Show me the code:
How Open Source is Shaking up the Software Industry
- Part II
- by Steven Myers -
Part I of this two-part series discussed the general nature of the OSS model and how it has developed in Japan. In Part II, Steve Myers examines the current state of OSS, starting with entrepreneurial initiatives in Japan. Afterwards, read on for Computing Japan's exclusive interview with Tim O'Reilly, president of O'Reilly & Associates.
Although the ranks of OSS entrepreneurs and business groups in Japan are still much smaller than similar outfits in the US, an increasing number of entrepreneurial software companies here are beginning to list the development and/or support of OSS products as one of their main business activities. Perhaps the most visible of these is Nagoya-based Net Hypercore, which has developed an OSS game-authoring engine called Hyperplay, and offers custom development support and consulting services for open source products. The company was featured in a recent Wired Japan article, and is actively involved in a variety of ongoing OSS projects targeted at both Linux and Windows platforms. Additionally, several other companies that had heretofore specialized primarily in Linux-related consulting are beginning to branch out into other areas of OSS. This list includes businesses like the aforementioned Third Ware, Co. (Chiba); Friendly Corp. (Sapporo) - which makes filtering software for Linux - and NAQ Design (Tokyo), a contributing member to the Wine project for Linux. All of these companies are members of the Japan Useware Association (JUA), which recently announced the formation of the Open Source Project for sharing and disseminating information about OSS projects. In addition to the entrepreneurial startups listed above, the Project also includes larger, more established (and slightly more traditional) companies such as Nagano-based Systex Inc. and Okayama-based Rios Corporation. While not technically an OSS-affiliated company, Digital Garage Inc. (which runs Infoseek Japan) deserves special mention here as well, as the company's president, Joichi Ito, is an OSS proponent and active industry speaker who thoroughly understands the merits of open source. Ito gave a short address at the O'Reilly party and has a one-hour segment that is repeated eight times monthly on Business Breakthrough (channel 757 on Sky PerfecTV). He is a highly influential figure in the Japanese Internet industry, and a frequent member of MPT-sponsored committees and study groups. Ito was selected by Time magazine as a member of the 'Cyber Elite' in 1997, and was listed in the January 1999 issue of Aera magazine as one of the 50 "nin san-juu dai" (people in their 30's) who will shape the 21st century. Given his celebrity status, it is a safe bet that Ito's views on OSS will eventually be heard by key government and corporate decision-makers. Finally, in addition to the Open Source Project, a separate joint effort known as the RingServer Project was started last November to provide bandwidth and mirroring for an online repository called 'Open Lab', which will be dedicated to OSS projects. RingServer will effectively pool the resources of eleven industrial and university servers, including the resources of ASAHI-Net, InternetJAH, Fuji Xerox, and Saitama University, among others. The effort will provide a local cache of all the important overseas OSS sites, as well as Japanese sites such as Mado no Mori (Windows Forest - a repository of Windows code and resources) and Vector (a large freeware site for Windows and Mac). Linux and Perl in Japan Of course, no discussion of OSS would be complete without including a look at how the two best-known open source products are faring in Japan. Linux and Perl have both enjoyed great success and popularity here and have been featured in previous CJ articles dating back to 1995. While the spread of these packages has perhaps not been as dramatic in Japan as it has been overseas, there exists nonetheless a large and steadily growing user base for both products. Not surprisingly, Linux has become by far the most visible OSS project in Japan, turning up recently in such ultra-mainstream media as Shukkan Playboy. The increasing number of media reports about overseas corporations and government agencies who are enjoying tremendous cost savings and performance improvements by throwing out Microsoft OS and database software in favor of Linux and MySQL has definitely struck a chord with IT managers here, and many are at least beginning to experiment with using Linux machines for non-mission critical tasks. Linux has always been the best OS for handling both English and Japanese, and the Japanese-handling continues to improve with the evolution of "Nihongo-ka" packages such as PJE and Plamo. Interestingly, many of the large Japanese system integration firms are now offering Linux solutions as part of their consulting service. Hitachi Software Engineering, Fujitsu Business Systems, and Otsuka Shoukai are just a few examples of the firms who are actively supporting Linux solutions. Additionally, the Linux Business Initiative was formed in 1997 to provide information, resources, and support to companies who use or support Linux. The group has been featured in Nikkei Biztech and Nikkei Open Systems, and many of the affiliated companies were sponsors and/or presenters at the Tokyo Linux