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.orgnajmi.zabidi {at} gmail.com

MSC Open Source Conference 2009

AbstractUnlike 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 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 the knowledge to the particular audience, the medium of delivering the message plays very crucial role.

2 Reasons why educational institution should adopt FOSSEducational 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. 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 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 TOOLSC

Programming

Anjuta, DevC++(Integrated Development Environment, 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, capture HPC, surfIDS)

• GCC• Nmap• Linux/BSD as host

machineOperating system courses

Some element of programming

Linux/BSD

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 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 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

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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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 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 spreaderIn 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 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 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.

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 becoming FOSS 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 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 academiaOne 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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Target GroupPolicy Maker

Enforce policy, monitor

Give feedback, provide contribution, execute

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 PURPOSEClaroline 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 serverDebian 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 subjectClamAV For email server's antivirusSpamassasin For email server's anti spam solutionApache httpd Kulliyyah (faculty)'s webserverNetbean/Eclipse For Java programming subjectPC^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. Students2. 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 GPLWillingness to license the final year project in 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 the questionnaire.

QUESTIONS RESPONSESSubjects System Analysis and Design,Multimedia Technology, Final

Year Project,IT Security, Calculus, Numerical Computation and Data Mining

Method to implement FOSS in the class

Student pick topic by themselves, using it to draw UML 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 enforcement(Yes/No)

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

FOSS better than proprietary(Yes/No/No difference)

No difference for system analysis,multimedia technology and and data mining. FOSS is preferred for IT Security and Final year project. While for Calculus, FOSS is suitable for undergraduate.

Will use FOSS for next semester(Yes/No)

Yes for all subjects

Provide manual/Ask student to search online

All subjects require them to search online

Contribute/User All are users

Operating System/Application

• Non Free OS+ Free Application – Multimedia, IT 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 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 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 campaignOur 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 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] 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 projectResearch 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 trainingYoung, 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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REFERENCES1. 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_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 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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