The Beaverton, Oregon-based open source promotion group has had a presence in Japan for some time with a test facility in Yokohama, but is looking to the Asia-Pac region to drive the next stage in its rapid development.
Masanobu Hirano will attempt to ensure that growth as the OSDL’s first director of Asia. Hirano was previously president of Red Hat Japan and general manager of Red Hat North Asia. The Linux vendor earlier this week strengthened its own Asian management team with the appointment of a new vice president of regional operations.
OSDL has been talking up the opportunities for Linux and other open source software projects in Asia this year and in March outlined plans to create a Customer Advisory Council in Japan after the successful first meeting of its European CAC in February.
The group already has some big name members from Asia including Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, Miracle Linux, Mitsubishi, NEC, Toshiba, 10 Art-ni, and Linux distributor IP Telecom in Japan, as well as Beijing Co-Create Open Source Software Company and Beijing Software Testing Center in China.
