Japanese Govt Boosts OSS Developments(Mar, 2005)

Over 16 month ago, IPA has catched eyes of slashdotters. The title was 'Japanese Govt Boosts OSS Developments'.

Many slashdotters had talk how govt should enforce or interact OSS activity.

IPA have accelarated the project of enforcing OSS named 'IPA OSS center'(Link in Japanese only) 1-year after slashdotters had been intersted in.
The OSS center have never published web page in English but many projects have already started. (IPA have published still a quite old page)

For example, they have launched several project such as 'Enhancement of OpenOffice.org for Japanese users', 'Study of object exchange architecture in cross-desktop environment' and 'OSS iPedia - OSS general information service includes case study, performance evaluation, and Q&A service.'

The first one, Openoffice.org enhancement, is the continous project with feasibility test by Ninomiya local-govt. It focuses Japanese users by researching requirement/comments from users especially from local-govt. After then the project make technical description of recommended features and will propose the features to OpenOffice.org developers.

Most interesting one is 'the kernel message database'. They try to create the web database service that user can search the messages linux kernel warned and can see the place of the problem and recommended actions.
It includes all messages of linux kernel source and public service.
At start time, it is only in Japanese but they have the plan to extend internationalize and to help developers / users in the world.