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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
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.
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]