A meeting of senior officials from the three East Asian countries will be held in Beijing on Saturday on policies related to information technologies, said the official at the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

"The agenda of the meeting will include establishment of standards for the use of Linux as our countries aim to share the results of research on open sources," he added.

Representatives of major hi-tech companies will join the government delegates in a parallel meeting in Beijing on the same day, said the ministry official in charge of information processing.

He said the Japanese companies to take part in the government-private meeting would include Hitachi Ltd., NTT Data Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., IBM Japan Ltd., NEC Corp., Nomura Research Institute and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.

Linux, developed by Finland computer scientist Linus Torvalds and upgraded nearly continuously by volunteer programmers worldwide, is a free operating system adapted by computer makers and other users under their own specifications.

The Beijing meetings are aimed at promoting technological cooperation in improving computer system security and lowering the cost of software for personal computers and other products, through the use of the Linux system, the business daily Nihon Keizai said.

SPACE.WIRE