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Korea Replacing 120,000 Windows with Linux
The Korean government has just signed a contract with Hancom to purchase 120,000 copies of HancomLinux Deluxe 2.0 (which is basically Red Hat OS + tweaks + korean language support + KDE localized) and HancomOffice 2.0. Thats quite a big achievement. Here is Hancom's Press Release about it.
Just think about it,
We know that India and China are battling it out to see who is going to be the powerhouse computer programming center and here Korea may have just pulled a coup by declaring openSource to be something that the gov't official supports. I dont know about you, but I would now look towards Korea as a contender for the place to where computer programming is acutaly done. Think of the costs savingd from using opensource
(I know OpenSource still costs money to run, but just think of the savings Korea will experince)
Thanks for reading
Sigs are dangerous coy things
During the US-USSR cold war there was a notion espoused by the US think taks called, "Domino Theory". It postulated that once a country within a geographic region changed to a communist government, it's neighbors would be more likely to do so. Hence the US policy of containment that we have seen since WWII.
Now, does this analogy apply to Free vs. Monopolistic Software ? We have recently seen the Chinese undertake a government program to promote free software over Microsoft. Now Korea. Is India next? Or Japan?
Granted, geography is not necessarily a factor in this "war" but language certainly is. When can we expect this to spread to Europe or (better yet) the US?
Globally, IT dependence on Windows has been a blight on the evolution and advancement of computing tech by homogenizing platforms and marginalizing new, innovative, and/or different domestic manufacturers (eg Sharp's X68000, the NEC PC-980x platform).
Good to see Korea join Mexico & China start working on self-sufficiency rather than the pernicious co-dependence of taking the easy route of being a MS shop.
Competition is a good thing, but many of the zealots here will go waaayyy out of their way to avoid Microsoft products, even if it costs them (and their employer) a significant amount due to wasted time, effort, poor maintainability, and incompatibility with what the rest of the world is doing. As an employer, I'd fire most of the jackasses I hear spouting this quasi-religious Linux crap. Want to use Linux? Do it on your own time. Don't spend the next 3 weeks, on my nickel, trying to figure out how you can avoid using Word and Excel, replacing them with 3rd rate buggy incompatible not-yet-ready-for-primetime facsimiles.
For most Americans Capitalism=Free and Comunism="Very bad thing that i dont really know what it is but have been taught to hate.... OO yes. and they eat little children for breackfast"
That's not strictly true. Sales of Windows is good for Microsoft and its suppliers (which, true, is a huge part of the economy). If a suitable replacement for Windows was available at a lower price, it would help Microsoft's customers (which are also a big part of the economy). It would lower the cost of the operating system software, which would increase the amount of money consumers will spend on other things (increasing production throughout the economy), and which would allow businesses to increase profits (or lower prices), since their costs would have lowered (either case would increase production).
I've tried StarOffice, AbiWord and a few other things. They all barf in one way or another
on some of the Word or PowerPoint docs that I must be able to display and edit. These are mostly IEEE standards documents. IETF is fortunately more enlightended.
Since I only have to work with such things about 10% of the time, Vmware has been the solution for me. Expensive? Absolutely since I purchase both vmware and M$. Expensive hardware too since running two operating systems requires more memory. Vmware sucks up a lot. But it works flawlessly for me.
I'll give Hancom a try.
I can't imagine a government agency standardizing on it if it didn't work well. Even so, I have a queasy feeling about whether the software can readily accept my ieee documents or not. Their webpage cites "Enhanced compatibility with MS office files" - kind of noncomittal. Even so, I'll try this before something that seems overly pretentious and overly hyped like Lindows.
It may be worth mentioning that I would really prefer that Adobe had not backed away from Framemaker on Linux. But that's no longer an option.
g
Gates took 10s of BILLIONS of dollars OUT of our economy by his extortionary pricing, something he could only have done by breaking the law in creating a monopoly.
