“Community,” which is a basis for human life, could be described as an “area or group of people with a sense of unity leading similar lifestyles.” Modern innovations in transportation and communication technologies have increased the scope of our activities, and have brought about large changes in the scale and types of communities we create. In particular, the recent development of the Internet has transcended the restrictions of physical space and has made possible the free exchange of communication in real-time regarding any item of common interest. This has developed the idea and very nature of “community” into something more international and more varied than ever before.

Furthermore, the spread and application of not only DSL and fiberoptic broadband communications networks but also technologies that allow the exchange of high-quality video and audio have paved the way for freer and more diverse Internet communities. Now, for example, people from all over the world with similar interests can gather and exchange information, or a number of doctors in distant places can cooperate in examining a patient suffering from a debilitating disease.

However, to succeed in creating a society with a truly free and diverse Internet community, it is not sufficient to just gather existing engineers. It is also important to develop software that will provide a smooth infrastructure. The software should not be provided by a limited number of companies and engineers, but should be created based on the ideas of those actually participating in the Internet community, and should continue to be improved by those users. We believe that open-source is the most powerful method to achieve this.

In light of this, here at Internet Community Pioneers with Open-Development, we plan to carry out activities to not only support the research and development of open-source software in the Internet community, but also to promote the general spread of the resulting software throughout society. We propose something entirely new for the future of inter-personal communication through the cultivation of a richly diverse Internet community.