Friday, 23rd January 2004 saw the inauguration of the first Sri Lankan 'open

source' conference. Organised by the Lanka Software Foundation in just 3

weeks, it was attended by 160 IT professionals and enthusiasts.

The effort was spearheaded by Dr Sanjeeva Weerawarna who works for

IBM in the US and telecommutes from Sri Lanka - a happy situation indeed.

So what is the significance of "Open Source" ? Communicating via the

internet is a community of dedicated software experts who develop bits of

software code purely for the reward of the intellectual stimulation that it

provides !

The best known example of open source development is the Linux operating

system. This initiative was started by Linus Tourvaulds a Finnish student, who

posted an unfinished (pardon the pun) version of Unix on the internet and

invited all comers to add to and improve on it. Many did so and the resulting

piece of software (Linux) is now a very sophisticated and robust operating

system. And it is free. In fact the phenomenon of open source

development is scaring the daylights out of big name software vendors - such as

Microsoft ! “Open Office” is an open source rival of their “MS Office” product.

In this 'bazaar model' development where there are so many contributors,

you might wonder how quality is maintained. Quality control is by a

rigorous peer review process. Your suggestions for additions/ changes

would be reviewed by many experts in the group before it is incorporated into

the code base. The source code for your modification would be open to public

scrutiny and further improvement – thus the term 'open source'.

How can money be made in this process ? Making a presentation entitled “Open

Source Business Models” Sujiva Dewaraja, CEO of John Keells

Computer Services drew a parallel between open source and the English

alphabet and words. No one owns them but they are used by many to create

literature and intellectual property.Similarly one can use open source

software products to create commercially saleable products (a few

conditions do apply).

To come back to software development, the opposite of the free for all 'bazaar'

model is the centrally controlled 'cathedral model’. In this model, tight

central control is maintained by a commercial organization over a group of

developers who are typically paid for their efforts. Sanjeewa has been able to assemble a team of developers who have been volunteered by their respective

employers toward specific projects started by him. They have been granted

duty leave to work on these projects. This talented group has been able to

impress the international community of developers and has been able to

contribute to important open source initiatives.

So what do we, Sri Lankans, get out of all this ? Significant contributions to the

open source community results in making a name for Sri Lanka as a

source of IT brainpower. Although these efforts do not bring in direct revenue, the

good press we get in the 'newsgroups' on the internet may bring in requests for

commercial work. Like being known worldwide for Ceylon Tea and for cricket, we must acquire a reputation as a source of excellent software. This is important if our IT companies are to go up the value chain from the 'body shopping' that most of them seem to be doing nowadays, where the only competitive advantage

we offer is lower cost. Chief guest Eran Wickramaratna,

Chairman of the ICT Agency kicked off the proceedings with his opening

address, giving inspiration to the local IT industry and urging them to seize

opportunities for advancement as they became available.

There were two prominent foreign speakers. One of them was James

Clark - the 'father of XML' (as in eXtensible Markup Language). James, a

“typical” Oxford educated mathematician spoke on “An Independent

Developers Perspective of Open Source”. He described some of his

contributions to the Open Source community with particular reference to

XML which is emerging as an extremely important markup language for data

exchange and web services on the internet.

The other foreign speaker was – Ken Coar - a VP of Apache - the world

renowned open source web server. He cut quite a figure being a very big made

silver haired, bearded person dressed in denims and festooned with keys, pens

and all manner of equipment. He spoke on “Open Source : Opportunties

Abound”. Both the foreign gentlemen made stimulating presentations albeit in

two very different styles.

Sri Lankan presenters included Dr Nimal Ratnayake of Peradeniya

University and of the Lanka Linux user Group (LKLUG). He spoke on “Open

Source History and Culture”. Dr Shahani Marcus Weerawarna,

Chief Software Architect of Virtusa (and incidentally Sanjiva’s wife) spoke on

“Open Source and Software Solutions Companies” with particular

reference to Virtusa.

Sankalpa Gamwarige of Crossvue USA spoke of “Open Source in Embedded

Real Time Systems” and identified some of the open source products used

by him in this field.

“Legal Aspects of Open Source Software” were amply covered by

Jayantha Fernando - legal advisor to the ICT Agency and previously a legal

advisor to the South African Government.

At the end of the conference, there was an animated Panel Discussion

moderated by Prof Rohan Samarajiva on the theme “Open Source in

Developing Countries”. Panellists were Manju Hathotuwa CEO ICT

Agency, Prof V.K. Samaranayake Director UCSC, Dinesh Saparamadu

CEO of hSenid and many of the presenters.

The general consensus was that Sri Lanka should not miss out on another

wave of opportunity in the field of IT. Sri Lanka does not have the large numbers

of qualified graduates that India does. However, contributions to Open Source

initiatives do not need large numbers of people and a few very good contributors

could make a good name for Sri Lankan IT.

So what does all this mean to you as a CEO or Head of IT ? Well, the next time

your IT staff suggest that a free, open source product (eg the Apache web

server) is robust and easier to work with than a commercially available product –

they could be right. Congratulations to Sanjiva and his team

at the Lanka Software Foundation on an excellent conference. For more

information on the worldwide Open Source Initiative you could visit

www.opensource.org