THERE WAS A TIME WHEN being associated with a fraternity or sorority was considered vogue and brings with it prestige, popularity, pride and a sense of belongingness.  During those times, the fraternity and sorority organization only recruited those whom they feel would become a good asset to their organization. 

So it is common for them to get only the best student and the brightest scholar, the most popular coed or the strongest athlete and the richest guy or the most influential brat.  Fraternities and sororities are known to support each other in their scholastic pursuits and even beyond it like landing a job position or being promoted to choice seats of authority.

I think, I belong to that era.  And we took care not to tarnish the image of our organization so that its standing within the campuses, which it thrived upon, would not be hampered, especially in recruiting neophytes.  Also, it was wise not to attract the ire of the school administration, much less the government authorities.

Only on one occasion though -- my fraternity became a part of a civil disobedience campaign during the Marcos regime!  And we won that one and could look back with pride.

Fast forward to today.  Cebu City’s news headlines are always assaulted by the repeated nuisance with which the Alpha Kappa Rho and the Tau Gamma Phi are preoccupying against each other.  Both of these fraternities (I would rather call them organized criminal gangs having Greek letters for a name) are engaged in a war of attrition against each other and so many promising young lives are wasted every week for just being associated with either one.

The police, on the other hand, has been making threats to classify Akhro and TGP as organized criminal gangs and have them placed in their order of battle.  But, so far, it has done nothing except to announce that threat to the media and, later, doing another nothing by being seen photographed with these so-called fraternity leadership after a peace council was held.

Days after that it’s back to square one.  There’s nothing wrong to fight for your turf but when it gets out of hand there must be something wrong out there.  Gee, there must be had with regard to their respective leadership and their organization’s thrusts and objectives? 

Their leaders always pay lip service to media assuring the city authorities (and the victims’ families) that they are doing their best to correct the situation.  So far, I have not seen nor heard of any back-channel talks.  They only show up to each other when compelled upon by the authorities for mediation after a series of shootings caused their members’ brains splattered upon the asphalt pavements and alarmed the local residents.

I heard that both groups have employed a rather unorthodox tactic of attracting neophytes.  They call it the “community outreach recruitment program”.  I have a first cousin, who is a college drop-out and have not been studying for more than nine years, appointed, after being initiated, as a community chapter leader of one group.  And under him were high school and elementary students and drop-outs as his chapter members or “brods”.  

I think it is time a law be passed to compel every school organization, scholastic or not, for it to secure Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration papers.  It is also  important to secure another permit from the provincial or city civil authorities and from the police, with recommendation from the schools where their chapters are entrenched, so as to regulate and control their excesses. 

Recruitment of out-of-school youths as fraternity neophytes should be dropped from their programs and discouraged.  What is important here is not quantity but quality.

Like it or not, those who fail to comply will be regarded as nothing more than just another criminal group and any criminal acts like murder, homicide or physical injuries attributed to a group, of whose officers and members are publicly known, will be criminally liable being that of either as principal, accomplice or accesory to the said crime being committed.

We, the community, are fed up of their skewed dispositions with regard to running their own organization and I am ashamed even to call myself a fratman, much more so, of being known as a member of a respectable fraternity that has nothing to do with those frat wars and killings that these groups are well aversed at.

Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS, font size 12.

I AM NOT a writer.  I was not trained to be one.  I am not schooled in the ways and techniques in writing a story, an essay or a poem.  I was schooled in the art of close-quarter combat and strategy and the enforcement of laws.  I have never had need of a teacher to guide me on why, how, where, when and what should I write? 

Still, I persevered, and I discovered that writing gives me a kind of therapy and energy.  It gives me utter joy as it released all my pent-up emotions and urges that have been bottled inside of me for years.  Or, were they not called memories?

The quest to write something is my preoccupation for the last six months or so.  The personal computer is a good tool and a perfect aid in achieving that.  Where, before, there was the typewriter.  The hassles of editing and re-editing an article by that mechanical contraption totally discouraged me into writing during my early years, though I did gave it a try and persevered for a while. 

Ditto with pen and paper.  God knows of how many pieces of paper I have thrown into the wastebasket!  Or have recycled when recycling was not yet in vogue.

A desktop with Windows to commence my writing is alright with me.  I have started with that operating system since it was called MS-DOS back then.  But I love Linux better.  I don’t encounter the hang-ups and the system crashes that the former has.  But it would be nicer if I could own a Power PC ran by a Mac OS X?   It would be a dream come true for me.

