While this article from News.com in July shows the ambivalence present in Asian countries towards FLOSS, yesterday's article in CNN announced a Japanese initiative that has definitely made waves. Microsoft reacted immediately, as you can read about in this article also from News.com. As mentioned, Microsoft has tried to address the security concerns by opening some code from Windows to Asian governments, but this doesn't really address the embedded market for which this research is to be funded.

It seems ironic that Microsoft is pouting about government involvement. I've heard from some acquaintances here that officials from Microsoft and the US government have visited some Costa Rican government offices together to talk about compliance audits for software licences. The general feeling is that this is a bit high-handed and intimidating. I guess Microsoft feels that government help is only unfair when the other guy does it.

Willy Smith reporting from Costa Rica