Open Source Database Management System

Pasar Open Source DBMS makin menggelora, ditandai dengan masuknya beberapa pemain baru ke arena ini. Salah satunya adalah perusahaan besar di industri IT, Computer Associates (CA). CA merilis produknya dengan nama Ingres relational DBMS, sebagai sebuah perangkat lunak Open Source. Ingres dirilis dengan payung CA Trusted Open Source License (CA-TOSL). Dibawah lisensi CA-TOSL, independent software vendors (ISV) dapat menggunakan Ingres dalam produk buatan mereka asalkan dengan syarat tetap membuka kode program dari Ingres. CA menawarkan layanan dukungan berbayar bagi CA-TOSL Ingres ini.

Sumbangan CA ini menambah alternatif pilihan DBMS bagi para pengembang open source. Hal ini juga berarti persaingan di pasar open source DBMS akan meningkat, dimana Ingres akan berhadapan dangan para pemain lama seperti MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, Apache Derby dan Sleepycat Berkeley DB (yang baru-baru ini dibeli oleh ORACLE).

Pendatang baru lainnya adalah sebuah perusahaan dengan nama EnterpriseDB Corp, yang merilis produk open source DBMS dengan nama EnterpriseDB 2005. Yang menarik adalah Ingres dan EnterpriseDB 2005 keduanya sama-sama berbasiskan PostgreSQL, sebuah open source DBMS yang cukup mapan dan secara luas digunakan di komunitas open source. EnterpriseDB merupakan sebuah paket yang terdiri atas Database Server, EDB Studio (konsol grafis untuk antarmuka DBMS), dan EDB Connectors (yang menydiakan akses untuk JDBC, ODBC, .Net, ESQL/C++, PHP, Perl dan Python). EnterpriseDB juga menyediakan paket EnterpriseDB Replication Server. Paket ini memudahkan pengguna untuk melakukan migrasi data dari ORACLE ke EnterpriseDB tanpa perlu melakukan modifikasi pada aplikasinya. Dengan paket ini EnterpriseDB berusaha masuk ke pangsa pasar di enterprise level.

Menarik untuk mengikuti kiprah dua pendatang baru ini. Ingres dan EnterpriseDB akan menghadapi pertarungan keras, tidak saja dengan penguasa pasar, “the Big Three” (DB2, SQL Server, and Oracle), tetapi juga dengan MySQL, yang merupakan open source DBMS paling populer saat ini.

Bagi kita sebagai pengguna, ini merupakan suatu keuntungan dimana pilihan akan produk open source DBMS semakin banyak. Untuk itu kita dituntut untuk semakin selektif. Yakinkan bahwa pilihan yang diambil sesuai dengan kebutuhan.

The Empire (baca MICROSOFT ) Strikes Back

Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom yang baru sebulan menjabat sebagai Menteri Teknologi Informasi dan Telekomunikasi Thailand melecehkan kebijakan pendahulunya yang mendorong penggunaan FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) di negeri gajah putih tersebut. Dalam konferensi pers pertamanya, ia menyebut inisiatif penggunaan perangkat lunak Open Source ini bagaikan "orang buta yang menuntun orang buta". Pak menteri melanjutkan "Jika saya seorang programmer, dan membuat kode program yang bermutu, mengapa saya akan memberikannya dengan cuma-cuma?" seperti dimuat harian Bangkok Post tanggal 15 November 2006.

Senada dengan koleganya dari Thailand, Menteri Ilmu Pengetahuan, Teknologi dan Inovasi Malaysia, Datuk Seri Dr Jamaludin Jarjis dalam konferensi persnya tanggal 21 November 2006, menyatakan bahwa pemerintah Malaysia telah memutuskan kebijakan pengadaan akan bersifat netral, seperti dikutip oleh thestar online. Seperti kita ketahui, tahun 2004, pemerintah Malaysia membentuk MAMPU (Malaysian Modernisation and management Planning Unit) yang meluncurkan "Malaysian Open Source Software Master Plan" dengan target pemanfaatan perangkat lunak Open Source di lembaga-lembaga pemerintahan. "Master Plan" ini didukung dengan kebijakan pemerintah Malaysia yang menyebutkan "Dalam kondisi dimana perangkat lunak Open Source sepada dengan pembandingnya dari produk Proprietary, prioritas akan diberikan kepada perangkat lunak Open Source".

