ICSEA 2011 : The Sixth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances

Vitalizing Local ICT-industry by Acceleration of FLOSS-based Software ProductDevelopment: A Case Study of the ICT-industry in Okinawa
Jun Iio
Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.
Chiyoda-ku Tokyo, Japaniiojun@mri.co.jp

Yasuyuki Minei
OCC Corporation
Urasoe Okinawa, Japanminei@occ.co.jp

Abstract—Occupational condition differentials between major enterprises in areas around central Japan and smallmedium-enterprises in rural area are caused by hierarchicalstructure in Japanese industries on the information communication technologies (ICT). In order to remove this inadequate situation, we have drawn a blueprint to reformthe ICT-industry by proposing a reference model to develop
Free/Libre/OpenSource-based software products and a systemthat can support the development. The system has been implemented in an organization to help the local ICT-enterprises in
Okinawa and the reference model is also now provided by thatorganization. This paper reports an outline of the system andthat of the reference model. A result of test-run of software
products development along with the reference model, using
the support system, is also shown in this paper.
Keywords- OSS-based software products; local ICT-industry;development support.

I. I NTRODUCTION
The industrial structure of the information and communication technologies (ICT) industry in Japan is similar
to that of construction industry. That is, it is organized
in a pyramid structure, where a main contractor exists atthe top of the hierarchical structure. In the pyramid, notonly sub contractors but also sub-sub contractors, and oftenmuch deeper degree of contractors can be members of thehierarchical structure. In such an industrial structure, only
contractors in upper layers have opportunities to perform
creative activities, because they play roles in upper process, such as requirement analysis and/or system conceptual
design. Small-medium enterprises (SMEs) located at thebottom of the hierarchical structure are usually associatedwith lower process of system development. Hence, theymainly take charge of coding or relatively smaller unitfunction development, and tend to accept relatively nonchallenging work.
The occupational condition differential between major enterprises in the Tokyo area and SMEs in rural areas is causedby these hierarchical structures of Japanese ICT-industry. To
eliminate these differentials and to vitalize the local ICTindustry, this industry structure should be modified, or more
specifically, it should be corrupted and restructured. In orderto break the dependencies in the hierarchical structure, it is

Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011.

ISBN: 978-1-61208-165-6

Masato Kubota
E-Sir, Inc.
Naha Okinawa, Japankubota@e-sir.co.jp

Kazuhiro Ooki
NEC Corporation
Minato-ku Tokyo, Japanooki kazuhiro@bc.jp.nec.com

important for bottom members to have their own products.
As the first step to rebuild the structure, we have designed areference model of work process to develop Free/Libre/Open
Source Software (FLOSS) based products and a development
support system for the SMEs in the rural ICT-industries.
The ICT-industry in Okinawa is also embedded in thistypical problematic pyramid structure. In the ICT-industry
in Okinawa, many of ICT-enterprises are SMEs and main
customers of them are sub contractors and/or sub-sub contractors in a large project. They seldom close a contract withneither user enterprises nor public sectors directory. That is
one of the reasons why the ICT-related SMEs in Okinawa
have an occupational wage problem. Three years ago, we
have drawn a blueprint of an organization for industrial
reform to solve this problem. This organization is now
realized as an institute, named Ryukyu software businesssupport center.
II. O KINAWA S OFTWARE D EVELOPMENTACCELERATION P ROJECT
Based on the blueprint, “Okinawa software development
acceleration project” has been conducted from the fiscal year
2009. The aim of this project was to transform the local
ICT-industries in Okinawa from commission-based businessmodel into production-based business model. Because theproduction-based business can help SMEs to make contract
directly with end-users, this transformation was considered
to be needed to vitalize the local ICT-industries.
The goal of the project was to establish the standardized
software development method based on FLOSS project andto implement the supporting system environment whichdevelopers were able to utilize for developing their software
products. These functions are consolidated in the Ryukyu
software business support center in order to develop theirown software product based on FLOSS and its resources.
A. Background and Objective
In the Internet, there are varieties of software databasecalled “FLOSS repository,” where many FLOSS projects areregistered by developers from FLOSS communities. Suchsoftware can be used with no expense. Furthermore, we

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ICSEA 2011 : The Sixth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances

Figure 1. An overview of the Okinawa software development acceleration project and activities around the Ryukyu software business support center
located at the center of this figure.

can use, modify, and redistribute freely under the condition of licenses bundled with software. Many of FLOSS
are equipped attractive functions for users and they havepotential capacity to be commercial software products. However, there is always a possibility that the software qualityof FLOSS cannot satisfy appropriate level as commercial
product. For example, it can be considered hard to use fornovice users due to lack of install-function to install software
into different environment, non-Japanese messages shownby non-internationalized software prevent average Japaneseusers from operating the software easily, and so on.
In our project, we have established the reference modelof work process to develop FLOSS-based software products,
which has several steps starting with searching FLOSS,
screening, evaluating, and applying internationalization including localization, if needed. We designed not only thereference model but also implementation of the system
environment that can be used to support the work processof software development. In addition, the framework for
operating these systems efficiently was considered. These
services can be provided to ICT-enterprises in Okinawa
prefecture by Ryukyu software business support center sothat the ICT-industry in Okinawa will be vitalized and be
activated.
B. Overview of the ProjectThis framework is expected to help the ICT-enterprises
in Okinawa to acquire material as the basis of software

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ISBN: 978-1-61208-165-6

product development, several data, and other resources. ICTenterprises in Okinawa can put extra effort only to develop
additional functions that are considered to be needed in orderto suit it as their software product. This framework supports
ICT-enterprises to accelerate their software development
much rapidly and efficiently, that results in an establishmentof effective software business infrastructure in the local ICTindustry.
A basic concept of the project is shown in Figure 1. It
also illustrates a series of validation processes, an overview
of supporting system, and an image of acceleration of software development by participants from the ICT-industries in
Okinawa. The whole validation process contains screening,
evaluating, testing, internationalizing, and localizing.
III. S UPPORT S YSTEM AND R EFERENCE M ODEL OF
P RODUCT D EVELOPMENT
The system environment for the FLOSS-based software
product development and the reference model are explainedin this section.
A. Support System for FLOSS-based Software Product Development
Ryukyu software business support center provides its
working guidelines for FLOSS-based software development,
and members of the center can use the supporting system
for their development activities, which is implemented in thecenter.

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ICSEA 2011 : The Sixth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances

Figure 3. Work steps in the FLOSS-based software product development
project, begin with marketing process and end with registering materials
into portal database.

Figure 2.
An overview of the software development support systemprovided by the Ryukyu software business support center.

their products into the product catalogue and demonstration
environment and they will be public to the consumer.
B. Reference Model of Work Process

An overview of the system is shown in Figure 2. The
system is roughly divided into two parts. The public partof the system shown in the left half of the Figure 2 can beaccessed by everyone via the Internet and the restricted partof the system shown in the right half of the Figure 2 can beaccessed by authorized members, which are ICT-enterprises
in Okinawa prefecture. In either case, user has to access “theweb portal” at first.
Main content of the public part consists of a catalogue
and demonstration function for software products which
are developed and offered by ICT-enterprises in Okinawa.
The information provided only by the software catalogue isconsidered insufficient to present a whole image of software;thus demonstration system is prepared so that user canfigure out usability of the software as a practical manner.
Optionally, software can be exhibited by operation movies.
Restricted part of the system helps ICT-enterprises todevelop their software products which can be registeredinto the software catalogue. Firstly users have to log into
“development portal” and then carry on process management, member assignment and progress management, using
the project management function that is implemented within
the restricted part of the system. For the practical work insoftware development process, developers can use working
environment for their software product development. For
the evaluation, internationalization, and localization process,users can access adjunctive environment provided as a function of the system. Results of development are registered into
product material database. After the registration of productmaterials, if some ICT-enterprises proceed with additional
development by themselves and decide to make a saleof the software as their own products, they can register

