BAGUIO CITY?The country?s economy is recovering faster than expected from a global downturn and advocates of a ?free the Internet? campaign hope to take some credit for that.

Both business and government have started using free software programs, saving as much as 80 percent in their operations, officials of the International Open Source Network (IOSN) said during a recent conference here.

It is a quiet economic revolution that has yet to catch the attention of big Internet-related businesses, said Dr. Francisco Sarmiento III, IOSN project manager for Southeast Asia.

But the trend is significant for the Philippines, he said.

Rule-bound

The country is bound by world trade regulations governing intellectual property rights, which requires the government to shield global firms marketing branded software from piracy, as well as the online sharing of software applications, Sarmiento said.

Almost 90 percent of business and government office transactions rely on basic software applications for word processing, spreadsheet or web browsing, he said.

Based on an informal survey in 2008, however, IOSN believes that a substantial number of business firms have shifted to open source software, which has a more liberal licensing policy, Sarmiento said.

Because software accounts for 40 to 80 percent of a government office?s annual budgetary outlay, IOSN has documented cases where government offices access open software online instead of buying licensed software, he said.

The same reports indicate a significant reduction in government corruption because some irregularities have been traced to the purchase of computer hardware and software, Sarmiento said.

IOSN is negotiating with the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry to launch a comprehensive survey of software used by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country, he said.

The 2008 Survey on Information and Communications Technology (SICT) of the National Statistics Office (NSO) said 32.4 percent of local businesses transact online, while 90 percent of all entrepreneurs in the provinces use personal computers in their operations.

Most of these operations use software sold by big computer firms, like Microsoft, which IOSN refers to as ?proprietary companies,? Sarmiento said.

Vendor locked

These firms have ?vendor lock-in? clauses that compel users to source out software or computer hardware upgrades, repairs and improvements only from these companies, he said.

?When you buy the software, you don?t own them. You are simply licensed to use them,? Sarmiento said.

Open source software, on the other hand, like the Linux operating system, grants users the right to modify the systems to suit their respective requirements, he said.

Many open software programs have been designed by Filipinos, Sarmiento said.

At the open source conference sponsored at the University of Baguio by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Foundation, Meric Mara and Joel Bryan Juliano were introduced to the audience as the persons behind the popular operating system Kahel OS.

Many of the conference lectures featured open software designed for business management or for secure audit and accounting operations that would be useful even for small businesses.

Choice

Sarmiento said the Philippines has not instituted an open source software policy, although it has encouraged local governments to take advantage of its economic benefits.

He said the government was still reconciling growth in software demand among business operations with the unabated proliferation of pirated software in the market.

Government also benefits from goodwill programs initiated by Microsoft, including many computerization projects targeting provincial schools and poor local governments, he said.

These factors may be behind Congress? reluctance to support House Bill 1716 (the Free and Open Source Software Act of 2007) filed by Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casiño, Sarmiento said.

But he said government agencies, like the Department of Education, have taken the lead in acquiring open source software.

?Maybe we really don?t need legislation. We don?t need to order Filipinos to have free choice. Government just needs to allow [choice] in the market,? he said.