Asia and OSS

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Asia and OSS
by Mikey on Tuesday 29/Apr/2008, @01:57

It's really sad that there isn't going on more in terms of Asia and OSS... those people are as resourceful as any, and practically all hardware is manufactured there. So why this gap?

Many developers like Linus Torvalds or Aaron Seigo say that the main reason would be cultural and language barriers ... well, at least the language thing really can't be it, as "the western world" as the main force behind OSS doesn't speak the same mother tongue either.

Related Links

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Re: Asia and OSS
by winnie on Tuesday 29/Apr/2008, @02:21

Well, the western world doesn't have the same language, but at least most of them are used to read and write in English.
I have lived several months in Korea and for most people, also in university, speaking English is quite difficult. Don't forget that for example German and English are much more related than Korean and English.

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Re: Asia and OSS
by KTP on Thursday 01/May/2008, @23:14

An very interesting video: The language challenge -- facing up to reality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU
It was also subtitled in many languages: http://dotsub.com/films/thelanguage/

In the website of the author, there is many more articles about the theme, in many languages also: http://claudepiron.free.fr/articles.htm

In terms of ease to adquire english, first comes the germans, then latin, then slavic, and in the last position the east-asian languages speakers. It takes somewhere like the double of time to learn english to an good level than for an latin, for example. English has two times more words than most languages, because it's dual inheritage, and germans or latins have an handcap here. The structure of the language is more related to german languages, but also to an certain degree to the european languages in general.

As you can probably tell, I'm not an native english speaker, and after many years of study, at least I think that I can be understood in writen medium.

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Re: Asia and OSS
by nikos on Tuesday 29/Apr/2008, @07:20

I have the same question.
I see a lot of freeware programs from Japan (and Korea, too),
but very few Open Source programs.

By the way, I think you are doing a very good job by building bridges with these communities.

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Re: Asia and OSS
by Donovan on Tuesday 29/Apr/2008, @09:10

I don't know, could it be cultural indeed? Like people defining themselves primarily as a unique individual in the western world, while in Asia folks leaning more to the collective side of things? OSS after all is about personal initiative and expressing yourself as an individual...

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