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The Almighty Buck Software Linux IT

Japanese Govt Boosts OSS Developments 141

Posted by Hemos from the pushing-the-agenda-forward dept.
Final Samurai writes "Information-technology Promotion Agency(IPA, in pdf), an extra-departmental organization of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan has been supported open source software development. Some efforts are now available: framework for printing, Samba internationalization, a tool for hacking Gtk+, ssh in Java, manuals for OpenOffice.org, and GRASS internationalization. Though IPA doesn't announce the support program strongly, we can find the name, `IPA' in each project page. Does your government have such a plan to fund OSS developments? How do you think about governments' funding OSS developments(by tax)? If you have a chance to be funded, what kind of software will you develop?"
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Japanese Govt Boosts OSS Developments More

Japanese Govt Boosts OSS Developments

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  • Not too bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by soniCron88 ( 870042 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @06:55AM (#12044871) Homepage
    "How do you think about governments' funding OSS developments(by tax)?"

    It wouldn't be much different than the library system. Sharing knowledge for "free" is never a bad thing.

    • Re:Not too bad (Score:1, Funny)

      by amanox ( 862297 )
      It's not exactly free, you do pay taxes :-)

      But I agree, such initiatives have to be stimulated.
      More intiatives like these should be backed up by gouvernements, to stimulate innovation.

      Like Software-pattents... oh wait ...

      Anyway, love the idea, hope to see this here in Europe too.
      The OSS-funding ... not the pattents.
    • It wouldn't be much different than the library system.
      That's a dubious claim, to say the least.
      Sharing knowledge for "free" is never a bad thing.
      Code is not necessarily knowledge.

      I'd be willing to bet that there are quite a few people who believe sharing knowledge of how to manufacture nuclear weapons is a bad thing.

      • I don't. Share that info. The biggest terrorist the world has ever seen, is also the one that is trying to stop that information propogation. Coincidentally, it is also the only entity to use a nuclear bomb on another country. Have a nice day.
    • "Free" is probably the worst term one could choose to describe funding OSS via tax monies. I see no valid reason to fund OSS using taxpayer money.

      First, tax monies should not fund things that are obviously able to be funded privately as OSS is (lots of individual, non-profit, and coporate support and funding).

      Second, we should be VERY careful in selecting what to fund with tax in order to minimize what is funded with taxes because of the associated burden and consequences. People who don't pay 100% of t
      • Rubbish. If I pay for something (indirectly) using my Tax Dollars (actually: in my case: Pounds Sterling), I want to be able to use it. If I have to pay a 2nd time, how is that better?

        You seem to assume that OSS is outside "the normal free market" - I cannot see any basis for that assumption. OSS will not depend on state funding: If the state does *not* "buy" (for want of a better word) OSS, this does not mean the end of OSS. Rather the opposite appears to be the case: OSS operates in the same market a
      • I think that you made some good points. However, I think you're overestimating the impact it would really have. Open source is a hot topic right now with the public because Linux is gaining such popularity. In addition to that, to most IT people (programmers, network administrators, hobbyists, doesn't matter), Open Source is a big deal. It's hard to imagine that to a large majority of the world, nobody cares about OSS. They barely know what it means. Typically, they just know Linux is somehow related to it
    • Anyone knows the state of the OSS/FS movement in Japan? is there a significant number of developers working for this movement in Japan? what are they working on? Only think I know is that the Ruby language was made in Japan and that cell-phone tech is quite open over there.

  • One more convert... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WilliamSChips ( 793741 ) <full.infinity@gma i l . c om> on Friday March 25, 2005 @06:58AM (#12044879) Journal
    Another convert to the array of corporations and governments supporting and using Linux. Soon, the only major corporations not supporting Linux will be Apple and Microsoft...
    • Monoculture is bad. Moreso, Linux (or GNU/Linux if you fancy) is not perfect, far from it, just like other UNIXes. It reminds me C++ in certain ways. I wonder when it will outgrow itself and will go supernova (like C++ predictably did).

