Fri, May 10, 2002 page12

• 'Microsoftization' must be avoided

  • By Lin Chien-chen 林建成
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  Apart from countries in the developing world, there are very few nations in which government ministries behave as they do in Taiwan as far as the "colonization" of information by multinational corporations is concerned. That is to say the way in which they completely abandon their powers of reasoning and become appendages of the multinationals and accomplices to their monopolization of markets.

  Taiwan's IT hardware industry has been highly successful, yet we still have to rely on operating systems and office management software provided by foreign software companies.

  The media have reported that, before the Ministry of Justice began its large-scale crackdown on pirated software, it wasted public funds by purchasing so-called "legal" software from these foreign software companies, apparently considering that it was perfectly in order for it to do so. I worry that once organizations are forced by anti-piracy activities to install legal software, Taiwan will not only lose tens of billions of dollars as feared by some legislators, but, more seriously, it will also have to give up its "sovereignty of information" and maybe even its national security.

  Taiwan's IT strategy has all along been tantamount to "Microsoftization." So-called IT education is constantly providing training and marketing at no cost to Microsoft, and the nervous atmosphere created by anti-piracy activities provides an excellent opportunity for the all-out "Microsoftization" of Taiwan. This is a structural problem. Government ministries, IT educators, the media and private organizations, have all, through no fault of their own, fallen into a maelstrom of complex and egregious consequences of the globalization of information and the detailed manipulation of information rights.

  Basically, a computer operating system is not only the gateway to information. It is the fundamental platform of information. If we cannot grasp the technologies to utilize that platform and instead entrust our "sovereignty of information" and our national security to a closed company that does not publish the source codes of its software and monopolizes markets, then we simply allow that company to colonize our IT efforts. This is the greatest danger to the development of the information society in Taiwan.

  China, whose information industry is less developed than Taiwan's, realized just how frightening this colonization really is a few years back, and has since then been developing its own operating system with the backing of the Chinese government. What's more, the "Chinese 2000" operating system developed by Zhu Bangfu (朱邦復), the father of Chinese computing, is a local attempt at wresting "sovereignty of information" from Microsoft.

  Here in Taiwan, there are many talented information professionals quietly protecting the spirit embodied by free software and working hard to create a Chinese user environment.

  My point is that Microsoft is far from our only choice. Rather than allocating large funds to purchase foreign software, why doesn't the government invest in the research and development of a few pieces of free software, further developing our own operating systems and office management software? More importantly, such software should not be freeware, but it should be far less expensive than Microsoft's products. In view of the need to cut down on government expenditure and protect national security, I can see no reason why the government should reject such a strategy.

  On the pretext of developing an information society, the government has already allowed Taiwan to become substantially "colonized" by Microsoft. Look at all the government Web sites. Whether they consist of statistical research or government reports, they all use proprietary Microsoft formats. The documents available at the sites are very slow to open, and the viewer has to have software capable of reading the Word format installed on his or her computer. Thus the government has taken the lead in the "Microsoftization" of Taiwan, and silently helps Microsoft products become the industrial standard.

  While striving to protect intellectual property rights, the government must work toward a legalization in this field that exists in form and in substance, and reflects the true nature of Taiwan's IT industry. The nation's IT strategy must absolutely not amount to "Microsoftization."

  Lin Chien-chen is a research assistant at the Social Welfare Research Institute, National Chung Cheng University.

  Translated by Perry Svensson
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