Surat kabar online, Detik.com dalam pemberitaan tanggal 4 Desember 2006, melaporkan pemerintah Indonesia dan perusahaan perangkat lunak raksasa Microsoft telah melakukan Memorandum of Understanding mengenai perlindungan hak cipta dibidang piranti lunak. Keberadaan MoU tersebut mencuat setelah Craig Mundie, petinggi Microsoft mengunjungi Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono di Istana Merdeka, 16 November 2006. Kemal Stamboel, Wakil Ketua Harian Dewan Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi Nasional, menyatakan "Dewan akan mendorong dua-duanya dalam level yang sama. Kalau kita bilang kita tidak mau pakai proprietary, dan akan membuat sendiri yang kita perlukan, maka menurut saya ini tidak smart". Ini adalah langkah mundur pemerintah yang pada tahun 2004 meluncurkan IGOS (Indonesia Go Open Source), dideklarasikan oleh Menteri Riset dan Teknologi, Menteri Komunikasi dan Informatika, Menteri Kehakiman dan HAM, Menteri Pendayagunaan Aparatur Negara dan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional.

Sulit untuk menghindari prasangka adanya keterlibatan Microsoft dibelakang perubahan kebijakan pemerintah Thailand, Malaysia dan Indonesia ini. Perusahaan yang menguasai pasar perangkat lunak dunia ini melihat FOSS sebagai ancaman serius bagi kelangsungan hegemoninya. Hal ini disebabkan FOSS menawarkan sesuatu yang lain, perangkat lunak FOSS dapat diperoleh secara gratis, juga boleh di kopi dan dibagikan ke teman, saudara atau tetangga. Kode program perangkat lunak FOSS terbuka untuk umum, sehingga programmer di seluruh dunia dapat belajar atau ikut mengembangkan. LINUX, OpenOffice dan Firefox adalah contoh perangkat lunak FOSS yang paling populer saat ini. Linux adalah sistem operasi alternatif yang bisa digunakan untuk menggantikan Microsoft Windows baik digunakan sebagai server maupun desktop. OpenOffice adalah perangkat lunak perkantoran sebagai alternatif dari Microsoft Office, sedang Firefox adalah perangkat lunak untuk "berselancar" di internet.

Sejak diperkenalkan sekitar 1980, FOSS telah memikat jutaan pengguna sekaligus sukarelawan di seluruh dunia. Lingkungan kampus, adalah komunitas pertama yang mengadaptasi perangkat lunak FOSS, diikuti lembaga-lembaga pemerintah dan baru kemudian dalam lima tahun belakangan ini mulai dilirik oleh dunia bisnis. Dari Parlemen Perancis sampai sekolah terpencil di pedesaan Namibia, dari perusahaan kecil, menengah hingga tingkatan Fortune 500 mulai memakai FOSS, IBM, SUN dan HP menginvestasikan jutaan dollar untuk mengembangkan FOSS.

Microsoft tentu saja tidak tinggal diam melihat pangsa pasarnya digerogoti FOSS. Bersama dengan Intel dan EDS, Microsoft mendukung Initiative for Software Choice (ISC), sebuah organisasi lobi internasional yang bermarkas di Amerika Serikat. Tujuan utama kampanya ISC adalah bagaimana menahan laju penyebaran FOSS di dunia. Sewaktu Presiden Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva menginstruksikan seluruh jajaran kementrian dan kantor-kantor pemerintah di Brazil untuk meninggalkan Microsoft Windows dan beralih ke sistem operasi Linux, kontan ISC langsung menyatakan keberatannya dan meminta kepada pemerintah Brazil agar memberlakukan “level playing field”, kesetaraan antara produk-produk FOSS dan proprietary. Permintaan ISC ini tidak digubris, dan pemerintah Brazil memetik hasilnya sekarang. Brazil sudah berhasil memasyarakatkan FOSS hingga ke sekolah-sekolah sehingga sebagai bangsa mereka bisa mandiri bahkan siap bersaing di pasar global.