      • Re:One more convert... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Monoculture is bad. Moreso, Linux (or GNU/Linux if you fancy) is not perfect, far from it, just like other UNIXes.

        True, but there are alternative suppliers of Linux (and Unix), which give all of them a greater incentive to improve it since the lower switching costs between different suppliers are so much smaller that the competition is much harder.
      • Shhhhh... My company didn't hear the Earth shattering KABOOM. They still employ hundreds of us C++ programmers.

    • OSS != Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mamladm ( 867366 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:18AM (#12046041) Homepage
      With all due respect, you are talking nonsense.

      First, the IPA does not expressly support Linux. Its progam is to further the use of open source software in Japan. And in fact you will find that many government sponsored research projects in Japan are based on BSD and not Linux. A prominent example is the KAME project (IPsec and IPv6).

      Second, Apple has embraced open source software and it is supporting and contributing to open source projects. Some of the work Apple is contributing directly supports otherwise Linux centric projects, for example KHTML.

      Also, it should not be forgotten that Apple sponsored and contributed most of the work on MkLinux. In any event, the impression you try to create with your wording, that Apple is in one boat with Microsoft in resisting open source is nothing more than spin.
  • I'd love to know if something like this - or other Government based funding system is in place in Australia.

    As a long term OpenSource developer with several routinely used projects for email content management/filtering it'd be lovely to get a few dollars from the government to help me pay the bills around here - hell, even a tax break would be lovely.
    • Brazil is all talk with the Free Software, with the Lula government and what not, their big bruhaha forums, their highfalutin' Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and speeches about "empowerement and technology transfer", but no action. No action, that is, except the government hiring consulting firms full of sysadmins that are making big bucks installing FOSS.*

      The Brazilian government AFAIK is spending zilch, nada, on developing the code base that will save them millions. It's an exploitative mentality: you

      • Your portrayal of the situation in Brazil is at the very least unfair.

        The Brazilian government is spending on developing the code base that will save them millions, but I'm sure government management software does not make Slashdot headlines like "a tool for hacking GTK+". Migrating to a Free Software platform does not involve only installing Linux distros; migrating the actual systems that run on top of the platform is the most substantial work.

        Brazilian involvement with Free Software started in my

  • If I could develop software funded by taxpayer dollars I would totally make an MMO. It would be free as in NPR and PBS free. It would be designed to be high quality, not designed to be addictive. And it would appeal to all peoples, so everyone could enjoy it. It would hopefully give everyone in the country something in common to talk about and help bring an end to this dichotomy of peoples in the US.

    I would also use the money to fucking educate people about technology. God damn are people freaking clueless

  • Pandering to the Chinese? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shanen ( 462549 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:03AM (#12044897) Homepage Journal
    Well, not sure how far they'll really go with it, but I feel like their motivations are suspect. The Japanese government has pretty much made peace with Microsoft. The only reason I can see for them supporting OSS is because the Chinese seem to be going away from MS, and Japan is thinking about who's going to be most important to Japan a few years down the road.

    Think of it as another form of distributing their investments away from dollars...

    • Re:Pandering to the Chinese? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RoLi ( 141856 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:59AM (#12045083)
      Why is every positive Linux movement badmouthed?

      It doesn't matter why they did it, also being at "peace" with Microsoft doesn't prevent you from supporting Linux. The important fact is that they did a big Linux commitment and that that commitment is helping all Linux users.

      • Being at peace with Microsoft doesn't prevent you from supporting Linux, but supporting Linux does prevent you from being at peace with Microsoft. M$ will see this as a hostile act and terminate their non-aggression pact with Japan. Hopefully the Japanese will see it coming sooner that Stalin did.

        Does that count as an invocation of Godwin's Law, or was it too subtle?

        • M$ will see this as a hostile act and terminate their non-aggression pact with Japan.

          Nice analogy, if it weren't for the simple fact that MS doesn't have any possibility to hurt Japan in any way.

