Benefits of open source highlighted in conference

The significance and benefits of open source were highlighted during the recently held Philippine Open Source Conference 2004 which sought to raise the country’s level of awareness of open source as a feasible alternative to proprietary software.

Dwelling on the theme "Open source goes mainstream," the successful event was held last Aug. 17-19 at the EDSA Shangri-La Plaza Hotel in Mandaluyong City where some 600 delegates converged to attend track sessions on Business Applications, Telecoms/Networking/Security, and Programming/Advocacy, including hands-on sessions, tutorials, open forums and product demonstrations.

Described as the "biggest open source event in the country," the three-day conference organized by Media G8way Corp. (MGC) in cooperation with Imperium Technologies Inc. also featured executive sessions that gathered C Level executives for a discussion with open source experts, and a bonus track session that focused on the social and political implications of free and open source software (FOSS).

In his keynote address, Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT) chairman Virgilio Peña said that although the government remains neutral on the open source issue, it will use open source software in a number of key e-government projects to lower costs.

Conference speakers included Philippine Linux Users’ Group president Ian Sison, Novell Asia Pacific Corporate Technology strategist John Philips, Intel Corp. Asia-Pacific Solutions Group solutions specialist Chew Kuan Beng, National Telehealth Center director Dr. Inocencio Maramba, Hewlett-Packard Business Critical Servers business manager Nilo Paul Nepomuceno, and Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute software research and development group head Peter Antonio Banzon.

"The event has raised awareness of open source not just in Metro Manila but across the country," said MGC president and chief executive officer Delia Castañeda-Gutierrez.

"The next conference will have a better mix of seminars and open discussions. Hopefully, there will also be programming competitions and other side activities that will make the event even more exciting," she said.

For his part, Imperium Technologies president and CEO Fernando Contreras Jr. said the "first-time" formats implemented during the conference significantly contributed to the success of the event.

These formats included a Tuesday-Thursday schedule, the Birds-of-A-Feather open forum, lunch time plenary sessions, open source sessions for executives, and an online distribution of materials.

"Although there are (still) lots of areas for improvement, I think we have satisfied the expectations of all parties involved," he said. "I think the objective was met, and the support from the enterprises was overwhelming."

Contreras vowed that next year’s open source conference would be "bigger and better," particularly in terms of format, marketing, content, management and logistics.

The next conference, whose updates will be posted at www.philosc.com, will be held either in April or May 2005.

This year’s event was sponsored by Intel Phils., Microsoft Developer Network and SuSE@Novell as diamond sponsors; HP Philippines, myDSL and Supermicro as gold sponsors; and American Technologies Inc., Chase Technologies Corp., Computer Associates, emic Networks, Netopia Internet Café, QLinux Solutions Inc. and Red Hat as silver sponsors. Open S2 was the official Web content manager.