About

What are the Aims of AsiaOSC?

AsiaOSC has several aims:

  • Promote open source and free software in Asia.
  • Provide a hub of information about open source activities in Asia.
  • Encourage use of open source to address widespread Asian issues such as producing localized software and content, and bridging the ‘digital divide’.
  • Improve networking and collaboration between Asian open source developers and policy makers.
  • Lower the barriers to entering the open source software development community.
  • Help to establish a large pool of open source software developers in Asia.
  • Allow Asian open source related organisations to promote their own products and services.

Where do I download the free software?

This site promotes free software and open source. When we say free, we mean free as in ‘freedom’. For more information, see the GNU project . If you want to download open source software packages such as various Linux Distributions, and OpenOffice.org, please see our mirror at mymirror.asiaosc.org.

Who is funding this centre?

AsiaOSC is currently fully funded by MIMOS Berhad. MIMOS Berhad is a technology R&D organisation that functions as an advisor to the Malaysian Government on technologies, policies and strategies relating to technology development. MIMOS would welcome formal or informal partnerships with other Asian organisations in order to enhance this initiative

How can I Contribute?

Get involved in the community:

  • Assist with adding relevant open source to our knowledgebase
  • Meet and network with others who are interested in open source on the message boards
  • Contact us about writing articles for the front page.
  • Consider hosting your open source projects at our free project hosting section, community.asiaosc.org.
  • Recommend us to others who may be interested
  • Link to our pages from elsewhere on the web

Why Asia?

MIMOS believes many of the issues related to open source are common to many countries, so there is an advantage to promoting open source at a wider level than nationally:

  • Every country can benefit from an official open source policy to promote open source in the Government and commercial fields.
  • Many open source activities are similar in many countries. For example, many localization issues are common to many countries. Co-operation will help everybody to work faster.

MIMOS decided to that the scope of this initiative should be targetted to Asia because:

  • Many different languages and fonts are used in Asia. The need for software to support this is most urgent in Asia.
  • The ‘digital divide’ is a worldwide problem, but this issue is widespread in Asia. MIMOS and its contacts have experience in tackling these issues through the use of technology.
  • Focusing an initiative in one region helps to establish a sense of community.
  • MIMOS has widespread contacts within Asia.

If you are not Asian or not based in Asia, you are still welcome to contribute. This initiative is only called the ‘Asian’ open source centre to help us focus on the needs most urgent to Asia.

Why ‘Open Source Centre’? Why not ‘Free Software Centre’?

While we strongly believe in the cause of Free Software, we feel that the term ‘free software’ causes confusion among people who are not familiar with the whole concept of free/open source. Hence we choose to name the centre ‘Open Source Centre’, whilst asking visitors to note that we strongly support all the four freedoms of software as defined by the Free Software Foundation.

What is the Future for the Project?

We aim to rapidly form a virtual community of Asian people interested in open source. We will gradually roll out resources to help developers, such as our list server lists.asiaosc.org and our community projects server community.asiaosc.org. If you have any ideas, discuss them in our message boards or contact us directly.

Who owns the copyright to the material in this website?

All content on this website authored by employees of MIMOS Berhad are copyright MIMOS Berhad. All content on this website authored by people who are not employees of MIMOS Berhad are copyright the authors. Please contact the copyright holder for permission to use material on the website. Authors of articles on the Wiki (Knowledgebase) can be found by clicking on the ‘Older versions’ link. All articles on the Wiki (Knowledgebase) are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and will have to remain under the same license unless otherwise licensed by the author/s.