Keteguhan sikap Brazil mestinya menjadi teladan bagi Thailand, Malaysia dan khususnya negara kita Indonesia. Kita masih dililit hutang yang sangat besar, sebagai bangsa daya saing kita sangat rendah di segala bidang. Janganlah anggaran pemerintah yang terbatas itu dibelanjakan tanpa pertimbangan yang matang. Menggunakan perangkat lunak FLOSS bukanlah berarti gratis sama sekali, tetap ada pengeluaran untuk pendidikan dan pelatihan. Tetapi perlu dicamkan bahwa biaya ini adalah sebuah investasi, yang dalam jangka panjang akan membuat kita menjadi bangsa yang mandiri, yang menguasai teknologi informasi. Bila anggaran itu dihabiskan hanya untuk membayar lisensi perangkat lunak, selamanya bangsa kita akan menjadi konsumen. Setiap rupiah yang kita belanjakan untuk membeli lisensi perangkat lunak akan menjadi milik dari perusahaan tersebut, tetapi setiap rupiah yang kita keluarkan untuk pendidikan dan pelatihan dalam memanfaatkan perangkat lunak FOSS akan tetap menjadi milik kita, tidak hilang bahkan terus berkembang.

M. Farid Azis MKom.
Open Office Marketing Contact Indonesia
Associate Member Free Software Foundation

* Open Office adalah perangkat lunak yang bebas dan gratis sebagai alternatif pengganti Microsoft Office

a must this week

Thai FOSS Community Responds to IT Minister

An Open Letter to the Thai IT Minister has been released in response to his claims that Free and Open Source Software is lacking in IP and offers Thailand no value.

To the Minister of the Ministry of Information Technology and Communication
Re: Clarifying the facts about open source software

According to your declaration of the department's policy over which you have authority and the newspaper reports regarding your reasons for not supporting open source software development, we, who are software developers and users in Thailand, even though we don't oppose your use of budgeted money for a more important reason, we think that the reasons that you gave are not accurate according to our experience and cause public misunderstanding about OSS, which will affect our work which, we are trying to accomplish for the betterment of our country. We are doing this on our own without requesting money from the government.

We'd like to point out these facts with reference to the Bangkok Post report on Wednesday, Nov 15th, 2006 covering the following points:

On the subject of open source software, he said the current government plan was a case of the blind leading the blind, as neither the people who are in charge nor the people in industry seem to know the dangers of open source software. "With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated," he said. Apart from Linux, he claimed that most open source software is often abandoned and not developed, and leads to a lot of low-quality software with lots of bugs. "As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source," he said.

We will cover the issues point-by-point below:

1. The work that we have done was not done blindly without direction. We studied well the various conditions about OSS development, including the law, development methods, project accomplishment, and the effects on the economy. We saw opportunities for our country, which we will clarify later. We are therefore trying to work in the private sector to support the government's projects.
2. There is a misunderstanding that open source software is public domain without copyright because, according to current law, every piece of open source software has a legal copyright holder. It is only the generosity of the copyright holder which gives others special rights under his or her license, which uses copyright law itself to protect the holder's and user's rights to edit and distribute the software. If someone fails to follow the conditions of the agreement, they can be sued. This is an issue which open source projects take very seriously and try to monitor in order to prevent copyright violations.
3. Open source software can generate revenue because the license allows one to do so as long as one doesn't violate the license. Therefore, you see open source software in many kinds of hardware, such as routers, firewalls, mobile phones, and PDAs, to start. Because of the availability of the source code, the software can be adapted freely to many different kinds of hardware. There is also after-sales service, such as system installation and integration of solutions. The use of open source software reduces the start-up cost and is amazingly adaptable. The seller must offer the user the same right which the seller has (transfer). In other countries, the seller uses part of the revenue to support the development by sponsoring, donating , or hiring the developer to develop new features for the software. They may possibly simply employ the developer. All this is the reason why open source software is being continuously developed. In Thailand, this happens occasionally, but isn't common, because the open source mentality hasn't caught on here, but if it does catch on and is supported, it is entirely possible that process will be supported in the same way.
4. Like normal software, open source software has to survive natural selection. If there are enough users, the software will be advanced and developed forever because the open source process encourages communication between users and developers more than proprietary software, due to the availability of the source code. Some of these users are able to send in patches to the main tree. This means that open source software has many more developers available to it than the equivalent proprietary software. Other than the Linux kernel, which has passed through this process and reached great heights, there are other projects, such as Firefox (browser), Apache (web server), Squid (http proxy), MySQL (database), PostgreSQL (database), PhP (web programming), Mambo (CMS), Drupal (CMS), Gnome (desktop environment), KDE (desktop environment), X.org (GUI windowing system), ... etc. These projects are developed faster than leading proprietary projects.
5. There are many reasons why people who write good code might want to give out their code for free (under license). If you don't count the love for human society or self-satisfaction, there are also economic reasons.
   1. Netscape Communicator, which lost market share to MS Internet Explorer, decided to reopen the browser wars by releasing the source code as the Mozilla Project. They received a lot of help from developers on the internet and it became the Firefox web browser, which is stealing market share back from IE perpetually. The cooperation of the Mozilla Project with outside developers has benefited both sides.
   2. Businesses which use open source software and modify it in-house incur a increased cost every time they upgrade because they must patch the new version. An easier method is to contribute the changes back to the main tree for inclusion and to tell their customers that they are supporting OSS and making further modifications easier for their clients.
   3. The availability of the source code help in education by allowing the student to work with real code and develop extensions to it instead of simply reading a textbook and following the exercises within, only to learn how to really develop later on, increasing the rate of collaborative research.

   All these are possible because of the new availability of legal, large-scale, collaborative development which respects the IP rights of others. The open source model also credits developers in various ways.

Other than these, we see the following economic advantages in adopting open source software:

1. Reduction in the piracy rate. Due to the high cost of software from foreign countries, any attempt to reduce the rate of software piracy by purchasing only the required elements would result in a large amount of money leaving the country. A new solution to this problem is to use FLOSS. The quality is not lower than the other software.
2. Supporting the development of technology in-country. The collaborative open source software process mentioned previously is a efficient tool to help develop technology in Thailand at a faster rate. It reduces our dependence on pricey foreign technology and allows us to solve our own problems instead of paying for expensive foreign support.
3. Increasing the potential of Thai developers. Generally, code in open source projects is of high quality and superior design because the developers take great care to protect their images. Good design is also much more important in the collaborative model and attempt to increase the size of the project. That Thais join the process (there are some already) doesn't only cause foreign developer to acknowledge the Thais, but also is a great opportunity for us to learn software engineering concepts which are more advanced than what we are using now.

Regarding your concern over the income of developers, we, who are the direct recipients, are equally as concerned as you are. We believe, however, that when open source grows, the economic channels will open similarly to those in foreign countries. It is a chicken-and-egg problem -- we either wait for the result before offering support or we offer support first then wait for the result.
We choose the latter because we have foreseen the end game -- we will not stop working, whether or not the government supports open source or not. We can only hope that if you don't support us, you will at least stay out of our way and not interfere in our work like you did in the interview.

Presented for your consideration.

With respect.

U-Turn at Thailand ICT Ministry

In his first "meet the press" session as ICT Minister, Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom put forth his radical vision for 3G in Thailand, condemned open source for turning out buggy, useless software and promised to make the civil servants in the ICT Ministry proud of their organisation once again.

After just over a month in office, Thailands new ICT minister Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom has declared the current government focus on Free and Open Source Software a case of the blind leading the blind.

In a wide ranging "meet the press" session, Professor Pokai-udom set down his view on the future of the ICT industry in Thailand. His vision included a focus on developing outsourcing services, multi-media and animation and embedded devices. It emphatically did not include Open Source.

In the meeting Pokai-udom claimed that Free and Open Source Software was inherently inferior. "With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated," said Pokai-udom.