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ISBN: 978-1-61208-165-6

Participants in the FLOSS-based software product development project execute tasks up to the work steps shown in
Figure 3.
Before starting the software product development process,a person in charge conducts market research to make clearthat what type of software is required and what type is not
required. This market survey is conducted on a regular basis
to catch up with market trends. The result of the market
research would be used for deciding what area should befocused on and which software should be tailored as a software product by each enterprise. This decision is made in thefirst product planning step. Next step is to extract FLOSSbased product candidates. To find the candidates, FLOSS
repositories such as SourceForge.net will be explored. In
this step, at least five or more FLOSS projects should beselected, because these candidates will be filtered at thefollowing steps and will be dropped depending on resultsof successive evaluations.
The software quality of each candidate is roughly estimated in the screening process, from the standpoint ofdevelopment stability, the number of current users, activityof its community, and so on. In this step, every evaluation
is judged by their information delivered from the website of the candidate projects. Note that FLOSS installation
and/or source-code analysis are not required. These practicalevaluations are performed in the subsequent evaluation step.
The second product planning step that is optional will be
conducted. In this step, what problems will be faced within the process of making FLOSS into software products is
discussed. The decision whether this action is taken or not
is depending on business strategies of ICT-enterprises. Froma practical perspective, this step will be started after thescreening process, and it will be being performed simulta-

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neously with the other subsequent processes.
The FLOSS candidates filtered by the screening step are
subjects of evaluating-and-test step. In this step, software
quality and license condition are investigated in details. Especially in desktop applications, localization is an important
issue for the end-users. If FLOSS is not internationalized
nor localized for Japanese, it is not familiar with Japaneseusers. Validating whether the software is internationalized
and localized for Japanese or not is very important for
the Japanese users. This work will be done in testing
requirement for the internationalization and localization step.
Finally, development process will be shifted into comprehensive decision making phase. In this step, possibility of theattractive software products with the candidates is examinedbased on the results of the sequential steps of screening,
evaluating, and considering the needs of internationalizationand localization. The results are registered into the database
if the candidates have some possibilities to make a business
contract. In a practical sense, the development requires
several developing steps on the internationalization and localization for the Japanese users. After that, considering thesecond product planning step, developed software products
can be published via the web portal in the public part of thesystem.
IV. E VALUATION OF THE S YSTEM AND O PERATION
For the purpose of validating the efficiency of the system
and reference model of operation, preliminary test-run was
designed and conducted from the middle of December 2010
to the end of February 2011.
The trial validation was conducted along with following
steps:
1) Interviews with key persons in higher educational
institutes in Okinawa
2) Workshop on the overview of the test-run3) Workshop on the practical work in the marketing step4) Workshop on the practical work in the screening step5) Workshop on the practical work in the evaluation-andtest step6) Workshop on the practical work in the internationalization and localization step7) Briefing session on how to operate the Protex IP tocheck licensing issues
A. Implementation Structure of the Validation
The trial had twenty two participants from eight companies that are the member companies of this project. All
participants were divided into five groups in order to evaluate
the proposed system and the working model.
There were two types of groups; the one was singlemembered group and the other one was hybrid group.
“Single-membered” represents that all the members in thegroup work for the same company and they work in the sameoffice. On the other hand, the members in the hybrid group

Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011.

ISBN: 978-1-61208-165-6

Table IT HE SCREENING RESULTS OF THE TEST- RUN .
FLOSSmagentoprestashop
zabbixSimple Groupware
Open Atrium
Concursive]project-open[
vtiger CRM
ERP 5.0

Score in the screening step

Result

41
70
59
51
55
38
60
63
36

NG
OK
NG
NG
NG
NG
OK
OK
NG

were gathered from different companies. In addition, designers in charge of each step of the reference working model
were participated in the training phase of the trial validation,
as lecturers teaching the details of each procedure.
The reason why these two types of working groups isbecause the Ryukyu software business support center islocated in the rural area of Okinawa and it is far from
Naha, the central region of Okinawa prefecture. Thus manyof engineers will use the system remotely, and sometimes
they will work in cooperation. The hybrid group can beconsidered as an emulation of practical use of the functions
provided by the support center.
Table I illustrates the results of the screening processduring the test-run. Scores were calculated from 0 to 100 inconformity with evaluation criteria in the screening process.
At the end of this procedure, the final result was decided
to OK if evaluation score is 60 or over. On the other hand,
if the final score was under 60, which is the case of NG
in the Table I, evaluation process for the FLOSS candidate
stopped.
After finishing the test-run, only the “prestashop” shownin the Table I has been reached to the final judgement andthe other factors has increased its final score up to 74 points,
which results in the conclusion that it has possibility to bea software product sold by the ICT-enterprise in Okinawa.
Note that ERP 5.0 got lower score than expected. The reasonof the low score is considered that the software has been
already famous enough in Japan and there is a company
supporting localization and promotion for the software in
Japan. That is, ERP 5.0 has already been well-suited forJapanese market and there seems no room for developing in
our project. Thus, the score of ERP 5.0 is relatively low.
Participants in this validation process have contributed
their comments to improve the reference model and supporting system.
Followings are selected reviews:• Although there are many difficult points to be not able
to make a decision in each process, appropriate advices
from instructor help me to solve the questions.
• I did not have opportunities to evaluate the tools pro-365

