Crashing Servers Teaches Linux - Realizing the Passion in Indonesia
Possibly, a productive way to learn computer use may be fiddlingwith it, however many may disagree but for Yohannes BaptistaAgusnugroho, IT Coordinator of Formasi, Indonesia, it may really havebeen true. “Even though I was a student of Psychology, that didn’t turnout to be the career track for me since I actually fell in love withcomputers” narrates Yohannes as he recalls the track he followed toaqcuire his Linux and FOSS skills.
“In 1985, around age 6, my father bought me a XT generation computerthat helped evolve my love for games including Digger for DOS, this,probably, a very long time back when games came on large Floppy Diskshardly seen today. One day, while at the store where I went to buygames, a guy told me to learn programming and I questioned him that whyshould I, he replied, if you do so then one day you will program a gameyourself and people may even buy it if its good.
The passion for programming was born driving me towards learning theBasic Programming Language and further in high school a computerteacher taught me computer software and hardware. In 1997, I attendedcollege in Semarang, Central Java and initiated work as a part-timeInternet Administrator for Internet Cafe’s in the region and that wasthe first time I used Linux but passed through a very bad experience. Imade some changes to the Linux Server and somehow later that day, theserver crashed however, the owner called in a System Administrator whofixed the problem easily but that intrigued me to further explore Linuxand strenghten my grip on the technical aspects.
After resigning from my Internet Cafe’ job, I took up SystemAdministration helping organizations with Linux but also tried otherareas such as working as a Graphic Designer for a commercial newspaperwhile several other companies called me occasionaly to providetechnical support visits to them. Later on, I met a programmer andlearnt from him HTML growing my skills on to PHP and various FOSS CMSapplications. In 2005 I stepped into the NGO sector with Jakarta as ITStaff that lead me to joining Formasi, in 2006 as an IT Coordinatorresponsible for assembling and leading a seven member IT SpecialistsTeam but they still have been working on Windows due to someunavoidable constraints that I am tackling.
Yohannes’s organization, Formasi, also known as the Indonesian ForumFor Cooperatives Development is network of cooperative organizationsand lobbies for the Government to develop polices to help Cooperativesgrow in Indonesia and also supports its network to gain access tofinancial institutions. Formasi helps cooperatives grow bigger and isnow including a focus for empowering these organizations with ICTs.Formasi’s focus on ICTs is driven by the fact that Cooperatives arestill ignorant of the benefits of ICTs especially FOSS, mostly stillusing manual data entry methods and if they anyhow manage to usecomputers, its only for donkey work, that is, data entry into aSpreadsheet Software without digital calculations and formulas.
Shares he: “Organizations cannot affored the burgonong costs oflicensed proprietary software within the NGO sector and FOSS is animmediate and evident solution to remove that barrier therefore I havevision for this year to push the agenda of FOSS and Linux in particularfor both Formasi and its cooperative members network since they have noexposure to FOSS attributed to the fact of lack of FOSS ResourcePersons and limited budgets to support the organization of FOSSCapacity Building Programmes. I will be initially reducing the gap bytraining the inhouse staff at Formasi on FOSS right after Asia Source2″.
Yohannes has also faced certain problems promoting the use of FOSSin various other organizations, “It is a common perception in Indonesiathat if the software Source Code is open and available with thesoftware, it makes the software very insecure for use and to changethat perception, I am building knowledge and technical partnerships atAsia Source that will help me in countering those misconceptionspractically with enhanced knowledge and appropriate skills”.
FOSS Inspiration, “For Indonesia, Onno W. Purbo is an inspirationfor our young generation whom I met at the Security and HackingConference in Jakarta. in 2002. He has always been there to providehelp, support and awareness on various occasions anywhere and anytime”.