Putting your ideas into writing and into an opaque screen is quite a breeze, especially if you have a good word processor to accomplish that task.  I don’t stick to just one word processing tool.  I try them all.  I love to experiment. 

I have MS Word, OpenOffice Writer, AbiWord and RoughDraft and they are placed as shortcuts on my desktop screen for good measure.  I installed other word utilities like yWriter2, Notepad, Scribus, MS Publisher, FreeMind and LaTeX; hidden and accessible on the “Unused Desktop Icons” folder.   

Internet connection is a most welcome addition, without which I would have no possible outlet to publish my works.  Blogging, that’s what they call it. 

Blogging.  Yeah.  I reckoned there are quite a lot of free web-hosting outfits out there and you only have to choose which one’s better and have features that is or are acceptable to your tastes and standards.  I have tried many of those and dropped an almost same number from my retinue.  Then I got stuck with Blogger, Multiply, MyOpera and, to a lesser degree, Tabulas.

With MS Word, a bad writer becomes a good one and an average writer becomes better.  It has an automatic spellcheck function and has a built-in grammar-correction feature.  With a click of the mouse you could access the dictionary and thesaurus and all your needs are attended to. 

But I discourage myself from using Word, no offense meant for Mr. Bill Gates there.  It does not teach me to improve on my writing by relying on the comfort and ease that these add-ons provided therein.  I am a non-conformist.  I belong to an old-school line of thought and I give justice to my being one by using “less-comfortable” software.  “To thread on trails were few have gone to”.  Now, that settles all my preferred writing media.

What writing experience I had are confined to personal letters, a handful of poems, office correspondence and creating lots and lots of criminal affidavits.  Modesty aside, the affidavits I have written were masterpieces of a craft in a department wanting of dynamic and creative investigators. 

It is neither bland nor full of legalistic innuendos and is done in a language much easily understood by the common masses yet in a much refined manner.  Simple yet superior.  It elicited awe then from my peers and my superiors, a blessing for the plaintiffs and a curse for the accused and their counsels.

I am now in my 40s and it is obvious that I am late in arriving to make a shift in my thoughts and habitual disposition.  It’s alright.  Writing happens to run in my veins and capillaries. 

My late grandfather, Atty. Gervasio Lavilles, is an accomplished historian, poet and essayist.  He authored a book entitled Cebu: A History of its Four Cities and Forty-Nine Municipalities, published by Mely Press in 1965 and I saw his works printed on English-, Cebuano- and Spanish-speaking periodicals and newspapers a long time ago. 

His daughters, Evangeline and Marietta, my aunt and my mother, respectively; are creative technical writers, essayist and poets themselves.  Both are Theresians and they are able to juggle between their craft, their careers and mothering with such ease.

They might have influenced me to write but never the writing style.  What style I might have developed, probably are mere reflections and mirrors from hundreds of thousands, nay, millions; of words, sentences, paragraphs and quotes that I have digested through the years reading and re-reading novels, books, magazines, newspapers, documents, even chocolate and candy wrappers. 

I must admit that reading a blog is quite different from reading on a piece of paper.  The glare from a screen are just too much for my ageing eyes, then, you tend to read in haste instead of enjoying what you read.

But that disadvantage, as illustrated above, does not hinder me to keep on writing (or blogging).  I write for the pleasure of writing.  For the sake of writing.  For the love of it.  It is there for the taking.  It is free! 

It is one of the crafts I learned on my own power.  Like Miyamoto Musashi, the great “Sword Saint” and samurai strategist, I, too, embarked on my own “warrior pilgrimage” and have come to a point to learn the Ways of different crafts apart from the ones where we were born and made into.

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on November 16, 2007

LAST OCTOBER 15, 2007, I WENT to Mactan Island on some official business. I went to Pier 3 to board the River Ferry launch that was to take me to that island from mainland Cebu. It was 2:30 PM when the launch proceeded to cross the Mactan Channel. The rain had just stopped minutes ago where there was heavy downpour that lasted for about an hour before that.

As the launch was now cruising on the livid blue-green waters of Cebu Harbor, I noticed swarms of marine birds, unusual in number, dived and skimmed on the water’s surface. They happened to peck and pick on the flotsam and jetsam that the floodwaters of the Lahug Creek disgorged, whose river mouth is now but a square hole underneath the asphalt-and-concrete berthing area.