          Any hostile action by Microsoft drives Japan further to Linux, which is bad for MS and good for Japan in the long run.

    • >The only reason I can see for them supporting OSS is because the Chinese seem to be going away from MS. I would say it isn't true. That Asialinux is probably just a small move in order to cut cost of servers. Chinese in linux isn't ready anytime soon and the government isn't helping at all. From fonts to input there are still lots of problems. Common forks would just use windows, it's the doorway for using pirated software to save money.

  • Goverment funded OSS (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:03AM (#12044898)
    I know that the the french government is increasingly pushing free software.The police will soon use OpenOffice as the official suite.An hardened version of Mandrake Linux is beeing used in the army and the standard Mandrake Linux in some part of the administration.Well, Id'l like to see gnu/linux used in other places than army and police, but there are many others examples. Goverment support gives OSS a lot of credibility.
    • so the french army uses Mandrake these days? *easy pun alert* my my, that sure explains a lot */easy pun*

      all kidding aside, knowing the french they'd just love to be free of yet another (american) shackle. looks like they're ahead in the race to get rid of good ol'MS.

  • Government should not be funding OSS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:04AM (#12044902) Homepage Journal
    Unless it is under contract to provide an immediate service that is needed. Just putting money out there for funding development would be wrong and we would have nothing more than the waste of taxpayer money that funds "art".

    In other words, if there is a purpose/need for the software then by all means fund it under contract for that purpose. This could include changing educational programs to only use OSS for teaching of students on how to program. If however the reason is just to buy votes, keep unemployed "artists" from starving, or there is no need then do not use the taxpayers dollars on it.

    I just want to avoid a situation like what we have here in Georgia where one local county spent more on art than their roads. Boy does it show. Want to find a government building - just look for the ugly art or a building that looks more expensive than a bank. I used to think it was just a saying.
    • I agree and disagree. I dont think the goverment should give money to be giving money. But I do like it when the goverment (our hard earned tax dollars) are given to specific OSS projects (and is stated this is a one time shot of money). The lottery in GA (yeah I live here too) gives a wad of cash to schools and are told this is a one time deal/single shot of cash. Once it is gone it is gone. period. Granted the lottery has been back to give more money but they make sure everyone knows that you can no

      • That's a cool idea. Why doesn't someone start a US lottery? As far as I know gambling is legal if its non-profit, like how churches do casino nights. Why don't we set up a lottery where the winners get 70% of the winnings, and worthy (proper non-profit) OSS projects get the rest?

        Jeeze, a national lottery? It could put a dent in the state lotteries. :)
    • If you local government does stupid things by spending large amounts on art or software without requiring something substantial back, that does not make art or software bad. It just shows that morons exist everywhere, even in your gouvernment, and there are always people willing to profit of it.

      We had a similar subsidised art system here too, the warehouses were stacked to the brim with art that was delivered in return for the grants. With (Free) software it is different: an overflowing warehouse of softwa
    • "we would have nothing more than the waste of taxpayer money that funds 'art'."

      Uh, sorry to be upset at you but geek or not, don't you think that funding arts is a good thing?

      Art is an indicator of the state of a society, perhaps you could see it as a way to give joy to the population, it serves so many purposes. That I am quite disturbed that you could imply that it is useless!

      If you see technology as the only method of furthering human development do you think that eugenics might be a way to improve

      • "This leads us back to the point of this thread, that governments are here to help the population..."

        BZZZZZZT!

        Wrong answer! Government (in America, anyway) was created to uphold the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. It does not exist to redirect tax money to certain privileged segments of the population.

      • Art is an indicator of the state of a society

        Art is only an indicator of the state of society when it is society that is creating and supporting the art. When the government is supporting the art against the wishes of the people, then the indicator is pointing in the wrong direction. Using your argument, as long as the government supports art, the populace can be a pack of violent, slobbering morons but that is still a health society.