ICSEA 2011 : The Sixth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances

vided in the evaluation-and-test process, because theperiod of validation process was too short.
• It can be difficult unless the participants in the evaluation process have enough skills.
• The idea and method to narrow the list down toeffective products are considered valuable when we
have to struggle with FLOSS projects in the future.
V. R ELATED W ORK
Many FLOSS and its community evaluation methods havebeen proposed so far, like Open BQR[1], Open Source
Maturity Model (OSMM)[2], method for Qualification and
Selection of Open Source software (QSOS)[3,4], Open BRR(Business Readiness Rating for Open Source)[4], SQO-OSS
Quality Model[5], and QualiPSo[6]. Evaluation criteria usedin our screening process are based on a mixture of thecriteria defined in those evaluation methods.
In our evaluation-and-test process, check items arearranged in accordance with the international standard,
ISO9126[7] quality standards. As described in this standard,
the operator works on checking three categories of thesoftware quality: inner quality, outer quality, and quality-inuse. The inner quality and the outer quality are separately
defined as six quality features and twenty seven sub-quality
features. Also the quality-in-use is defined as four quality
features.
The evaluation-and-test process has an additional function
to verify the risk of license violation. According to Monden
et al.[8], about ten percent of FLOSS has contained reusedcode in its source code. To avoid GPL violation, it should be
confirmed that the software product does not have any GPL
contaminated code. Thus, Black duck software’s Protex IP
has been introduced in order to make sure of compliancewith the FLOSS licenses.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, the reference model and the system fordeveloping software product based on prospective FLOSS
are described. The model and the system are provided by
the Ryukyu software business support center in order totransform the structure of the local ICT-industry in Okinawa.
Implementing the system using well-known FLOSS, suchas MySQL, Track, PHP, Zend, and Subversion, has reminded
us that the FLOSS products were helpful to construct a
specific system quickly and efficiently. With the help of
these FLOSS products, we could develop the highly practicalsystem in a short development period. The system has
also its web-based user interface and it is provided by the
combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP; that is
the LAMP system. The decision to use LAMP stack resulted
in quick development and stable operation at present.
In the reference model using the system, working processes for screening and evaluating FLOSS products areneeded to be managed by administrators. However, since

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ISBN: 978-1-61208-165-6

those processes are complicated enough and there has someroom to modify in instruction of the working process, those
two working processes have been designed as independent
on the system.
Practically, the reference model is described with two
documents. One is system operation manual and the otheris a guidance document on the reference model. Several
methods were discussed and refined through the design ofthe reference model; it is composed of a method to focus ona specific area in the software classification as market survey,
a method to extract FLOSS according to the result of themarket survey, a method to apply screening process onto
FLOSS candidates, a method to derive evaluation items inaccordance with the (sub-) quality features that are suitableto validate the candidate software, and so on.
Regular operations of the Ryukyu software business support center have just started after preliminary discussion
phases. The ICT-enterprises in Okinawa prefecture should
bring forward their activities on developing their own software products with the help of the functions provided by thecenter. Promotion on the center’s operation remains as our
future work.
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[2] B. Golden, Succeeding with Open Source, Addison-Wesley
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[3] A. Origin, Method for Qualification and Selection of Open
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qsos.org/download/qsos-1.6-en.pdf[4] J.C. Deprez and S. Alexandre, Comparing Assessment Methodologies for Free/Open Source Software: OpenBRR and QSOS,
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[5] I. Samoladas, G. Gousios, D. Spinellis, and I. Stamelos, The
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