Posted by Tetsuya Kitahata on June 08, 2003 at 11:49:54:
北畠です。最近、Apacheのコミッタに、以下のような質問を受けたので、
返事をしてみました。何か気がついた事があれば、レスお願いします・・m(__)m
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> Let me ask you something: a few years ago, the ASF members had a
> discussion about the fact that despise the good english and technical
> skills, there were no many active japanese developers in open source.
> Somebody identified the problem in the japanese culture that makes it
> hard for a person to stand up in front of somebody who he recognizes as
> a higher ranked person and just plain say what he says.
>
> it goes along with your question on what makes lurkers speak up.
>
> What is your vision on this? I'm very interested in hearing from a
> japanese directly.
IMHO,
1. Most of the Japanese men/women had been taught that
"Stand out from the crowd and you just invite trouble for yourself."
, so they tend to lose their motivation to get involved in
the opensource communities actively.
2. Most of the Japanese men/women feel their English skills are
very poor. This is due to the "bad" English educations in the
junior-high and high school. Especially, (me too) they are not
getting used to the spoken English.
(But, in my opinion, English used by the Japanese are relatively
correct in grammatical) Japanese guys had been measured by the
grammatical accuracies in their "TESTS".
3. Japanese companies do not encourage their employees to
get involved into the opensource communities (Intellectual
properties issues etc.). Just use the products produced by the
opensource communities.
4. They tend to do for theirselves. Not in dev communities.
And they form the users' communities.
I know a lot of "free software"s which once were developed by
the indivisuals and they deserve to be known more openly, widely.
The Mail Client (Becky! 2), my favorite, is one of them. (Now this
is distributed by a company .. http://www.rimarts.co.jp/)
5. They are too busy for getting the money in order to live
in the high-level, expensive land prices (Japan), therefore they
do not have much time to get involved in the opensource
communities actively.
6. Most of them are too shy (disposition) to communicate with
the guys in foreign countries. If they have come to think the
"barriar" was actually too low, I am sure they might participate
willingly.
Are these above answered to your questions?
Sincerely,
Tetsuya.