Japan’s Next Step With Open-Source Software: Global Strategy

Japanese open-source developers are renowned for their skill, dedication, and meticulous focus on quality and detail. Their contributions have shaped global projects and produced standout achievements, such as the Ruby programming language, which exemplifies Japan's influence in open-source development.

However, corporate policies in Japan have often been cautious regarding open source, particularly concerning licensing, lack of resources for future development, security worries, and other perceived limitations. While large Japanese corporations contribute significantly to open-source projects, they lag behind their U.S. and European counterparts in leveraging open-source as a core component of their products and services.

This is now beginning to change. Open source is increasingly recognized as a way to accelerate development and expand global reach. Japanese companies are looking to open-source as a tool for increasing the speed of development, not just as a way to get projects up and running. 

Hitachi employs well north of 250,000 people worldwide and offers software products in an incredibly broad range of industries. Recently, it announced the establishment of an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) to lead its strategic utilization of open source worldwide.

According to Hitachi’s announcement, the OSPO will “survey advanced OSS, plan utilization strategies, manage compliance with OSS licenses and other regulations, train advanced engineers, and promote the propagation of OSS.” The scale of this initiative is noteworthy: the program is starting with 60 members and plans to expand to 100, including personnel from outside Japan.

Does this signify a broader shift in Japan’s open-source strategy?

In researching Japanese articles on open source, I discovered information on the efforts of Hitachi's open-source employees, including Yuichi Nakamura, an advocate and specialist recently named head of the new Hitachi OSPO.

A recent discussion between Nakamura, Takashi Norimatsu (Hitachi), and Yuku Takahashi (Flywheel) sheds light on how Japanese developers involved in open-source are working to extend their international impact. The information has been translated and edited slightly.

• Yuichi Nakamura, chief OSS strategist of the OSS Solution Center, is also an evangelist at the Linux Foundation Japan and a founder of Cloud Native Computing Japan (CNCJ). He is committed to developing the open-source community in Japan and was just named Head of Hitachi OSPO.
• Takashi Norimatsu, the Keycloak Community Financial-grade API (FAPI) Implementation Leader, began his career developing firmware for communication devices and entered the OSS space in 2008. He has contributed to numerous projects, including implementing Holder-of-Key Tokens with Mutual TLS Certificate Bound Access Tokens in Keycloak, Proof Key for Code Exchange (RFC 7636), and various signature algorithms. Norimatsu frequently collaborates with international organizations and speaks at global developer events.
• Yuku Takahashi, currently the tech lead for Qiita, a popular information-sharing platform for engineers, is a highly skilled CTO and the first employee of Increments. A graduate of Kyoto University with a master’s degree in Social Informatics, Takahashi is now a software engineer at Flywheel Inc.

Contributions from developers like Nakamura, Norimatsu, and Takahashi highlight Japan's growing ambition to play a more prominent role in the global open-source community.

Personal Path, Getting Started With OSS

Takahashi: What made you start using OSS?

Nakamura: I myself started using OSS when I was a student. I used open source simply because it was free to use, but the more I played around with it, the more interesting it became. When I joined Hitachi and was assigned to the research and development department, SELinux had just emerged, so I began to seriously work on OSS as part of my job.

Norimatsu: In my case, this may not be an exciting answer, but to be honest, the reason was that I started using it for work. When I was a student, and when I first joined Hitachi, I had never even considered the concept of open source. Around 2008, I was working with embedded devices for network communication, and I discovered Linux, which was being used there, and I've been using it ever since.

When I created smartphone apps and back-end web servers, I used the Spring Framework and other frameworks. I didn't choose them on my own, but I started to use OSS. From my experience, I feel that this was the trend in the industry as a whole from around 2010.

Takahashi: The boundaries are vague, but compared to large companies, startups lack human resources and cannot develop everything in-house, so unless they build on software developed by someone in the world, they cannot compete with the big players. Therefore, the starting point is inevitably to use OSS.

Nakamura: It's true that not long ago, there was an atmosphere of "just wanting to make it," even at Hitachi, but in recent years, development has become a race against talented startups and large companies around the world to speed things up. I think we're moving in the direction of accelerating development by making good use of OSS.

Norimatsu: I guess it's a natural progression. If you look around the world, things are moving at a much faster pace than they used to. If you want to compete, you simply have to do things quickly, and Hitachi is also increasing its use of OSS.

Of course, there are some fields where OSS cannot be used, but there is definitely a trend toward open-source software that was previously proprietary. I think that is the trend in the industry.

Takahashi: It's true that when developing something, you should spend time-solving your own unique problems, and there is a tendency to use tools that can be combined with other existing tools to solve problems that can be solved. Being in a startup, I often feel that kind of value firsthand. I think that this way of thinking is highly compatible with the use of OSS.

By the way, both you and I are involved in security-related OSS. Are there any areas you would like to focus on in the future? As part of the Hitachi Group, is it inevitable that security-related OSS will become more prevalent?

Nakamura: As a group, Hitachi also manufactures things like elevators and home appliances, so I think we will focus on a wide range of fields that only Hitachi can provide, such as services that connect and combine things. Also, because Hitachi is promoting safety and security, I think we can go deeper into the security field beyond just Keycloak and authentication.

Norimatsu: Personally, I think that data analysis is one area where OSS is becoming the norm. In Hitachi's case, I feel that the use of open source will be promoted even more in areas such as AI and machine learning.