As far as the eye could see, discarded pieces of plastic in huge volumes and other kinds of household debris and industrial wastes were floating and bobbing on the surface, scattered over the whole width and length and depth of the channel. It was brownish and dirty and fast approaching the dirty notoriety of murky Manila Bay.

The harbor waters wasn’t THAT dirty 30-35 years ago. I remembered in my pre-adolescent years when the city’s waterfront area was my favorite playing ground and hang-out. I learned (or was forced) to swim there after being pushed intentionally and I swam like a dog. Back then, whenever my time would warrant I would take a dip there. Sometimes, as a sport, we would dive from a departing boat and swim back to the pier and the one who left the boat when it is farthest from the shore was declared the winner!

Marine life were abundant back then. Jellyfish would parade like an army of strange aliens. Squid or cuttlefish would appear in droves when no moon appeared in the night sky and find refuge under the glare of lights of berthed ships. All kinds of fishes could be angled from its depths as well as crustaceans caught inside cagetraps from beneath.

Seashells could be had by the mere picking during low tide by swimming towards the exposed reefs, sandbars and rocky beds nearby Pilipog (Shell) island which is a half-kilometer away from the Aduana*.

Today’s condition of the sea is a far cry from that sea of long ago where I used to swim.

As the launch moved on in the middle of Mactan Channel we passed by Mandaue City. The Subangdaku River let out the same kind of debris and wastes, marked by swarms of marine birds, and they took on a pattern as if it were parading in a straight and wavy line going south. Farther north, it was the same discouraging look as the Butuanon River and other northern rivers aped the previous two.

I have done my share by watching the part of the Lahug Creek where I am living and discouraged my household and my neighbors from disposing their garbage on the waterway for it would surely wind its way to the sea. It has been my advocacy for many years now and, I know, it is not enough. It would take a whole mass of people with the same mindset as I have to reverse this trend.

People living upriver and below mine find it convenient to throw their wastes directly on the creek. My heart ached when I see whole canvass sheets, garbage wrapped inside plastic shopping bags, discarded rubber tires and islands of styropor stuck on the river bed impeding the flow of water and it will take a great downpour to erase that stigma. Which the harbor waters graciously receive into its depths that, I know, is a never-ending vicious cycle imposed by man on his environment.

After witnessing the condition of the Mactan Channel after a heavy downpour did it occur to me to involve myself more by writing this story on my blog and disseminate this information into as many people as possible thru the Internet. I would broaden my advocacy on the World Wide Web.

I surmised, that modern science and technology have made plastic and other synthetic material more harmful to man than good in an indirect manner. Especially, if they happen to be used by some people living in Metro Cebu.

Then you add the government bureaucracies that line the shores of this narrow channel who don’t give a damn about its environs and content themselves passing some toothless garbage ordinances that nobody wanted to enforce! Lack of foresight, laxity, ignorance, carelessness and a "don’t care" attitude make up for disastrous elements that may cloud the future of our children.

If I may have my way I would opt to ban plastic and other synthetic materials and those goods contained therein for it doesn’t do no good if they happen to be in the hands of those mindless zombies. For the future of our generation, I say, we BAN THOSE PLASTIC AND SYNTHETIC MATERIALS!

Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.

Featured in Blogger on December 19, 2007 

THE CEBU MOUNTAINEERING SOCIETY or CeMS, of which I am a member, recently celebrated Christmas party at Sierra Tree Farm in Gaas, Balamban, Cebu, the Philippines last December 8-9, 2007. Me and my youngest son, Cherokee, were there; as well, as members of CeMS, active or not, who all came strong and in high spirits with their backpacks, exchanging gift presents, foodstuffs, tents and all. Cliff and Claribel Abrahan even brought their two boys and their mansion-sized tent!

Hosted by Ramon and Ann Vidal, owners of Third World Outdoors (TWO) all-weather sandals favored by mountaineers and outdoor enthusiasts, they were very accommodating, especially with the use of their humble mountain refuge along with their beautiful and well-manicured frontyard lawn. All told there were 17 tents set up on the saddle of two peaks which afforded a very nice view of the rolling valley below and a glimpse, now and then, of Canlaon Volcano in the distance.

An induction climb for the incoming CeMS members preceded this event, where it started from Barangay Tabunan, Cebu City and traversing Mount Manunggal early in the morning of December 8. Later that evening, the five neophyte CeMS climbers were welcomed by the veterans led by the indefatigable Daddy Frank Cabigon and Doc Abe Manlawe and the incumbent CeMS president -- Rosebelle Daculan during the induction ceremony.

