RE: [myoss] Re: [ossig] Technical workshops in MIMOS?

["Ow Mun Heng" <ow.mun.heng@wdc.com>]

Hear..Hear...

Coming from a NON Computer background, you have no idea (maybe you do) how
much a person (me) learns just by looking at (open) source codes and mailing
lists.

1 year of education can be compressed to as much as 6 months via this
method. This knowledge actually empowers us to build better a better mouse
trap with lower cost and total knowledgeship.

(hearing you all speak with Gusto.. how I wish I could have gone to FOSSCON
rather than sit here in the office doing something I don't enjoy as Much.)


Cheers,
Mun Heng, Ow
H/M Engineering
Western Digital M'sia 
DID : 03-7870 5168


-----Original Message-----
From: Dinesh Nair [mailto:dinesh@alphaque.com]
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 4:43 PM
To: MNCC Open Source SIG
Cc: MY Open Source
Subject: Re: [myoss] Re: [ossig] Technical workshops in MIMOS?



On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, Imran William Smith wrote:

> That fits in very well with Mad Dog's central 'principles not products'
> theory.

agreed, and i said the same thing during both my presentations.  that
rationale is relevant when you're pushing government to level the playing
field and to inculcate open standards within the procurement process.
however, my rationale for structuring the workshops the way i did is thus:

open source is all about helping yourself, i.e. you need the knowledge to
put things together and to invest the knowledge into making sure it all
runs well and smoothly. if you want packaged software, then go pay the
closed source vendors and get maintenance support from them. you'd be
nothing more than an IT manager then, without the need for any fundamental
knowledge.

the goal of having the workshops is to bump up the skill levels of the
malaysian technical person a notch or two. the idea is to create many more
meling mudins, yusmar yahayas, colin charles, hasbullahs et al. widen the
pie, so that our people are better able to support, learn, innovate and
then finally build new software. i refer to nsh's LIVE (learn, innovate
and invent) principle here.

by increasing the technical skillset available, we take away an important
barrier towards open source adoption today, i.e. the claim that there are
not enough open source people around. at the same time, each of these
people will then become automatic open source advocates as they'd be able
to say confidently that they can help their companies and organizations
save money if they swung by the open source way.

open source technologies need to jump up to the next phase. today people
are already convinced of it's utility in things like file service, dns,
mail, web and for some simple web apps. it's when you get to more complex
systems and implementations that you start needing to know how to drive it
further, to wring more out of it and to take it to places it's not gone
before.

just simple awareness and concept teaching won't do this. that is the
domain of the university and the colleges. while we all admit that our
insititutions of higher learning are not churning out computer scientists,
i feel it is way beyond our abilities to attempt to do so with these
workshops. let's not get carried away with too much enthusiasm.

Regards,                           /\_/\   "All dogs go to heaven."
dinesh@alphaque.com                (0 0)    http://www.alphaque.com/
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