        And no, I didn't choosing "violent, slobbering morons" just because

    • That is nice for us, but in other countries, the citizens want their gov. to spend money on creating jobs. Look at India. They have focused on Hollywood, Software Engineering, and Space. Bollywood is up and coming, as is space. As to software engineering, well, you can not be here and not know that India is coming on strong. In adiditon, their gov. is moving towards Linux even with the MS bribes. Why? because, they can not hoep to compete in MS's back yard. So they are wanting a new front yard.

      Likewise fo

      • 'Sadly, we have seen our gains from the 90's wiped clean over the last 4 years.'

        There were no gains, switching to computers has not increased efficiency or created any new jobs. It has just replaced some old jobs with some new ones. Since the new jobs cost about as much as the old ones did the transaction costs are comparable to before computer automation.
    • Unless it is under contract to provide an immediate service that is needed

      If everyone though like that the Government would never hand grants out to anyone. If the Government thinks that it good for the country (or the world) as a whole then they give it funding.

      If I were to start up a small business the Government would give me a lot of backing, including the ability to apply for several grants, because small businesses are good for the country.

      If I start up a charity then the Government gives me extra
    • There are often goverment grants or tax rebates available for research and development. I think OSS research and development is not neccessarily a bad thing even if isn't required for a specific "product".

    • Government should not be funding OSS unless it is under contract to provide an immediate service that is needed.

      That shouldn't be hard, government needs every kind of software.

      If you want to get annoyed with govt. waste, think how much govt. (at all levels) has spent on MS Office over the years. How many billions does Microsoft have sitting in the back? And guess who is their biggest custmer [findarticles.com]: the govt. of course.

      It's time to end the Microsoft handout. For a relatively paltry fee, the government co

    • And on this basis, how would the internet itself have been developed?

  • You just had to (Score:3, Funny)

    by kevin-cs-edu ( 854636 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:06AM (#12044908)
    You just had to give me another reason to move to Japan.

    ARGH!!!
  • Governments probably do not wish to alarm MS and our gov.. So they quietly slip away from both.

    Sadly, I think that by the time, We Americans wake up, it will be too late. All the jobs will have flowed out as all new apps will be done on Linux in other countries.
  • With a budget of 240,000 NIS it's a small step but one in the right direction. http://www.maor.gov.il/english/open_office.asp [maor.gov.il]

  • Repeat of the 1970's (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:10AM (#12044920) Journal
    Remember Big Steel, Big Auto, Big Air... large monopolies subsidised by the State, inefficient providers of substandard goods... being eventually driven to the edge of extinction by cheap foreign competition, surviving only by embracing modern practice and competing equally?

    Remember how world leaders turned to world losers in just 15 years, unable to change with the times?

    We're rapidly entering the same phase with software. Big Software in the US (and to some extent in Europe) is largely dependent on its monopoly position, bolstered by State support, using the argument "we pay taxes and create jobs" (both false) as blackmail.

    Meanwhile the rest of the world is rapidly evolving to use modern practice (which means open standards and open code) so that they can compete against the previously unassailable US Big Software giants.

    It's going to happen exactly the same way. Trauma, crisis, mass layoffs, and finally, when it's almost too late, an understand that Big Software sees that it cannot fight the commoditization of its industry through marketing, politics, or blackmail.

    • Re:Repeat of the 1970's (Score:4, Insightful)

      by beacher ( 82033 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:58AM (#12045081) Homepage
      I disagree wholeheartedly. The japanese kicked our ass in the auto industry in the 80's and 90's but detroit adapted and learned how to make a better product. More and more american cars are finding their way into consumer reports top 10's and that's something that benefitted the population at large.

      Competition fosters a better quality product. If Japan wants to help make Linux a better product, then I'm all for it.

      Adapt, evolve and pass the strong genes on ;)
      B
      • Wait, their OSS development is in competition with Americas? Hmmmm pearl harbor ... bush ....

        tough call.

        ok, Japan wins hands down.
      • More and more american cars are finding their way into consumer reports top 10's and that's something that benefitted the population at large.

