Japan's Trade and Industry Minister Takeo Hiranuma is to propose the study on open-source operating systems when he meets his Chinese and South Korean counterparts in Cambodia on Wednesday, a trade ministry official said.

The three economic powers of Asia are to hold the Phnom Penh meeting on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) trade ministers' meeting.

"The state (of Japan) has no intention at all of rejecting one specific product, but Microsoft's Windows is totally dominant despite some people's wish to try other products' functions," the Japanese official said.

"It is important to provide (electronics) users' with options -- some people may want to use Windows as it is convenient while others may want an open-source software due to concern over security and costs," he said.

Open-source systems such as Linux cannot be a serious alternative to Windows at present, he said.

"Open-source software represented by Linux is solid in terms of their core software, but their peripheral software for such functions as word processing, spreadsheet and printing are not," he argued.

The central governments need to promote the development of more user-friendly peripheral software for open-source operating systems, he said.

"Since Japan, China and South Korea had had little cooperation in the study of open-source software, we will exchange information and promote personnel interchanges," he said.

"If we see a possibility of developing an operating system in the course of such cooperation, we will also explore it," he said, adding the cooperation was not directly aimed at developing an original system.

The three countries are also expected to set up a joint private-sector promotion committee, which would be backed by the central governments, the official said.

Weekend newspaper reports said the committee would include Japanese businesses such as NTT Data Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., NEC Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Fujitsu Ltd.

Computer viruses targeting Windows' defects have been rapidly proliferating, awakening global industry officials to the importance of reviewing reliance on Microsoft's operating software.

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