[Desktop_architects] Desktop Meeting in Japan, Jun. 1

[Bastian, Waldo]

Takaaki Higuchi wrote:
>Bastian, Waldo wrote:
>> The problem with the disconnect between the asian markets and current
>> open source development communities is that in the above analysis
these
>> markets classify as a whole in the "free rider" category which makes
>> them essentially uninteresting for the development community. A
>> loose-loose situation for both sides.
>Some might be "free rider", but language barrier is very high
>for us in my observation at least in Japan.

To be clear, I used "free rider" in quotes to refer to the group of
people that do not contribute back as mentioned in the earlier example,
I don't want to imply any moral judgement with that term. I understand
that there are cultural and language barriers that contribute to if not
cause this situation. My point is that all parties would benefit if we
would find a solution to overcome these barriers.

>There are so many localized development efforts, but sometimes
>they are not put back to the upstreams. In most of cases,
>there are some mis or no communications because of language barrier.

So what can be done to overcome such barrier? I'm inclined to think of
bi-langual liasion persons, or maybe a liason group whose mission it is
to facilitate the integration of patches in upstream projects. Not sure
how scalable that is. The extra indirection would also be a bit of a
drag on the efficiency of the whole process. What do other people think
about this?

Cheers,
Waldo