One notable survey result, however, is that although 37 percent of the Filipino IT professionals cited government support as a key issue to industry development, more than 60 percent of the respondents believe that regulation should be industry-led and not government-led. Goh, for his part, said that there are, in fact, some sectors where the government needs to regulate like the telecommunications sector, but the BSA official said the government should know in what cases and sectors they should be the ones to regulate -- whether in competition policies and standards, among others.

'For the industry to grow, competition is vital; the government should therefore create as little restriction as possible in terms of competition,' said Goh. What the government should instead focus on to contribute to the local software industry is education and training, especially since the industry seems to prefer self-regulation, Goh said.

With governments often in between debates of promoting open source and commercial software, Goh said that governments should remain neutral and should have no reason to prefer one over the other. 'What the government should do is to give the public the ability to choose,' he said.