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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?"
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...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
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.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
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.
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?
--
make install -not war
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 the money the government has alotted for this progeam isn't spent and it is not for lack of applicants.
If you do decide to apply, you have to prepare an application that most SMEs won't have the expertise to do. They will need to spend $$$ on ex-government officials turned consultants to prepare the application for them.
Then if you do get invited to present your application at the IPA, you will find yourself with 3 or 4 employees of your company in a room with about 15 to 20 Japanese government officials, every one of whom will ask questions that are pretty humiliating for small and medium sized companies.
The tenor is pretty much like "Who the heck are you guys? Is three people all you can muster? How big is your company? Have you done this before? Have you got any backing by big corporations with recognised names and brands?"
The smaller your company, the more likely your application will be judged not on its own merits but on prejudice against anything small and without a big name.
The IPA program may look different on the outset but under the surface it is just the same old way of Japan Inc.
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