        But, alas, not the environment.
      • ...detroit adapted and learned how to make a better product.

        Have you been to Detroit lately?

        No seriously... Have you been to Detroit and walked around the streets during the day? I didn't think such a place existed in the United States until just a few months ago. Entire neighborhoods of suburbia abandoned... Houses burnt down... Blocks and blocks of abandoned car warhouses. Crackhead zombie bums straggling in the streets. They even have these "Food Vans" that go around handing food out to the homeless.
  • You'd need to keep the grants smallish or otherwise every coder will be writing grant applicatiosn instead of software applications.

  • Tax-Based Funding (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Evil W1zard ( 832703 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:13AM (#12044930) Journal
    If the government starts to really push OSS funding from taxes then I would want to see a big push for security-related products. Because broadband/always-on connections are growing there is a real need for free/open-source security solutions for home users who don't really know anything about security and might not be inclined to go out and spend the money on firewalls, anti-virus and etc (and a good advertising campaign for use of freeware security products since there are already many out there, but many people just have no idea they exist or where to find them.... And why we're at it they can also develop an freeware version of VMWare as well please!
    • So not only do you want to spend tax money to develop software that competes with the private sector, you want to spend tax money on advertising for it too?

      Why should OSS get a free handout when every other software business has had to make their own way?
    • I said "If" the government starts using tax dollars to do this. I would prefer that they don't use tax dollars, but if they do then security is where I would like to see the money spent. (I also would not have qualms "if" the govt. decided to use tax money for software development to spent the money on private sector development of security products to lessen their costs as well)
  • "Information-technology Promotion Agency(IPA, in pdf), an extra-departmental organization of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan has been supported open source software development.

    Obviously they support slashdot as well...

  • I'm METI Certified (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mad Geek ( 102911 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:24AM (#12044957)
    I'm a METI/ITA/JITEC certified Systems Administrator, and they've always been vendor neutral in their exams and included question about opensource for many years. The shortest
    exams are still 5 hours long, and are available in the spring and autumn.
    Even if they are mostly standards centric, you can see a preference towards open source. They even require knowledge of the GPL in their recent exams.

  • In Italy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Simon (S2) ( 600188 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:33AM (#12044976) Homepage
    Does your government have such a plan to fund OSS developments?

    In Italy LUGs get funded by the government. More or less everything they spend for hardware, room rentals for courses, etc. gets a refund.

  • As a citizen I am concerned (Score:5, Interesting)

    by briancnorton ( 586947 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @07:35AM (#12044986) Homepage
    Not to disrespect the OSS developer, but I have serious concerns about the level of professional financial management that these projects have. I don't want my tax-dollars going to buy a foosball table for an OSS company that will go out of business before their product is delivered. No offense, but follow-through has been a serious problem for OSS. Look at how many projects in freshmeat are at at version 0.5 and haven't been touched in a year.

    • No offense, but follow-through has been a serious problem for OSS. Look at how many projects in freshmeat are at at version 0.5 and haven't been touched in a year

      That's very true, and one of the saddest sights in a the world is a promising-sounding project that has seen no releases for two years :( However, I wonder how common this would be if the authors had been given funding? I'm willing to bet that a lot of these abandoned projects were dropped mainly because the authors found that their need to put

    • Look at how many projects in freshmeat are at at version 0.5 and haven't been touched in a year.

      I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that; most of those little freshmeat projects are just personal projects that somebody graciously offered to the public.

      Whether the code will be open is irrelevant; if the govt. lets out a contract, there should be deliverables and they should be delivered. Unfortunately that sometimes doesn't happen. [corpwatch.org]

    • Look at how many projects in freshmeat are at at version 0.5 and haven't been touched in a year.

