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This article is the executive summary of "Free/Libre/Open Source Software Asian Developers Online Survey" conducted by Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. from December, 2003 to January, 2004. The full version of this report is available at the website of Mitsubishi Research Institute.
As in other parts of the world, open source software and free software (OSS/FS) is attracting a great deal of attention in Asia, primarily from a cost perspective. China is investing enormous sums of government funds to develop a desktop Linux environment equivalent to Windows. In Korea and Taiwan, products with Linux pre-installed are actively being developed. In this way, in East Asia an IT industry has already developed, and these countries are supporting OSS/FS in order to nurture their own IT industries. In Southeast Asia, however, OSS/FS activity has only just begun. In these countries expectations are greatest for OSS/FS as a low-cost desktop environment in an effort to eliminate the "digital divide."
In all of these countries, the training of OSS/FS developers is becoming a pressing national policy issue. It is also crucial for Japan to take the initiative in the OSS/FS field in Asia, and to contribute to Asian countries and achieve growth together. This survey was conducted to determine the current status of OSS/FS developers in Asia and to provide reference material for studying these policies.
This survey represents the Japanese version of the FLOSS survey* conducted in Europe in 2002, the FLOSS-US survey** conducted in the United States during the first half of 2003, and the FLOSS-JP survey*** conducted in Japan during the latter half of 2003. As these surveys were conducted in English, there was little participation by developers in Japan and the other countries of Asia. Accordingly, the authors decided to implement a FLOSS-JP survey in Japanese and a FLOSS-ASIA survey in the languages of the other countries of Asia.
During a two-month period from December 1, 2003 through January 30, 2004, an online survey system was put up on the Mitsubishi Research Institute website (http://oss.mri.co.jp/floss-asia/). The surveys were prepared in Asian languages (Traditional/Simplified Chinese, Korean, Thai, and English for other countries), to make it easy for those developers without English proficiency to participate as well. No particular restrictions were placed on who should respond to the survey, as long as the respondents considered themselves to be open source or free software developers who applied through several specific communities.
During the two-month survey period, 138 responses were received in all. The reason for the small number of responses is probably due mainly to inadequate promotion. In addition, the accuracy of the translation into different languages was not necessarily high in some cases, and so the possibility that full participation could not be obtained from respondents for this reason can likewise not be ruled out.
The overall picture of the Asian OSS/FS developer can be summed up as follows.
First, most of the respondents were developers in Korea and Thailand. Developers in Asia began OSS/FS development later than their counterparts in Europe, the United States and Japan; most began developing around the year 2000 when they were approximately 23 years of age. As in the European, American and Japanese survey, almost all (98.5%) are male and, undoubtedly due to their youth, most are single (72.1%). Most (63.9%) have graduated from university, and although the number that have completed graduate school is lower than in Europe, the United States and Japan, they seem to be highly educated when compared with the average in Asian countries. In terms of occupation, many are in software-related fields, but 15.8% are students, and of these 10.5% are in information related areas. Only in Japan were there fewer students in information-related areas than in other areas.
In Asia as well, most developers made a distinction between open source software and free software. 42.1% considered themselves to be affiliated with open source and 25.6% with free software. These percentages were about the same as in Japan. However, in terms of licenses, GPL was the overwhelming favorite (64.7%). The results provided a picture of people with an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
No particular characteristics could be ascertained with regard to development time and development target, but a high percentage of respondents were developing network and web services, and reflecting this trend many developers had experience with PHP and SQL. Linux was the most often used development and desktop environment (approximately 70%), but 15-20% used Windows, a figure that was in between the values for Japan and the West.
A higher percentage of respondents than in Japan were participants in the global community (52.6%), and their English language ability tended to be higher, but this should not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the English language ability of Japanese is poor. The high level of participation in the global community in Asia may be due to the fact that a domestic community has not developed in Asian countries because Asian developers have only recently begun OSS/FS development.
Most respondents had acquired their knowledge of OSS/FS development through self-study (54.9%), but many (22.6) had also studied in university. One distinctive characteristic was that OSS/FS-related education was being conducted not only in information-related fields (9.8%) but in science and engineering-related fields as well (11.3%).
As in the European, American and Japanese surveys, the motivation for oneself and others to participate in OSS/FS development was primarily to acquire and share knowledge and skills. However, one distinctive characteristic of the Asian survey was that many developers felt that others were involved for fame or profit. Most developers traced the beginning of their involvement in OSS/FS development to email exchanges with authors, friends and people on mailing lists, and unlike Japan, few developers traced the beginning of their involvement to coding.
The percentages of developers who derived direct and indirect remuneration related to OSS/FS development were roughly half and half (direct 45.1% and indirect 50.4%), about the same as in Europe and the United States. Noteworthy was the fact that in most cases the source of the assistance was a university or school (18.8%). Although the percentage of developers receiving assistance was about the same as in the West, the degree of recognition by companies and schools was not as high in Asia as in the West, and developers wanted increased recognition of their development activities.
As questions posed only in the Asian survey, respondents were asked about the development of skills in the OSS/FS community. In response, developers said that they felt they could learn more efficiently in the community than through seminars and other existing learning techniques (70.7%). The content of learning was wide-ranging, including not only technical matters such as programming techniques (54.1%) but also interpersonal and communications skills, and most developers (85.7%) said these were helpful in actual work activities.
Overall, for many of the questions, the responses of Asian developers placed them in between their counterparts in the West and in Japan. Although unfortunately the number of responses was not adequate, due in part to insufficient publicity, the survey did seem to reveal the active trends on the part of developers in Asia.
The most noteworthy difference between the results of the Asian and Japanese surveys is the activity on the part of the academic organizations. Teaching at academic organizations is not limited to information-related areas; moreover, since these organizations actively provide assistance to developers, young OSS/FS developers are produced one after another. In the summary to the FLOSS-JP survey, the authors listed university education as one of the problems with OSS/FS development in Japan. A study should be made of university education in not only Europe and the United States but in Asia as well, and the results reflected in Japanese education. In addition, private sector assistance is low in both Japan and Asia, indicating that OSS/FS business is still in the developing stages. Many developers said that they would like to make a living from OSS/FS business, and the establishment of OSS/FS business in Asia will undoubtedly be the key to the advancement of OSS/FS development. To achieve this, increased awareness on the part of society of OSS/FS development and improved public assistance policies for OSS/FS development will be indispensable.
It is the hope of the authors that the findings of this survey will help promote OSS/FS development in Asia and improve the circumstances of OSS/FS developers.
The FLOSS-ASIA survey is conducted with kind cooperation of Asian Open Source communities. The authors would like to offer their thanks to those developers who submitted responses and helped publicize the survey. We appreciate their great effort, especially for asian language translation and announcement in local community:
We also appreciate the European FLOSS survey team for their consent to use the questions willingly and for sending additional questions about skills development.
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