Open source presents immense opportunities for local job creation and innovation, says visiting guru, Jon "Maddog" Hall. ILLUSTRATING HIS ARGUMENT in favour of open universal standards, Jon "Maddog" Hall couldn`t plug his laptop power supply into a South African power plug to start his LinuxWorld South Africa keynote address in Sandton last week.

Hall, the president of Linux International, heads up the worldwide non-profit association of end-users dedicated to furthering the acceptance and use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

He told delegates to the event that, proprietary software for business use is much like trying to fit a square pin into a round hole, and more often than not, businesses have to model their processes around the restrictions of proprietary software, be it in functionality or as a result of lack of hardware support.

Hall notes that businesses needing support for proprietary software programmes often get lost in the vendor`s support processes, and small business requirements for new functionality is often at the bottom of the list of problems the vendor wants to fix.

With open source software, this is not the case, he says, and new functionality can be built into a company`s software architecture, sometimes in less than a day by many open source specialists.

"I know that proprietary software companies want to give you a good product and service, but the problem is that in most cases they have millions of customers.

"If each customer reports a problem, or requests new functionality, requests will most likely fall on deaf ears unless the vendor is likely to profit immensely from it. If a new functionality can be added almost instantly with open source business software, which customer is getting the better service?" asks Hall.

This, he says, turns the argument of total cost of ownership on its head. He says companies should not always look at total cost of ownership of software, but rather at the value of the software to constantly support and streamline the business process.

OFFSHORING WOES

But that is not the only side-effect of proprietary software. He says the US has problems due to offshoring, with software development jobs now being outsourced to China and India where skills are cheaper.

In South Africa, he says, offshoring has been happening for 20 years, and three billion rand in software royalties left South Africa last year alone.

"That is three billion rands that could have been spent in South Africa, creating jobs, which could have a knock-on effect to create a greater demand for software customisation, and programmers to do those jobs," says Hall.

He says Venezuela had the same problem a few years ago, when information technology students had to move to other countries to seek work once they finished their degrees, in order to earn a decent wage.

However, since the Venezuelan government started focusing on open source, more jobs had been created to support, develop and provide a local service around the software.

"I believe a person should have a good education in their own country. I don`t believe a person should leave his or her own country to live a good life. I also believe a person should be able to provide a better life for their children. If all of this is not true, then we as a society have done something wrong," says Hall.

He believes there are also other areas where South Africans could stimulate jobs and the economy through innovation.

"Linux is the most used operating system in embedded system design. I would like to challenge South Africa to find the most creative people in the industry to develop embedded systems for appliances and devices using Linux, and take these prototypes to investors and manufacturers," he says.

* LinuxWorld is a yearly event for open source professionals and all who are interested in Linux and open source technologies, and attracts a large local business community, proof that open source is and will remain one of the major issues in IT.