Open source can boost S’pore innovation

Open source technology can help Singapore become a hotbed for innovation under the country’s iN2015 masterplan, says ICT regulator.

SINGAPORE–Open source technology has a role in aiding Singapore’s quest to become a hotbed for the creation of innovative products and services, according to a senior government official.

Through its 10-year Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) masterplan, Singapore seeks to create an environment where its people, the private and public sectors can collaborate on innovative next-generation ICT products and services, said Tan Geok Leng, CTO of the country’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).

During his keynote address here Tuesday at the Open Source Singapore Pacific-Asia Conference and Expo (OSSPAC), Tan urged attending developers and delegates at the event to use Singapore as a place to create innovative services, pilot them and then provide these services globally.

For instance, he said creators of innovative new services could use NextGen NBN, the country’s next-generation network infrastructure as a delivery platform for their products. Targeted for completion by 2015, the network is touted to provide access speeds of up to 1Gbps.

These developers can “exploit open source technologies” to build their services, he said. Tan added that open source makes it easier for developers to compete without having to bear the cost of acquiring “licenses for 1,000 servers”.

In the price-sensitive mobile devices market, for example, developers looking to save on costs could build their new products on open source mobile operating systems such as Google’s Android or Nokia’s Symbian.

Harish Pillay, open source evangelist and sales training manager at Red Hat, welcomed any opportunity for the open source community to contribute to Singapore’s iN2015 effort.

Also a speaker at the conference, Pillay said commitment by governments toward open source can rapidly boost the technology’s deployment.

“When the open source community is engaged and recognized…they will join you,” he said.

However, he noted that here is “not enough contribution in the open source space in Asia, which is very disappointing”. “We need people to get the participation going [in the region],” he said.

Despite this predicament, Pillay told ZDNet Asia, there are “pockets of contribution” to the course in the region such as Sri Lanka to the Apache technology, as well as significant contributions from Australia and Japan.

To help encourage participation from the region, he suggested introducing open source into schools and educating students on the technology.

Citing an October report by the Linux Foundation, Pillay said efforts poured into building free Linux community distribution, Fedora 9, would have otherwise cost US$10.8 billion. This figure was estimated based on the 204,500,946 lines of codes written for the software, 59,389.53 man-hours spent, and the average programmer’s annual salary of US$75,662.08 as determined by the US Department of Labor.

Source: ZDNetAsia

Android Marketplace v.s. Apple App Store

When the Android Marketplace (the place to download applications for the Google Android mobile platform) launched last week, things looked a bit sparse: There were only 62 applications available. It looked especially weak compared to Apple’s App Store, which launched with more than 600 apps early in the summer. But less than a week into the Marketplace’s existence, things are filling out, according to data from mobile analytics and advertising company Medialets.By October 29, the number of apps in the Android Marketplace had risen to 167, nearly three times as many as there were at launch on October 25. But still a bit troubling is the fact many of the downloads — 73 to 83 percent — are driven by a mere 41 applications, according to Medialets data.

In terms of overall numbers for the whole marketplace, Medialets’ numbers are less clear. The company estimates that there have been between 667,000 and 2.9 million downloads total. Regardless, this number pales in comparison to the App Store, which saw 100 million downloads in just 60 days and 200 million in about 100 days. Extrapolated out, even on the high end the Android Marketplace would only have about 36 million downloads after 60 days, and 58 million after 100 days.

Of course you have to assume more applications will be added to the marketplace over that time and that should mean more downloads. Still, it will be hard to hit Apple’s numbers.

So the Android Marketplace is gaining in popularity, but it still has a long way to go before it can claim App Store-level success. Its killer apps appear to be Pac-Man and The Weather Channel right now. If the Android Marketplace is really going to explode, it will need to rely on more than just ports of decades-old products.

Article written by VentureBeat can be found here.