Open Source Thrives in Asia

Kirsten Newcomer | Open Source Delivers | June 13, 2012

Last week I attended the LinuxCon Japan conference, which was held in Yokohama – one of the great port cities of the world! There’s a terrific Ferris wheel near the conference center that lights up with different colors at night and has a digital clock in the center – a good reminder of the famous Japanese efficiency (everything here runs ON TIME)! The city is bustling and beautiful, with attractions as varied as the largest Chinatown in Japan (great food!) to the CupNoodles museum.

The conference was truly an excellent experience. It’s great to see the tremendous energy around FOSS here in Japan. There’s no question that Asian companies are taking full advantage of the innovation and game-changing opportunities that FOSS creates. For example, Dr. Kiyohito Nagata, one of the keynote speakers, talked about the opportunities that Tizen & HTML5 create for NTT docomo and other mobile carriers in Asia, and Brian Stevens from Red Hat spoke about “Breaking the Billion Dollar Barrier” as an open source company...