Present were past president Lilibeth Initan, Nonoy Edillor, Sarina Avellanosa and her daughter, Dennis Legaspi, Boy Olmedo, Roy Ragaza, Joy Tongco, Paeng Jura, Jon Consunji, Jecris, Andrew, Julienne, Pen-pen and daughter, Glen Domingo and daughter Sam, Glenn Lao, Brian Gera, Grace Ventic, Aldrich Apaypon and, of course, Ben Lao, who just returned home after a very long stint at Dagupan City in Pangasinan.

Ben brought a videoke machine for this purpose along with a 14” TV set, an amplifier and two 4-foot tall MB Quatro speaker baffles. I carried one of those heavy baffles on my shoulder thinking it would be a light workout, but, it was a killer exercise of futility that I got and I almost fainted negotiating that short 300-meter distance! Took me almost an hour negotiating the trail from the trans-central highway to the Vidal’s resthouse. Whew...tough course!

Then the party dinner started during nighthfall where a special lechon baboy and lechon manok, pasta, fresh lumpia, ngo-hiong, fresh vegetables and steamed saang shells were served while the desserts consisted of fruit and macaroni salads, sweet pastries and pies and masi and botsi. The meals would not have been complete without the usual spirits which were served right after that to help in digestion.

Master of ceremonies was, no other than, Ramon V himself, the acknowledged dean of Cebu mountaineering. He gave life to the small party with his puns and antics, especially, during the “improvised” exchanging gifts episode which was the highlight of the event, after all, it was a Christmas party, wasn’t it? A time of gift-giving.

Distilled spirits brought out the singer in us as we competed with each other to reach the perfect score on Ben’s videoke machine and, so far, only the geckos and the moths seemed to applause after every song we belted out, but, never mind, it was fun all the way that all of us will never forget. Our voices echoed even in the wee hours of the night until our throats got sore.

The second day in Gaas were appreciated very much by all of us as we decided to have a little excursion to stretch our muscles to beat the early morning cold. Some of us went to the nearby cave that claimed the life of Dr. Adolph Espina II of Speleo-Cebu just a week ago. The disturbed grasses all around bore a great activity of people gathering that centered around the great rescue and retrieval of the body of the late doctor inside this partly-unexplored cave by Ramon V and company.

Fully satisfied with our own investigation we went back to the cabin to feast on breakfast of hot coffee, bread, some leftover pasta and food and fresh fruits and then it was time to break camp by folding our tents. We left at noon after feasting on a steaming native chicken soup. We took the trail down to where we came up from yesterday and bid goodbye to Ramon and Ann for home.

Document done in RoughDraft 3.0, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.

The Way of the Shield

THEY BLINDFOLDED ME on that early Saturday morning of March.

They made me stand up, my body bent forward while my hands held in support of my crotch, or should I say my “balls”. I was almost at the halfway point of this rite of passage. Of laying claim to be a part of a brotherhood of men.

“Omega Pelta Kappa. Omega Pelta Kappa. Omega...,” I trembled as I recited those three Greek-sounding words over and over again like a mantra expecting a sudden whack from a wooden paddle from behind me. I received, I mentally counted, twenty-four paddle strikes at the back of my now tender thighs. The last one had been unpleasant for it had been done in a deliberate and chopping manner instead of the flat piece of the paddle hitting you. And the two before that on my poor rump...

“WHACK!” Came the twenty-fifth!

“Arrgh!” I jumped up and down as an agonizing pain swept up through my body from my swollen thighs, sweat poring down on my forehead. I began to doubt my brazen determination and my patience wore thin. Now how did it came to be that I was made to be a part of this extra-curricular foolishness? This weird and cruel test? This demeaning and humiliating initiation?

Prologue

I remembered then about two months ago when I visited my girlfriend at her home and I noticed that she was not feeling well. Concerned with her condition, I offered to buy medications for her or, if need be, to accompany her to a doctor for a look-see. But she was adamant that there was nothing wrong with her.

Then at some point of our verbal see-saw she admitted that she just came from a sorority initiation. I saw bruises on her shoulders and arms and the marks of the paddle on the back of her legs. I was shocked! How could she do that? I was so stunned! It was she, of all people, who forbid me not to join a fraternity or else...

Wow! I got so envious of her. Believe me, she hurt my pride so bad back then that I felt myself to be just a miserable wimp incapable of protecting the woman of my affection. How could they do that to my girl? I will have my revenge (sic)!