Fair '98. Of course, there are regional Linux user groups all over the country, as well as a large national user group (JLUG). If the first-ever Tokyo Perl Conference (held last November at the Shinjuku Park Hyatt) was any indication, Japanese interest in and usage of Perl is also on the rise. The two-day conference - directed specifically at developers - drew over 100 people both days and featured several technical seminars as well as a keynote speech by the inventor of the language, Larry Wall. The conference also saw the official formation of Japan's first Perl users group, the Tokyo Perl Mongers. The seminar presentations included a session given by Dick Hardt, president of Active State Corporation, which makes Perl for Windows 95/NT systems. Hardt related that Japan was an extremely important market for his company, as they have over 1200 members on their Japanese mailing list and that 17% of their total website traffic comes from Japan. He went on to explain that because of the high number of advanced Windows users and programmers here, he was able to get much more feedback than at the U.S. conference, but was somewhat surprised at the degree to which Microsoft had so thoroughly captured the server market in Japan. "The herd mentality here is amazing. Microsoft has definitely entrenched themselves significantly - much more so than in the U.S. - because people buy into it and that's just how it is." Hardt also noted that OSS for Windows in Japan would be especially significant because of the strong abilities of Japanese programmers in general. "The level of knowledge here is just incredible," he said, "some of the people at the seminar seemed to know my product better than I do." Where OSS is Headed Considering the numerous advantages that OSS development processes and business models have to offer, it is not surprising that the movement is spreading quickly and generating heavy media attention. It should be mentioned, though, that as with all new technologies and design paradigms, a quick reality check can often prove beneficial before getting too caught up in the furor and hype. In particular, there seems to exist a tendency to view the success of the OSS movement as proof positive that all development efforts should be open source from start to finish and include as many programmers as possible. However, a closer look at the realities of what made Linux and Perl so successful reveals that there are many caveats to bear in mind before taking the open source plunge. The first point that must be emphasized is that the most successful open source projects actually began as very closed source projects. Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall did not release their products until they were already working, and working quite well at that. The increased number of developers did not become beneficial until the product had matured to the stage of adding and integrating extensions, checking for regression failures, and finding obscure bugs. Indeed, it appears that the conventional wisdom of small, closely-knit design teams still holds true for the initial and middle stages of software development. An increased number of programmers during these stages still tends to increase complexity and weaken the overall integrity of the system design. That said however, the project must not be so close to finished that there is little left for the other developers to do. Such a project will inevitably fail to generate the developer interest necessary to sustain it. One of the main criticisms of Netscape's OSS effort is that the interesting 80% of the problem has already been solved, and there is little incentive for serious developers to dig into the Navigator source and mess with the few minor features and bugs that are left. The trick to initiating a successful OSS effort appears to be developing most of the high-level architecture and just enough of the implementation to show that the concept is exciting and viable, while at the same time leaving sufficient features and components uncompleted for the other developers. Conducted properly, an open source development project has something to offer everyone. Developers, salespeople, and entrepreneurs all stand to benefit from the increased quality and new avenues afforded by the OSS process. In particular, Japan and other Asian countries now have a real chance to take more of an active role in the crucial activities of software internationalization. It is no accident that Linux has long been the most international operating system in terms of easily supporting multiple languages and locales. No sooner does a hot new feature come out in one language than it is quickly ported to native locales by expert programmers all over the world. Given the abundance of highly talented and enthusiastic programmers in Japan (witness efforts such as Kazuo Yamada's Hidemaru for Windows), it is quite likely that the combination of OSS, XML, and Unicode will finally provide developers here with opportunities to build the truly multilingual, cross-platform applications which we have all been waiting for. Steven Myers heads the Software Development Group at Linc Media, which is currently at work on a wide variety of multilingual Perl- and Java-related Web applications. You can contact Steve at steve@lincmedia.co.jp 
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