Think of the lost rollover that occurs when money is normally allowed to recycle through the economy... by most counts as many as 7 times.
Think of all the smaller businesses he destroyed by stealing their code and rolling it into his OS.
Think of all the REAL INNOVATION he (and other companies) stifled by agreggious patents and copyrights. The mind boggles at where operating systems and software could be right now if progress hadn't been held back.
Gates took and took and took from the community, primarily through the BSD license and a lot by outright theft, and gave back only agreggious EULAs, higher "license" fees, and an army of lizard lawyers to intimidate the 'lower class' into submission.
Think of the lost revenues, increased expenses and wages and lost productivity that occurs every time an OS made by Gates crashed. I would wage that sum to be well over a TRILLION dollars. A value reflected back into the price of computer software and equipment.
THink of the BILLIONS that have been stolen because GATES was too (stupid, greedy, unconcerned) to publish an REAL OS, web server and browser than the imitation swiss cheese he calls software.
Go troll someplace else. Your memory is too short to be useful at
Really? Why, then, did the CIA:
overthrow the Iranian democracy and replace it with the shah when the president proposed to nationalize oil (1953)?
overthrow the Guatamalan democracy when the leader nationalized the United Fruit Company's holdings?
assinate Rafael Trujillo, the previously supported dictator of the Dominican Republic when his business interfered with American business?
kill George Papandreous, who refused to bow down to American companies?
assassinate Salvator Allende, democratically elected, and replace him with Pinochet?
and don't give me that bullshit about defending democracy; most of these countries WERE democracies before the CIA got in there; and those who replaced the old governments were much worse than those they replaced in terms of running a police state.
Why do we endorse the IMF and WTO, which, in exchange for much-needed economic aid, undermine democracy to replace it with wishes of the largest companies and richest people in America?
In practice, the Domino Theory had more to do with the beleif that nations who demonstrated independance from Washington's spehere of influence (even if they didn't become Communist or pose a threat to the U.S in any way) were a danger because they would serve as a good example for their neighbors who would be less open to exploitation by foreign governments and businesses. It's detailed in government documents from the Cold War. Noam Chomsky's supremly excellent What Uncle Sam Really Wants examines them in detail.
Most of our covert and not-so-covert operations were directed at those who posed a danger of not submitting. This lead to some of the worst atrocities of the century.
After MS tried to bully the Korean Government over the buyout of the bankrupt company that makes the popular "Hangul office suite", going so far as to ask the Hangul Office developers to stop working on the program if MS takes them over, this is a little retribution. The Korean Government is most likely quite annoyed by the transnational American software monoply.
Besides, Linux has a pretty good following in Korea. I installed my first Korean version of Redhat in 1996.
Still the problem is political. Korea has a lot of pirated MS software installed on Government computers-- especially police stations and public/university school computers. Since Korea's government doesn't want this to be an issue for them in trade negotiations or even issue when having to mobilize *raids* on their own agencies at the behest of MS/US, why not just eliminate the problem with Linux. Here is where greedy, inflexible licensing kills itself. Use the alternative to save political headaches not necessarily political ones.
At the heart of it, people are more forward looking in Korea towards technology and always seek ways in which to help their youth to get a decent education--corporate computing looks out for itself, yet public/school computing should be accessible to all students and at a low cost with the backing of smart government agencies. SInce Korea is developing a nationwide fiber network for itself, it will need an OS robust and distributable enough to satisfy needs. Linux is it. Besides, the national "good feelings" from using a Koreanized Linux OS is a lot more patriotic than using a foreign made and costly OS.
I always believed Linux was most suitable in countries where copyright protection/intellectual property was negligble anyway. Linux is just more legal for Korea at the end of the day. That is a fact the MS most face in Asia.
Does anyone else see the huge advantage of getting countries like China, India, Korea, etc. involved in Linux? Just think of how many developers would come out of that. Look at the population they have, and just think of what kind of progress could be made with their help. Microsoft can't keep up with that.
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"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]