Re: [tlug] e-Tax and the timid gaijin

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

AbH Belxjander Draconis Serechai writes:

 > With regards Japanese use of corporate...
 >   its a change in mindset from "*I* will do this..." over to
 > "everyone uses... " and the results of years of sales pitching from
 > corporates to other corporates where the programming happens.

Heh, to be totally bigoted and ignorant about it, from your name you
might be from Estonia or Latvia where they actually get technology at
the highest levels.  But remember, it was the US that came up with
"nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

 > Open-Source has to gain traction in an area where corporates demand
 > corporate support or equal capability which *few*(if any?) open
 > source projects even have the volunteers for.

Well, I hope to change that in a small way in the near future.  And
Tsukuba-Dai did give us Ruby, whose primary developer went on to found
NaCl in Shimane of all places.  When I talked to him a decade ago he
claimed NaCl had not lost a customer ever (that was about 10 years
after its founding).

Unfortunately, at least in the academic world it's clear that a lot of
work is being done in-house by people with no clue how things work in
the real world.  At the other end of the scale at Tsukuba-Dai (aka
"the self-described MIT of Japan"), until a couple of years ago we
used a VPN client developed in-house, and I read the source (you had
to compile it yourself on Linux) -- it was scary bad.  Now they expect
you to use a standard client on your platform, thank goodness.

 >   I get the impression of marketing overrunning open source with
 > regards the promises made for what a system can do.

That's true everywhere, though.

 > I have not seen any OpenSource anything in  any of the High Schools
 > I taught at either...
 >   unless I installed the Workstation myself ans gave the students a
 > login to experiment with it.

Tsukuba is different, our kids get to play with robotics from
Cyberdyne, and the UT labs all dual-boot Linux though few students use
that capability.

Guys, we're gonna have to change the world ourselves.

Steve