“ATTENDEES THRONG THE FIRST EVER MSC MALAYSIA OPEN SOURCE CONFERENCE 2009”

Conference bring together Open Source gurus and enthusiasts for a 4-day powwow to discuss creative ways to stave off the effects of the downturn

KUALA LUMPUR, June 1, 2009: The inaugural MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009 officially began yesterday on Sunday 31 May 2009 with a Hackathon Day, featuring a variety of Open Source workshops and tutorials for enthusiasts, a Linux ‘install fest’, ADempiere packaging Effort competition and a Lamp2Win (migration of Open Source PHP applications from LAMP to the Microsoft Windows platform) competition for coders.

Organised by the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) in cooperation with the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), and supported by the Malaysian Open Source community, the annual four-day event is being held at Berjaya Times Square Hotel & Convention Centre from May 31 to June 3, 2009.

This year’s conference has attracted over 650 local and international participants, and is set to complement the annual Malaysian Government Open Source Software Conference (MyGOSSCON), as the premier platforms for all things Open Source in Malaysia.

The MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009 will also see the official launch of OSDC.MY, the Malaysian chapter of the Open Source Developers’ Club, this evening. The first OSDC was formed in Australia in February 2005, geared to allow the open source community to facilitate discussions and training sessions that would benefit the local developer community.

With this year’s umbrella theme “Open to Change”, the MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009 is targeted at business executives, developers and Open Source communities in Malaysia. In contrast, MyGOSSCON organised by MAMPU is targeted primarily at Government agencies and Institutions of Higher Learning; inclusive of the Research & Development and business communities.

“Our quadruple play involving businesses, developer, community and Government stakeholders sets us apart from other Open Source conferences,” said Dato’ Badlisham Ghazali, Chief Executive Officer of MDeC. “We hope this will be yet another catalyst for the continuing development of our knowledge-based economy.”

With the business theme ““How Open Source Software and the Community Can Creatively Help Businesses Survive the Impact of the Economic Crisis”, the conference seeks to show that by adopting the right business model, commercialisation of Open Source software can bring lucrative business revenue and provide lower total cost of ownership. The Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Software Program has proven that Open Source drives down the total cost of ownership through its pilot projects. An overall 30% savings have been achieved, of which 80% arose due to savings in licensing fees and 58% was due to reduction in development costs, according to MAMPU.

The MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009 consists of three separate tracks – Business, Developer and Community – that will feature speakers from the likes of Mozilla, Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Red Hat, as well as Ubuntu, BSD, Fedora and PHP.

Among the renowned International open source gurus speaking at the conference are Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager at Google, Gerry Messer, Redhat President Asia Pacific, Gen Kanai, Director of Asia, Business Development & Marketing at Mozilla, and Oliver Bell, Regional Technology Officer at Microsoft Asia Pacific.

· In the business track, the objective is to share/exchange knowledge on legal issues, business models, case studies, addressing talent issues and qualifying potential markets / users, so that participants can be more creative and resilient in creating opportunities during these challenging time.

· In the developer track, the objective is to share/exchange contemporary and advanced knowledge on the Open Source technology, such as new tools and languages, new computing models, new ways, as well as new approaches and application of Open technology, so that developers can grow new ideas and innovate for better future products and services.

· In the community track, passionate and innovative community members and leaders will put forth their ideas and concepts, to other members of the Open Source and business community, so that the community can gain insights and contribute further refinement or add value to the speakers’ presentations.

Of special interest is a first presentation by Timothy Ney, co-founder of the Linux Greenhouse on a study of Software Livre start-ups made by Harvard Business School students.The Harvard Linux Greenhouse team has been interviewing Software Live entrepreneurs and project managers from South America and developing a plan for a new Linux Greenhouse social network and entrepreneur training programme.

Among the local notables include Redhuan Oon, ADempiere Leader, Ang Chin Han, ByteCraft, Dr. Gopi Kurup, Extol Bhd, Dr. Yusseri Yusof, Omilogics and Dr. Shamsul Sahibuddin, CASE, UTM

The MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009 is sponsored by Red Hat Asia Pacific, Telekom Malaysia, Microsoft, Jobstreet Bhd, AeU University, Sun Microsystems and Novell.

For more information on the MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009, please visit www.mscmalaysia.my/opensource.