The Crucible and Acceptance

“To be or not to be.” My thoughts debated if I should quit or not. To quit now meant I won't be able to savor that sweet smell of my own self-styled revenge and the pain won't go away if I suddenly halt abrupt this painful interlude. Besides, I will lose face. No, I have to go on. I have to go on and offer my behind to the divine dictum of the paddle wielder and face the consequences. I can stand the scoldings of my parents later, if they will know. Maybe I can stand the threat of a break up my girlfriend promised if I ever join a fraternity organization, if she will know. I have already burned my bridges behind. I cannot turn back now. Come hell or high water I have to continue this!

“WHACK!” The fifty-seventh came as I have expected. The last ten paddles or so were now painless maybe because I know that the initiation is nearing its end or maybe because my legs were already so thick with the constant flogging and so severely numbed that the feeling of pain is now absent. Somebody removed my blindfold. Then I got my dues. Someone I knew shook my hand and called me “Brod” and so did the others. Then they sung the Peltan's Song. Everybody welcomed me as one new addition to their numbers. I cried that I passed my test of manhood. Elated, I forgot the pain. It was already dusk.

The Aftermath

I got home that night and nursed my swollen thighs. Reality came. It was hell removing the pair of jeans from my legs for my bloated skin adhered itself to the very grain of the thick fabric itself. I thought it looked like longaniza or a bloated sausage!

Monday morning came and it was the final examination day in my school. Still reeling from the bruises, the pains, the cramps, the aches and the who knows what from yesterday, I have to rise up from the comforts of my bed and it was pure torture when I stood up. My mind swam in dizziness and my eyes blinked as the pain swamped and shocked my very existence as I held on to my room's wall for balance. Then another torture came as I maneuvered my lumpy legs to fit inside a clean pair of jeans.

I walked slowly, slightly limping, and pain shot through me as I sat inside a PUJ. I let out an expletive under my breath as I tried to ease my legs from touching the seat. Reaching school, I went upstairs to take my exams at a room in the fourth floor! Hey, it was like carrying a cross to Calvary only my cross was my stubbornness. My willingness to accommodate pain in order to be a Peltan provided me those times of disquietude bereft of comfort. What a jerk I am.

“Never again,” I said to myself.

“Sure, you won't. Instead, you'll gonna be the one doing that thing to another, when you are fit.” My other conscience told me so.

But it was all worth it.Epilogue

That I did some months later and it was already more than twenty-six years ago today. My parents never found out about my joining a fraternity. My girlfriend did found out about it and we broke up two months later. I am still a Peltan. In name only. I have been inactive for quite sometime.

But the Omega Pelta Kappa Fraternity and Sorority is still here and we just celebrated the 42^nd Founding Anniversary last September 8, 2007 at D' Family Park in Nasipit, Talamban, Cebu City.

Peltans forever...!!!

============================================

This document is written in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS, size 12.

MICROSOFT TRIED out and liked an open source software technology developed by a Filipino company - D3 Systems Inc. The software, Yeh Ba*, is an instant messaging and short messaging system (SMS) service that will be fitted in to Microsoft Outlook to interact with users with mobile phone users using instant messaging or SMS and vice versa, according to Roger Delgado, vice president for technical operations of D3.

Bill Hiff, general manager for platform strategy of Microsoft from their Richmond, Washington headquarters, visited recently the Philippines last June to look to forging deals with local software companies that are using open source technologies to develop applications for the Windows platform in an effort to strengthen ties with the “open source community” and inked the deal with D3 Systems Inc. instead.

Wilfredo de la Cruz, president of D3 Systems, said the deal between D3 and Microsoft involves no direct investment from both companies and revenues will be generated through Microsoft's use of the company's “system gateway”.

Yeh Ba* works on other existing instant mobile messaging platforms currently in use in the market and is being tested upon at the National Computer Center laboratories and D3 had been actively looking for partners outside the Philippines. It has been downloaded and used in countries like India, Bangladesh and Brunei a month after the software was made available on the Internet last December 2005.

Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS, font size 12.

I AM A marginal home PC owner and user who, four or five years ago, abandoned the idea of buying or owning another desktop dictated by the high cost of procuring and installing a licensed proprietary operating system, without which my desktop would just be considered a piece of junk. Even if I could afford, at a lower cost, for this software to be installed in my PC from third party sources, I don't see any reason to maintain the high cost of re-installing over and over again this operating system as it is susceptible to system crashes and quite vulnerable to viruses, internet worms and malicious software. Although there are plenty of pirated copies of this software sold in the sidewalks I was never tempted to buy one.

