I want to add some background informtion of OSS activities in Asia,
especially, in CJK (China, Japan, Korea).
4 years ago, CJK (China, Japan, and Korea) has made CJK OSS Promotion Forum
to promote OSS in our countires. At that time, each country has also made its own
national OSS Promotion Forum, which has been participating in CJK OSS Promotion Forum as substance.
The latest CJK OSS Promotion Forum had the 4th meeting last April, in Beijing.
One of main issues was to establish two Sub-WGs (server and desktop) in WG1.
We've just started Desktop Sub-WG to collaborate 3 countries' effort and work together
in order to resolve common problems for OSS-adoption in Asian market.
We, Desktop Sub-WG's contact persons of CJK, had a preliminary meeting to discuss
a blueprint of Desktop Sub-WG, and prepare the 1st meeting August, in Seoul.
That is a brief history of overall CJK OSS promotion activities on desktop area.
I hope this debate to be a good chance to find a clue to motivate asian developers
to actively participate OSS community.
--
Chang-Won AHN ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
WG1, Desktop Sub-WorkGroup
CJK OSS Promotion Forum
"When minds interact, new ideas will emerge !!"
"In essentials unity, In non-essentials liberty, In all things charity."
On 6/9/06, SAKUMA Junichi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
On past June 1st, a BoF called Desktop Meeting took place
in Linux Conference 2006 Tokyo. About 40 community people
got together and discussed OSS desktop issues. This was
the first one of a series of gatherings of Japanese who
are interested in the linux desktop.
Here I attach the notes from the meeting with a hope that
this movement in Japan and DTL/DAM can start interaction.
---
Desktop Meeting
June 1st, 5:30pm
Linux Conference2006 at Tokyo Big Site
Hosted by Japan Linux Association
Co-hosted by Japan OSS Promotion Forum
Agenda
- Keynotes
- Japan OSS Promotion Forum overview
- OSDL DAM overview
- Discussions
- Wrap-up
Keynotes by Takaaki Higuchi, Sun Microsystems
- Various efforts for the desktop linux are being made
worldwide, e.g. FSG, OSDL DTL, etc.
- Unite people who work on the Linux desktop in Japan!
Japan OSS Promotion Forum overview by Motohiro Egota, Turbolinux
- The forum comprises three subcommittees: HR Dev. SC, Server SC,
and Desktop SC.
- In spite of a good success in the server market in Japan,
Linux's prospects are poor in the desktop market, where MS has
a monopoly.
- The Desktop SC holds meetings with 15 to 20 attendees to
discuss how to make desktop Linux in Japan successful on par
with servers.
- Topics discussed are: Japanese processing, Desktop
application compatibility, Printing, Desktop environment, etc.
OSDL DAM by Junichi Sakuma, OSDL Japan
- OSDL hosts Desktop Architects Meetings to gather .orgs,
developers, vendors and users.
- DAM craves infromation about desktop projects in Asia
so it can invite more Asians.
Discussions
- Food for thoughts by Jun Iio, Mitsubishi Research Institute
- Linux has only 5% share of the client market. Why so poor?
- Do we let MS rule forever?
- The OSS development model won't work sometimes with desktop
app. users who are mere beneficiaries. Who develops the Linux
desktop and how?
- Openoffice.org Japan Users Group by Yutaka Kachi
- OOo covers all desktop environments - not only Linux's -
and now focuses on how to live with MS Office.
- Interoperability is crucial.
- Ninomiya Project, a field experiment by IPA on OSS
deployment in a local government, succeeded in migrating from
MS Office to OOo. It proved that migration to OSS is doable.
- Mozilla
- In the U.S., Mozilla has spread bottom up - from consumers
to the enterprise. This is not the way in Japan, where the
top-down approach often works better.
- Companies who adopt Thunderbird need technical support
while the development community always hangs out only
with consumers. Additional effort should be made.
- Other projects
- Sylpheed, an open source MUA, released its Windows version.
It has had more downloads than the Linux version. It shows the
possibility of a paradoxical approach for OSS to spread from
the proprietary environment as a starting point.
- Nurturing developers
- Some hesitate over getting into OSS development.
- License issues are touchy.
- Hackers are harsh.
- OSS lacks documentation.
- It shows that the developers has very little interest in
popularity.
- OOo is an exception. It has a lot of document writers in
its community and has nurtured a business model in which
companies and writers can collaborate on ducumentation.
- Documents about APIs are definitely insufficient,
e.g. gnome, gimp, evolution...
- Obsolete even if documented, e.g. gtk...
- Hackers always say "RTFSC!" but a lot of source code has
dirty or wrong styles.
- Other issues and concerns
- Another field experiment on OSS deployment in a local
government is having a serious trouble of garbled characters.
- That same old, lingering problem has been ascribed to MS's
wrong design of its Japanese character coding system. The
"legacy-encoding" project(http://legacy-encoding.sourceforge.jp/wiki/)
claims that we should now be more realistic and pragmatic to
tackle that even by preserving the "bug-compatibility."
Wrap-up by Seiya Maeda, Good-day
- Continue talking in
- http://desktop-architect.good-day.net/
- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Open Source Desktop Summit Japan in summer, 2006
--
SAKUMA, Junichi <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Key fingerprint = 199D 03E9 E7C0 CC66 E2D9 AD3F CB2E F76F 8AD9 FC62
_______________________________________________ Desktop_architects mailing list Desktop_architects@lists.osdl.org https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects
