世論 What Japan Thinks

Despite numerous government announcements regarding Linux initiatives, little real progress is being made, with the official English web pages describing the project in fact looking rather dead. In order to find out what is actually happening in government offices, japan.internet.com published the results of a survey by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into introducing Open Source Software (OSS) in the public sector.

Demographics

On the 4th of December 2007 330 people from the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employen in the public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.0% of the sample was male, 3.9% were in their twenties, 42.7% in their thirties, 43.9% in their forties, 7.9% in their fifties, and 1.5% in their sixties.

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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the matter of the use of open source software in the public sector.

Demographics

On the 9th of April 2007, 332 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. All of the respondents worked in the public sector. 82.5% were male, 7.5% in their twenties, 38.3% in their thirties, 42.2% in their forties, 9.6% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

A number of years ago an initiative to promot the use of Linux within local goverment and other public sector locations was started, with many local authorities and the IPA, Information-technology Promotion Agency, carrying out open source software trials, but this survey suggests that the penetration at the client side has been minimal.

Note that a previous survey covering both the private and public sectors also found there was an overwhelming majority of Windows users.
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japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into server operating systems in small and medium-sized businesses. On the 10th of March 330 people employed in companies with less than 100 people, working in management, board-level, sales, technical or other specialist positions completed the survey. It may be worth comparing the results here with a previous survey on desktop operating systems.

Demographics

86.4% of the sample was male, 5.2% in their twenties, 39.1% in their thirties, 41.8% in their forties, 8.8% in their fifties, and 5.2% in their sixties.

Being in a large company, I don’t count for this survey, although our intranet seems to be powered by some sort of Linux-based system, I suspect. Within each team, however, file servers tend to be Windows; no-one is terribly interested in setting up anything more advanced, and in fact… ahh, perhaps I might get into company confidential information, so I’d better stop now.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with JR Tokai Express Research, at the start of June looked at what engineers thought about changing to Linux. They interviewed 330 engineers (not just software, I don’t think), with 90.6% male (a sad reflection on women in the workplace), with 12.7% in their twenties, 43.9% in their thirtiees, 37.6% in their forties, 5.5% in their fifties, and just one person, or 0.3% of the sample, aged sixty or over.

The reasons for people refusing to use Linux on their primary desktop seem interesting (just for the record, I would probably put myself in this category); the top answer, the lack of usable applications, doesn’t mention what sort of stuff people feel is missing. Next, Windows (Microsoft Office, I suppose) document compatibility; if my workplace is anything to go by, there are a number of (needlessly, IMO) complex macro-based documents that we use, which, I hear, causes major problems for the free software alternatives. The third reason, difficulty in set up and settings is mostly untrue, although there are problems if you have an unsupported device that needs a manual install. Other applications often don’t stick a nice friendly icon on your menus when they finish, which is a genuine problem.
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