The Magic of FOSS

Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarna is the founder, chairman and CEO of WSO2, and is also the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Lanka Software Foundation. He is well known around the world as an influential opensource guru. We talk to him today on opensource software.

Q: People have two myths about FOSS. Number one is that you don't get payed for writing opensource software. Could you explain how opensource software works?

A: I got a company that's trying to make a business out of opensource software. But every thing we write we give away for free. Now you're going to ask how in the world that going to work... Well we give the software for free, but what we charge for the potent maintenance of the software.

That is, I'm going to give you something for free, and you're going to use it. But if you're a bank and you're going to use my software and you're going to put the entire electronic banking system on my software then, you will probably want somebody to be there to help you if something goes wrong with it. Otherwise if something goes wrong with the software your neck is on the line.

So that's where we come. We basically insure our software. We're like an Insurance company. What we're insuring is our software. So if you have a problem we have to step up and fix it, and because we wrote the software, we have a thorough knowledge of the software and we have no trouble giving the insurance. Because we know that we can fix it.

Q: Then myth number two is the user friendliness. We still don't know whether this is a myth or not but user friendliness is not associated with FOSS. People prefer Windows rather than Linux.

A: Yes. You're absolutely right. Most people don't use Linux. The reality is the user-friendliness is behind the propriety industry. But it's been catching up over the years. It was far behind many years ago. But now there are a lot of opensource solutions that are quite as equal to propriety software.

For example there are a number of Linux variations which are just as user friendly as windows, maybe even more. Things like Office, instead of using Microsoft Office you can use OpenOffice. The only difference is that in Microsoft Office you see the Microsoft slogan and in OpenOffice you see a different slogan. That's all.

But there are some other cases where user-friendliness can be improved.

Q: But still 90% of the market is dominated by Windows, only 10% is with Linux?

A: There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that nobody is marketing FOSS. You don't see full page adds in the paper saying "Try OpenOffice. It works.". But you see that for propriety products. So that's why it takes longer. It takes longer but it's sort of the like the 'slow-and-steady wins the race' model. Because once you do get your hands on it and once you do study about it, and once you use it, you see there's no difference.

People in Sri Lanka have a wrong grasp on pirated software. It's basically stealed software. If you go to Unity Plaza, you can buy Microsoft Office for the cost of a CD. That's a pirated copy. The real price is $400. Even in Sri Lanka if you want to buy the proper license for the product that $400. So who can pay 40,000Rs. to pay for Microsoft Word?

So propriety software vendors are encouraging people in the third world countries to buy pirated copies. They know very well if they charge for the software, that no one is going to use it. People don't want to go to jail for using software. And if people stop using it then the companies are never going to sell their products.

What they do is, they let you pirate the products. Especially in Sri Lanka, and specially in third world countries. Let them use it. Let them abuse it. But when they go to the companies thinking that they cannot do without propriety software, then ask for the bill.

So now the people are in a situation that they are brainwashed to an extent that they cannot use any other software. So that's a generic charity for the software vendors.

We in the Free and Opensource software industry absolutely want piracy to be stopped. We know if we stop piracy, it shoots us up. Then you see the real cost of software. Adobe Creative Suite is $400, Adobe PDF writer is $400. We recently bought a Adobe Creative Suite because we don't want to advocate piracy.

Q: Isn't that a contradiction? You say that we as Sri Lanka will benefit hugely if we shift to OpenSource. But your own company bought Adobe Suite. So doesn't that imply we cannot totally rely on FOSS?

A: Absolutely. You should never rely on FOSS. You should never rely on any religion totally. You should use the best tool available. But if the problem you're trying to solve has a better free and opensource solution, then go for it. But if it doesn't have it, don't use it. Why we're buying the Adobe Suite is that we want to have some kind of tool to design our brochures and things.

There isn't high quality opensource software designed for that yet. Therefore we have to buy it. So I'm not religiously accepting opensource software. If the free and opensource solution isn't good enough for your specific task then don't use it. Even if it's free.