The Open Software Center is an organization within the Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA), Japan, one of Independent Administrative Agencies ¹ in Japan, and is operated under the budget of the Japanese government.
 The center was founded in 2003 and, it undertook to promote open source software (OSS) and open standards in a variety of directions including information service, development support, evaluation, and research studies.

 “Open Software” refers to OSS (Open Source Software) and Open Standards (technical standards of which specifications are publically available, any one can use and any one can participate to develop).
 Open Source Software (collaborative development) and Open Standards (interoperability) are inseparable and both indispensable concepts to build sustainable information society. The Open Software Center puts its efforts to disseminate OSS and Open Standards.