Last year I read about “free and open source software” (FOSS) through the newspapers and I learned that it was the “big thing” in some countries of Europe, in North and South America an in Asia where it is used extensively. I begun to study on my own about FOSS by surfing the Internet and finally found the freedom to use my home PC again by installing the equally user-friendly Ubuntu Linux 6.06 operating system, in which a free live CD installer was shipped to me free of charge courtesy of Canonical Ltd. As for the office applications (word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.), I downloaded and installed OpenOffice in my home, where documents produced are lighter in size, and I installed and used it extensively and that of AbiWord (another open source word document application) in my workplace in lieu of a pre-installed proprietary office application software, of whose documents eat up so much disk space. As for my browsers, I use either Mozilla Firefox and Opera and found it to be much more stable, faster and safer than using a common pre-installed browser.

However, FOSS is still unknown to most Filipinos, especially to Cebuanos, and those who do are afraid to make the change or uncertain about its benefits? One great advantage about FOSS is cost. My migration from an expensive licensed software to GNU/Linux costs me nothing, except for the fifteen pesos I spent by seating myself inside an internet cafe for an hour to access the site of Ubuntu.org and ten pesos for a blank CD to access, download and copy OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. I benefited myself so much by using FOSS. How much more would the government do, and the business sector, as well, and save those much-needed foreign exchange that are made to be spent to import those proprietary softwares? INTEL, a giant chip maker, reported a savings of over US$200 million by switching their servers from proprietary software to that of GNU/Linux while AMAZON reported a savings of US$17 million and beyond for migrating to GNU/Linux. DELL, a PC maker now market their desktops with pre-installed Ubuntu Linux operating systems at a much lower price than what they sold one having a pre-installed licensed software. The New York Stock Exchange benefited much by migrating from proprietary mainframe software to that of Hewlett-Packard's AIX and of GNU/Linux operating systems by estimating their savings of about 35% to 65% and that “cost, cost and cost” has been the bottomline for that change of heart. I heard that the Vatican uses FOSS now and in Kerala state in India, the use of FOSS in public schools and offices became mandatory due to the great savings incurred by switching sides. Many organizations and several studies have shown that using FOSS in lieu of proprietary software results in significant cost savings of anywhere from 15% to 35% not only due to lower licensing costs but lower personnel and hardware costs.

Another great advantage in using FOSS is its flexibility (and so development-friendly!) as its source codes - their DNA – can be accessed by users/consumers/developers/programmers who may opt to study, modify or customize the software according to their tastes and requirements. Because of this, the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (ASTI-DOST) has developed the Bayanihan Linux 4, a complete open source-based desktop solution for office and school use, and Bayanihan Linux Server 2006, an easy-to-use Linux server for government agencies, schools and SMEs. These Bayanihan Linux programs can do everything that a licensed (and expensive!) proprietary operating system can do, except drain one’s pockets. In the first place, Bayanihan Linux is free.

Another FOSS advantage is its interoperability. It can adapt to existing open standards and can work across different platforms and protocols.

And finally, FOSS is safe. The opening of the source codes and the use of open standards have allowed hundreds of thousands of users around the globe to serve as a virtual research and development team, providing patches and solutions to bugs and glitches in real time over the Internet.

A study produced by the International Open Source Network (IOSN) and United Nations Development Program – Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme have identified the following strategic benefits of FOSS: (1) Developing local capacity/industry; (2) Reducing imports/conserving foreign exchange; (3) Enhancing national security; (4) Reducing copyright infringements; (5) Enabling localization.

The study also identified economic benefits as: (1) Increasing competition; (2) Reducing total cost of ownership; (3) Enhancing security; (4) Achieving vendor independence.

Add to this the social benefit of increasing access to information.

As we slowly catch up with the rest of the world about using FOSS, the Honorable Teodoro Casiño of Bayan Muna party list, sponsored House Bill 5769, entitled the “FOSS Act of 2006”, in the Lower House of Congress. This bill will promote the development and usage of FOSS in the Philippines, particularly in the preference in procurement of ICT services and goods for government offices and schools favoring that of local open source developers and vendors and establishing for the implementation of school curriculum for students and teachers training in the use and development of FOSS in all levels of education; amending R.A. 3019, otherwise known as the “Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines”; providing penalties thereof and for other purposes. This is the right step in the right direction. A breathe of fresh air. Lastly, this document is done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.