[advocacy-discuss] The Business of Community: Tokyo

[Jim Grisanzio]

Reiko Saito wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
> That's exactly the same impression I have.
>   
And you are Japanese! So, I'm making progress, then. :)

> OpenSolaris/Indiana session was the most popular one
> in all sessions across Solusion, Technology, and
> Communitiy tracks.  I will try to communicate more
> and open from Japan Portal and mailing list, hoping
> vital user/developer group will be built.
>   

Cool. I think the addition of Indiana here in Tokyo will be the single 
most important event for OpenSolaris in Japan since we launched. Solaris 
is gigantic in Japan (second only to the US and #1 in Asia), but my 
impression is that the market is very old here. The young people don't 
know about OpenSolaris, and the older guys don't understand it (and too 
many of them are locked behind corporate firewalls). And even if they 
understand it they don't want to talk about it publically. That makes 
community-building difficult at best. :)

That's why having a very cool, easy-to-use binary distro is critical to 
even /starting/ a conversation about some of the deeper technology bits 
in there. Without that distro, there will simply be no OpenSolaris 
"community" in Japan. Japan is a Microsoft world right now. The Linux 
community here is quite active (and very cool), but their activity is 
driven primarily by Americans and Europeans living here, and I'm not 
sure Linux has taken too much share from Microsoft (surely not like they 
have in the West, anyway). Also, really easy open source apps like 
Firefox still have relatively low market share here.

So, I think the /opportunity/ here in Japan is extremely big, and the 
portal will be critical to bridge the language and cultural issues 
(which are also pretty big). I meet the vast majority of Japanese 
developers in Tokyo through my American and European friends who have 
lived here for a long time. That says to me that a potential OpenSolaris 
community in Japan can be built along the same lines that the Linux 
community has done -- a mixture of Japanese and westerners. This could 
be an interesting year ... :)

Jim

-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/