      Well as one of those thousants, i have this to reply: You have to try, to succeed. As a developer it can be very hard to find out if you are the only one having that itch, so you just put your app out there and see if you get any response. And when you've never done that you think it is cool to do, a little boost for your ego.

      To get a thriving free software culture you need both people that try, and people w


    • No offense, but follow-through has been a serious problem for OSS. Look at how many projects in freshmeat are at at version 0.5 and haven't been touched in a year.

      That is not a very nice thing to say about Debian. Sarge will be released "When It's Ready"(tm) any year now.
  • If you follow the link in the blurb, you'll see that this project did not port ssh to "normal" java (J2SE), which had been done before, but instead ported an existing java implementation of ssh2 to J2ME, which is the java platform for mobile devices. So now you can enjoy ssh2 on any mobile device you have that supports Java/MIDP2.0 (most recent cellphones and PDAs seem to do so).

  • m17n (Score:5, Informative)

    by pamri ( 251945 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @08:15AM (#12045144) Homepage
    The m17n [m17n.org] library funded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan [meti.go.jp] is probably, IMO the most exciting thing to come out of the whole process.

    The m17n library allow you to view and type complex text languages like Indic, Arabic, Hebrew and other languages. While this is possible by using QT3.2+ & GTK2.0+pango, this restricted one to just 2 toolkits and to two heavyweight desktops(XFCE4 is the exception though). The library [m17n.org] is also a good compromise between a toolkit dependent solution like pango/QT3.2 and Server based solutions like the doomed Indix and STSF.

    The screenshots here [m17n.org] show firefox and magicpoint, applications that use different toolkits displaying multilinugal texts. I have even seen but not used windowmaker rpms compiled with m17n support.

    A very practical example would be something like Damn Small Linux, which is a pretty lightweight live CD in both disk size (~50 MB) and Memory usage (runs on 64 MB RAM). This was ideal for a school near my place that wanted to use it as a teaching resource but wanted it in their native language. I finally am settling for XFCE4 and GTK2 applications like OO.o, Firefox.

    The keyboard solutions were too rudimentary, in the case of xkb for phonetic keymaps for indian languages or too buggy and complex, in the case of IIIMF. M17n was a joy to use from day one and rpms for Mandrake 10.1 & debs for Ubuntu/Debian unstable are available.

  • Great idea (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "How do you think about governments' funding OSS developments(by tax)?"

    Taxes are meant to fund means and services that are for public service and need, or rather, for different groups of people. This includes roads, traffic signs, also considering the handicapped.

    Anything that services a society, technologically, economically, including educational institutions, healthcare, etc. justified governmental funding.

    As such, tax funded OSS projects would be a good thing. Given that the solutions are beneficial

  • local government (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kerp11 ( 410921 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @08:43AM (#12045271) Homepage
    i think its very important that local government start initatives like this, as they are able to put money back into the local economy rather than giving it to large corporations, often in the case of europe - in other countries. this is a win-win situation as far as local government is concerned, local employees providing local services. re-investing back into the community they are supporting.
  • How do you think about governments' funding OSS developments(by tax)?

    Asked to Bill Gates (how I think he would answer): "What a stupid idea? Why only a complete moron would support that! There is nothing like it in the world. On the other hand taxes should support Microsoft since we know every man, woman, child, even pets benefit from Microsoft products and they should pay for it. We are getting ripped of to the tune of 1 billion billion bucks a month!"

  • Govt $ to make something useful when it could be developed at a profit by a company that would then be able to contribute to a campaign fund? No Way in the USA, man!
  • Can anyone tell me how this "open printing project" differs from or interacts with CUPS [wikipedia.org]?

    --grendel drago

  • Whew! (Score:2)

    by Cyn ( 50070 )
    I thought it said 'boots' - my jaw dropped and I was about to start Googling for home addresses of their OSS projects. :P
  • IPA used to contribute to nearly all my projects, and it was a very good time. I've since switched to a Belgian Abbey-style ale, which is a very much nicer time, though I tend to fall asleep sometime through the fourth.

