News

Asia OSS Conference & Showcase 2008 was held on March 8 to 14, 2008 in Guangzhou, China successfully with around 500 participants attended in total.

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Background

 The popularity of Open Source Software (OSS) has grown at an astonishing rate such that government, business sector, academy, R&D related organizations, and community groups have been expecting its policy to promote the use of open source software. The major advantage of open source software includes operation/development cost reduction, computer security raise, and, ultimately, competitiveness gain in software business and industry. However, in those economies which are slow in their economic development, the main focus concerns distribution of low-cost, rather than the most powerful PCs. Open source software can contribute greatly to this issues.

 Another issue involves the growing gap in the information society or the problem of digital divide, due to enormously varied degrees of technological advances, government policy, and knowledge and understanding of open source software among the participating economies. This leads to the need for Asian economies to cooperate in order to bridge the growing gap. This also involves promoting open source software.

 At the same time, whereas various kinds of organizations and communities conduct development and promotion activities under different circumstances/levels in order for information sharing, regional and international cooperative network including organizations and communities, have not been fully connected to share their knowledge and experience.

 Considering above background, peoples who are eager to develop their own software technology by their hands are gathered from various areas in Asia. We held the "Asia Open Source Software Symposium 2003" in March, 2003 at Phuket, Thailand. Since then, 10 symposia have been held.