

1. Becoming a committee of FOSS events2. 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 tothe public. However due to the improvement of network connection speednowadays it may become less popular as the prospective users may be able todownload the software by themselves.

• Active as the policy maker

The policy maker may consist of technical people (active developer, technicalcontributor) 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 thesuccessful plan of the FOSS wide implementation.

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

Passive target groupThe passive follower may just execute the university's plan or in our case by becomingFOSS user and provide feedback if needed.

7 The Effectiveness of FOSS Awareness CampaignWe 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 cannotmake a concrete conclusion towards our finding.

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

8 Online resources for FOSS solution in academiaOne way for the community to contribute back to the rest of the world is by lookingretrospectively towards their capability and focus on their strength. Several websites assist on theFOSS campaign, putting possible action plan and policies towards the applicability of FOSS inthe 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, FreeSoftware Foundation Europe putting several e-magazine athttp://fsfe.org/projects/education/tgs/tgs.en.html . These e-book project however seems abandonedfor almost 5 years now.

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Target GroupPolicy Maker

Enforce policy, monitor

Give feedback, provide contribution, execute

http://ofset.org/

http://fsfe.org/projects/education/tgs/tgs.en.html



http://ofset.org/



9 Sample FOSS solutions in Kulliyyah of Information of CommunicationTechnology (KICT)

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

SOFTWARE PURPOSE

Claroline Online course repository. Students and lecturers are heavilyrely on this software for slides uploads and classannouncements.

Squirrelmail Online mail user agent. Lecturers depending on this softwaregiven 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 machineswhich use Intel architecture, later we convert them into thinclient machines for the purpose of paperless meeting. Withthis we no longer print bulks of meeting's documents sincethese 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 nnumbers (which, at the moment of this writing is equal to 8CPUs) of single core computers interconnected for this

project. Real time status of these machines can be viewedonline via [12].

Bloodshed Dev C++ C++ teaching. For introductory course we still use MicrosoftWindows ™ 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 beingchosen, 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 timeconstraint; only to limited number of respondents responded to our survey. These target groupsare:

1. Students2. Instructor (lecturer)

Response for the student's survey

We distribute emails, link to questionnaires (via add URL in Facebook, for example) and host thesurvey online by using online survey provider. This is to increase the chance of getting morerespondents 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 projectin FOSS license

No

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 thequestionnaire.

QUESTIONS RESPONSES

Subjects System Analysis and Design,Multimedia Technology, FinalYear Project,IT Security, Calculus, Numerical Computationand Data Mining

Method to implement FOSSin the class

Student pick topic by themselves, using it to draw UMLdiagram (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 submissionenforcement(Yes/No)

For system analysis, multimedia technology and final year project – they were enforced to submit work using FOSS. Therest are not.

FOSS better thanproprietary

(Yes/No/No difference)

No difference for system analysis,multimedia technology andand data mining. FOSS is preferred for IT Security and Final

year project. While for Calculus, FOSS is suitable for undergraduate.

Will use FOSS for nextsemester(Yes/No)

Yes for all subjects

Provide manual/Ask studentto search online

All subjects require them to search online

Contribute/User All are users

OperatingSystem/Application

• Non Free OS+ Free Application – Multimedia, ITSecurity, 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 thequestionnaires)

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• Free OS+Free Application – Numerical Computationand Calculus

Table 4: Response from lecturers

11 Recommendations

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

1. Lesser software expense means hiring more lecturersAccording 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 systemfor example, by having autonomic decision by the university, the institution can hire morelecturers 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 universityacademic staff may use the excess fund towards research, thus contributing back to themankind benefit. The question is, whether current policies allow such flexibility? Anddoes 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 campaignOur survey also suggested that there were loopholes in the FOSS campaign, where wefound an instructor whom involved in technological driven subject (engineering) is notexposed to the FOSS philosophy, at all, though lecturing programming subject. We mightsuggest current programming textbook putting licensing subsection as a part of thesyllabus, as an addition for the technical intensive topics. It will not help the studentsaptitude towards programming, but does help them exposed towards the philosophy.

5. Development with open standardThe 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] statedthe 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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REFERENCES 1. Stallman R., “Why schools should exclusively use free software” ,

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html (accessed on 18 th May 2009)

2. http://code.google.com/p/utmthesis/3. http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/pubservices/confpub/AuthorTools/conferenceTemp

lates.html (accessed on 18 th May 2009)

4. http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-72376-0 (accessed on 18thMay 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_advise.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 18 th May 2009)

9. Stallman R., “Selling Free Software” , http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html (accessed on 18 th May 2009)

10. Peren, B., “ Open Standards Principles and Practice”, http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html (accessed on 19 th May 2009)

11. http://www.iium.edu.my/cct/index.html

12. http://rocks.grid.iiu.edu.my/ganglia/

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http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

http://code.google.com/p/utmthesis/

http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/pubservices/confpub/AuthorTools/conferenceTemplates.html


http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-72376-0

http://portfolio.umaine.edu/~hartt/OS%20in%20Education.pdf


http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/ict/english/free_software_in_ed_Flemish_Community_advise.pdf


http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/university.html

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html



http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

http://code.google.com/p/utmthesis/



http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-2-72376-0





http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/university.html

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html





13 About the author

Muhammad Najmi Ahmad Zabidi was born in Teluk Intan, Perak and currently working as an academicstaff in International Islamic University Malaysia,(IIUM) Gombak since 2005. Previously he wasworking in Byte Craft Sdn Bhd, an open sourceindustry pioneer from 2003-2005. He was educatedin IIUM with Bachelor of Management InformationSystems (2000-2003) and Master of Science inComputer Science from Universiti Sains Malaysia(USM, 2006-2007). He is the translation coordinator for KDE localization project to Malay language, anacademic member of Anti Phishing Working Group(APWG) and a member of IEEE.

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32212668 free and open source software foss adoption in malaysian education osconf09 mosc2010

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