  • Japan.org (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @10:11AM (#12045980) Homepage Journal
    Japan's central industrial planning, through MITI, has tried many times to snatch the global computing lead from the US. But every time, the strategy has been to fund large corporations to execute a central, multi-year plan, with a specific revolutionary goal. This IPA is completely different: it doesn't pick the end result in advance, it doesn't have a specific timeline, it doesn't even have a revolution in the specs. And it doesn't seem to be a state capitalist (friendly fascist) program for transferring taxes to corporations. Could this be the way that Japan Inc. finally pulls it off - as Japan.org?

    • IPA == Japan.inc++ (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mamladm ( 867366 )
      You are greatly mistaken.

      The IPA is a Japanese government agency and as such every bit as bureaucratic as anything else going in Japan Inc.

      I know of quite a number of cases where the IPA has turned down to fund interesting open source projects, the kind of projects most Slashdot readers would be very much in favour of.

      If you are a small or medium sized business in Japan and you want money from the IPA's program to develop open source, you have to go through a lot of hoops to actually get funded. Most of
      • I'm not surprised to hear your take on the IPA. I'd be surprised if the IPA were the only (or rare) gov't agency in Japan throwing off the straitjacket of their ancient state capitalist miracle that's kept their economy moribund for longer (18 years) than their "miracle" lasted (~1972-1987). But do you have actual stats on who's gotten the money? I'd hate to be unreasonably disappointed in my unreasonable optimism :).

        FWIW, in the US, government tech grant programs also require onerous application/reporting
  • an extra-departmental organization of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan has been supported open source software development.
    Please tell me that sentence came out of an automatic translation service.

    Hey, aren't EDITORS supposed to PROOFREAD?

  • Open Government - Full Stop (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TractorBarry ( 788340 ) on Friday March 25, 2005 @12:09PM (#12047089) Homepage
    Well I for one believe that Governments should develop nothing but Open Source products. As a taxpayer I'm paying the wages of the coders so I should be able to utilise the fruits of their labour.

    Not to mention the fact that once one government has developed something all governments can benefit from the work too. Maybe this will lead to lower taxes worldwide ;) ?

    My personal view is that all Govermnets activities should be fully accountable and a citizen should have access to all information held by the Government. The only exceptions being data relating to current military activities, ongoing criminal investigations, and the identities of witnesses in past criminal cases. If someone is hiding something it's because it's dodgy. Full stop.

    Being a UK citizen I view this in the same way that I view programming created by the BBC. I've paid for the work to be performd (via the licence fee) so I should be free to download them when I like, reencode them to new formats etc. etc.

    If I'm paying for something I have the right to use it. If not don't ask me to pay for it.

    And speaking of the BBC the first episode of the new Dr Who is on tonight. Fantastic !!!

  • How do you think about governments' funding OSS developments(by tax)?

    I for one welcome our new funding-projects-for-the-public-good-overlords. Wait, isn't that what government is supposed to be doing anyway? Sure, the right wing may not agree, but those are the same people that want to kiss Bill Gates' ass untill it turns red.

    Seriously though, just as long as governments carefully consider the licences that they will allow, I think this is great.

  • There's also Ruby [google.com].

  • that is killing off the dinosaurs...

    The computer is far too important to businesses, governments and organizations to leave it to Cretaceous market-protecting tyrants, and more and more people are becoming acutely aware of it.

    The real fear should be what is going to happen when these tyrants mutate and start looking for ways to work within Open Source system. Do you really want Microsoft contributing source code to anything?

  • I, for one, strongly support grass internationalization.
  • Today I just submitted a research grant proposal to the US Department of Energy, in their "Multiscale Mathematics in Research and Education" [doe.gov] program. If you look at their proposal guidelines, near the end under "The evaluation under item 2", they talk about making materials available to the public as open source. I was happy to see it, as I have made some software available from my previous research available in this way, and plan to do so again in the future on my new projects. I'll have to wait many m

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