A major beneficiary of these technologies is the less developed economies, whose natimal development depends on the awailability at low-cost comyulting devices on which OSS are able to function very well.
Though there are numerous organizations, communities and agencies promoting the development of Open Source Software, there is an urgent need to help set directions and goals, which, it wrongly set, may be hazardous instead. A regional sharing of knowledge and experience in this realm is therefore needed.
With the preceding considerations, the first “Asia Open Source Software Symposium” was held in March, 2003 at Phuket, Thailand. It was sponsored by Center of the International Cooperation for Computerization (CICC), Japan, and National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), Ministry of Science and Technology, Thailand. Over 100 OSS participants shared their experiences and the resulting document, “The Statement from the Asia Open Source Software Symposium 2003 (Phuket Statement)”, embodied their vision, hopes and challenges.
Based on the Phuket Statement, the “Second Asia Open Source Software Symposium” was held in Singapore from November 2nd-4th 2003, sponsored by CICC and Linux Users' Group (Singapore) (LUGS). About 70 people participated in the Symposium from 18 economies. The aim of this 2nd Symposium was to share policies/technical movements of OSS in Asian economies, acknowledge the common goals, and discuss a concrete cooperative scheme, the formation of working groups to prepare for possible action items was discussed in the Round Table discussion.
The 3rd Asia Open Source Software Symposium was held on March 8-10, 2004 in Hanoi, Vietnam. It was hosted by CICC, Japan and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Vietnam. About 230 public participants and 50 Roundtable participants (17 Asian economies) attended it. On March 10th,2004, the participants of the 3rd Asia OSS Roundtable agreed to have the "Hanoi Statement" for the roadmap of the Asia OSS Roundtable.
The 4th Asia OSS Symposium was held in Taipei, Chinese Taipei, from September 1-3, 2004. It was hosted by CICC and IIS, Academia Sinica, Chinese Taipei. About 150 people participated including representatives from 18 economies. Round Table participants reached an agreement on Chinese Taipei Statement, and decided to make 5 WGs Repository, Human Resource, Standard, Localization, Business based on the Statement.
The 5th Asia OSS Symposium was held March 2-4, 2005 in Beijing and was one of the events of the first China OSS week (February 28-March 4). The China OSS week was hosted by Beijing Software Industry Productivity Center (BSIPC) and was sponsored by Sun Wah Hi Tech System Software Limited (SWHSS). Participants agreed on Beijing Statement, in which 5 WGs (Human resource, Repository, Standard, CodeFest, Localisation) came up with concrete ideas. Besides the Asia OSS Symposium, the Debian Mini Conference (February 28- March 1) and Code Fest (March 2-3) were held as part of the events surrounding the week.
The 6th Asia OSS Symposium was held in September 6-8, 2005 in Sri Lanka and became one of the events of the first FOSS week. The week spanning 5-10 September, 2005 was declared the “Sri Lanka Free and Open Source Software Convention” by the Cabinet of GOSL. The week was designed to culminate on the 10th of September 2005, which was the Software Freedom Day for that year, with a massive open source advocacy programme to the general public. Besides the symposium, other events such as the CXO Conference, Code Fest and the FOSSSL '05 Conference were also held during the week.
The 7th Asia Open Source Software Symposium was held on March 6-8, 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, hosted by CICC and MIMOS Berhad, together with the CodeFest on March 4-5. Under the theme "Towards Asian Open Source Ecosystem -for sustainable development of OSS-", we discussed further strengthen the International collaboration in establishing the concept of Asian OSS ecosystem among the members, and agreed on "Kuala Lumpur Statement".