FLOSS Awareness in Malaysia

Over 2 years ago when I started this blog I wrote about the state of FLOSS awareness in this country. 2 years on, looking at where we're at now, it's depressing to see not much has changed.

I've been doing what I can, helping out in the local groups & forums. Educating & offering help, especially to newbies and easing them in on the ideals of Free Software. It's an uphill struggle & I'm pretty sure will continue to be so for a long time.

Of course, don't forget to bring a towel.

The state of FLOSS in Malaysia

If you're Malaysian you already know what I mean. In case your not, let me give you a little background. Malaysia is nice peaceful multicultural developing country situated below Thailand & above Singapore. As with many countries in South Asia, the growth of computing in this country is largely fueled by software piracy. Malaysian youths are able to get their hands on any piece of software for as little as RM5 (roughly USD1.30) nicely printed & packaged in CDs or DVDs. OSs, software, games, Audio CDs, Movie DVDs & anything else you can imagine.
As you can imagine, promoting FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) in this kind of environment is not only challenging, but damn near impossible. Outside of academic circles, Linux never really took off. Recent market surveys show 5% adoption in the enterprise markets. While virtually non-existent in the desktop market. This is really sad since in the past 10 years I've seen Desktop Linux grow from strength to strength matching & exceeding the capabilities of all other platforms.