Iwfst 2005.Position Paper Published on Jan 17, 2009

1. Cooperation and collaboration between China­Japan­Korea
on promotion and development of Open Source Software
Report from on­site of the Northeast Asia OSS Promotion Forum
Hiroshi Miura
miurahr@intellilink.co.jp
NTT DATA Intellilink Corporation
Kayabacho Bldg., 1­21­2 Shinkawa Chuo­ku, Tokyo, Japan
Abstract
The Northeast Asia OSS Promotion Forum (hereinafter referred as to "NEA
Forum"), held three general annual meeting and three director­general level talk of
the IT directors general of China, Japan and Korea (hereinafter referred to as "CJK").
NEA Forum established three working groups in order to discuss Open Source
Software (hereinafter referred as "OSS") Technology Development, Human Resource
Development and Standardization and Certification Study. I want to show general
overview of activities during two years and to discuss future direction of OSS
development and expansion from a viewpoint of NEA OSS insider.
Selected Discussion topic: Open Source / Free Software
­Organization overview
NEA Forum is established at Beijing in Apr. 2004 as a coalition of the local
organization of the CJK, the Chinese OSS Promotion Union, Japan OSS Promotion
Forum (hereinafter referred as Japan Forum) and Korea OSS Promotion Forum.
These organizations resulted from the agreement by C­J­K ministers of the
information technology and communication. We have held three annual meetings of
the NEA Forum and archived some technical, economical results through CJK
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2. collaboration and cooperation.
There are three working groups in the NEA Forum. WG1 is for technical
discussion, WG2 for Human Resource Developments (HRD) and WG3 for
standardization. These activities have been started officially at December, 2004.
The target of WG1 is development and evaluation of OSS products, which are
adoptable for enterprise Linux, desktop Linux and /or embedded Linux. The WG2
focuses HRD programs to cultivate development skills for productions of OSS itself
and OSS system integration. Last one, WG3, is to try sticking OSS and open
standard world together.
­Reports from CJK collaboration
I want to report how CJK colleagues collaborate in three areas such as technical,
HRD and standardization area.
First, I try figuring out a technical area. We assigns three technical challenge
areas to three each country. Because China is leading market on desktop Linux, they
have deep experience of desktop Linux on government and consumer market. Same
things is applicable Japan for enterprise Linux and Korean for embedded Linux.
Second, I show a HRD area. We planed a project to give an grant to developers who
have developed valuable OSSs aggressively in long term. We have tried showing
respective people to other developers or potential developers through this project. We
also plan combined awarding ceremony of C­J­K at next NEA Forum annual meeting
in China.
At last, I want to show a plot of standardization area. We organized sub working
group to develop the open standard of Input Method engine Service Provider
Interface. We have quite outdated specification named XIM which was developed at
early 90s. Because of becoming actual the many problems on XIM after late 90s, we
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3. now show various implementations of a couple of Input Method frameworks for
UNIX/Linux. The GTK+ immodule is a one of most famous one. We can easily show
the framework names such as IIIMF, SCIM, uim and Qt­immodule. These technology
have been developed with much effort by the developers living in the Northeast Asia.
If we can make and agrees a consolidated specification, it may accelerates
productivity and growth of the IM technology. As a result of common understanding
of problems on IM area, volunteers in China­Japan­Korean include me decided to
develop the consolidated IM engine SPI specification. To make it effective, we opens
liaison ship with the Free Standards Group (hereinafter referred as the FSG). There
is OpenI18N WG which focused an internationalization (I18N) of Linux in the FSG.
NEA Forum WG3 will pass developed specification to the FSG and probably talk with
OpenI18N WG.
­Activities in Japan Forum
I am working for government procurement study working group of Japan Forum as
a chair person. This is sub working group of Standardization and Certification WG.
The focus of government procurement study WG is to study and develop a guideline
document for government staffs. Guideline may assist staffs to procure OSS product
from vendors.
As a result of discussion of study WG, we reached that a guideline to write RFP
describes 1:1 term mappings from based on product name to based on standard and/or
requirement. It helps to make RFP to fair go.
­Discussion focus for future technology
It becomes common understanding that OSS is a strong methodology to spread
technologies among the world. Besides adoption of OSS methodology, the target of
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4. using OSS have also changed. EU government have tried keeping interoperability in
their system by distributing their software as OSS. As the other word, they combine
Open Standard with Open Implementation. And procurements may change the
manner from getting product to getting service/system with products based on Open
Standards which is proofed by OSS implementation.
NEA Forum now develops some particular technical specification as open standard
for Open Source/ Free Software. The FSG make a proposition to ISO/IEC JTC1 to
standardize the Linux Specification: Linux Standard Base as de jure standard.
It may become common understandings that industries, governments and
developer communities have chance to collaborate on basis of 'Open Sourced and
Free Software based on Open Standard'. It may drive rapid development of OSS and
fair competition on software service.
Users who ought to give a fair go to every vendor technology such as government
procurement department should write Request For Proposal based on application
requirement and Open Standards. Open Standards may help OSS spreading. As a last
result, OSS may be spread more and more.
In order to realize this scenario, we think we should organize coordination on
evaluation for enterprise OSS systems such as reliability and availability and/or
compatibility on Linux/OSS. Japan Forum have published the result that they
evaluate OSS for using enterprise system.
­About Author
The author is a one of leading participants to the NEA Forum, and is also a leading
member of the Japan Forum. He has wide and deep experience to discuss the future
direction of NEA Forum.
In details, he is working as a chair of Standardization and Certification WG in the
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5. Japan Forum and as a Project Editor of Input Method Project on
WG3:Standardization and Certification Study SWG1:Input Method Standardization in
NEA Forum. He had also been a member of three other WGs in Japan Forum, in
2004. Figure.1 shows the organization tree of the NEA Forum and Figure.2 is of the
Japan Forum.
Author is also a active member of OSDL: Open Source Development Laboratory
and a Linux Kernel developer. He has good technical experience to discuss this
theme.
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