Motivation for Releasing OSS Publicly and Running a Development Community

Nakamura: What motivates people in the startup community you work in to release OSS?

Takahashi: It's very difficult to answer that question. First of all, I am aware that I am truly indebted to OSS, and I want to provide something in return. When I was a university student, I read "Web Evolution" (Chikuma Shinsho) by Norio Umeda, and learned about the idea of openness and was influenced by it, but now it has become so natural that I wonder, "Why am I doing this?"

Nakamura: That's true. I'm from a different generation, but I've been using OSS since the beginning, so it felt natural to me to release it. However, after I joined the company, I was told that there was an internal procedure to follow when I tried to release it, and I remember being quite surprised. I'm used to the procedures now, but the culture of OSS is as universal as it was in the past.

Takahashi: Related to that, I think there are many different ways to get involved with OSS. Especially with large OSS products, there are many different aspects to it, but what motivates you to set up an OSS Security Technology Association and actively work on community management?

Nakamura: I used to write a lot of SELinux-related code, so I founded the group in the hopes of finding people to talk to about this field in search of technical stimulation. Once we started, we had many technical encounters, such as finding people who would write SELinux tuning code with us. It was fun. I hope that young people will also enjoy such technical encounters.

Takahashi: In OSS, there are active connections between companies, which is fun and beneficial. I feel that way too.

Nakamura: If you don't look at the outside world, you won't be able to get active inside either. At study meetings like the one you attend, there are times when we have endless, nerdy conversations, but I think this is possible because OSS specifications are open and there are few secrets.

Norimatsu: From the perspective of a participant, I think it's great that there is a place where we can exchange various opinions. I think all engineers feel the same way. Since each culture is different, talking about different technologies and being exposed to different ways of thinking is stimulating and helps me grow.

Nakamura: As someone who runs events, I'm curious about what motivates participants.

Takahashi: Realistically speaking, I think that most people who attend as individuals are pure-hearted, but those who come as part of work often seem to have the goal of "hiring good people."

Nakamura: It's true that in the past, recruitment activities were carried out behind the scenes at the SELinux Users Group, and someone once said to me, "I was able to change jobs thanks to the Users Group." (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

Nakamura: Recently, I've heard rumors that if you have a lot of stars on GitHub, it's easier to change jobs. Is that true?

Takahashi: What do you think? When it comes to changing jobs, even if you are familiar with a particular company's closed products and source code, you may not be able to use that knowledge at your new workplace. Experience using major OSS is likely to be useful at your next workplace, so I think it can act as a risk hedge.

Nakamura: I see. I think there will be many more in the future, but I think the circle of OSS will expand from the community. I think the idea and culture of OSS will spread to the creation of new services other than programming, and the world will become more and more open.

How Hitachi Enables OSS Engineers to Feel Rewarded and Grow Rapidly

Takahashi: You two are involved in security-related projects, aren't you? I feel that in fields like security and infrastructure, where stable operation is the norm and attention is only drawn to problems, individual achievements are less likely to attract attention. Hitachi is developing businesses that are related to the foundations of society, but do you have any initiatives in the company to find cases where "no problems occurred" and recognize those cases?

Nakamura: As far as I know, there is no such thing as security alone, but there are cases where a large-scale system project is successfully put into production and awarded. In the case of security, if an incident occurs, it will attract attention, so it may be rewarding, but it is difficult. It is best to have a technology that you can see is working.

As you say, I think that when it comes to real infrastructure, the difficulties tend to increase. SELinux, which I first worked on, works so deeply that you don't even know it's running, so it doesn't get any attention and it was difficult to continue. In that respect, Keycloak, which I'm working on now, works in a visible place like the authentication screen, so it's easy to notice it, and it's rewarding.

Norimatsu: In my experience with social infrastructure and security, there were always no problems. It's not like other software where you can announce that you can do something new, so now that you've asked me that question, I think it's true that it's a very difficult job to evaluate.

Nakamura: Hitachi makes systems that are used by everyone and affect society. I feel that many people in the company are motivated by this fact, that such systems are up and running and that we have received orders for them. I personally felt happy when Keycloak was included in a system out in the wild that everyone could use.

When I used the system myself, I was impressed that "Keycloak works!" I feel that such a rewarding experience is one of the great things about working at Hitachi, which is involved in a wide range of areas of society.

Takahashi: One of the motivations for me working on Qiita was the sense of accomplishment I got when I created a feature that made my engineer friends happy, as I am also an engineer myself. In Hitachi's case, that circle has already expanded to include the whole of society, including my parents, family, and friends, so I think I can understand why that is such a big motivation.

Nakamura: That's right. Hitachi supports all kinds of infrastructure for society, so as an engineer, I feel proud and motivated by that. Also, I personally think that being exposed to a wide variety of use cases means that my technical skills keep growing.

Norimatsu: When I'm involved in the development and implementation of Keycloak, I inevitably use English because I have many overseas counterparts. I can't say it's global, but it's fun to interact with people overseas. People who are interested in global development may be able to grow very happily.

Hitachi has an excellent environment for engineers who want to get actively involved with OSS, including going to conferences to give presentations and talking directly with developers, as I do.

Reference: https://qiita.com/official-columns/interview/202102-hitachi-2/