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
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