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Japanese Govt Boosts OSS Developments

Posted by Hemos on 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?"

7 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    More like illegal subsidies. We should sue Japan for this appalling breach of commercial freedom. It's not surprising in light of this that they held Fischer for so long.

  2. Re:Not too bad by amanox · · Score: 1, Funny

    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.

  3. You just had to by kevin-cs-edu · · Score: 3, Funny

    You just had to give me another reason to move to Japan.

    ARGH!!!

    1. Re:You just had to by metricmusic · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yep, I wish they would stop fucking around with us and just show us the Gundams already.

      ---
      http://starbulletin.com/2005/03/20/news/sto ry1.htm l

      --
      http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
  4. Re:Not too bad by George+Tirebuyer · · Score: 1, Funny

    We could come up with software paid for by: The Corporation for Public Programming and users like You...

  5. Re:One more convert... by indifferent+children · · Score: 1, Funny

    Shhhhh... My company didn't hear the Earth shattering KABOOM. They still employ hundreds of us C++ programmers.

    --
    Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
  6. Re:As a citizen I am concerned by cpeterso · · Score: 2, Funny


    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.

    --
    cpeterso