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Japanese Govt Boosts OSS Developments
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?"
It's not exactly free, you do pay taxes :-)
...
... not the pattents.
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
You just had to give me another reason to move to Japan.
ARGH!!!
We could come up with software paid for by: The Corporation for Public Programming and users like You...
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
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