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.

Comments

OpenSource Korea

[peripatetic_bum]

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

Domino Theory

[crumbz]

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?

Re:Domino Theory

[the eric conspiracy]

Monopoly isn't technically defined as any number. That is a persistent myth

Not correct. There are a number of quantitative measures that are used in various legal arenas to test for the presence anti-competitve market concentrations.

Example:

HERFINDAHL-HIRSCHMAN INDEX (HHI)--A measure of market concentration that's used primarily in merger cases. See the Justice/FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines of 1992, 1.5 (Antitrust Law & Economics Review, Vol. 23:2, at 68, 73, n. 17.) This concentration measure is calculated by summing the squares of the individual market shares of all competing firms there. Thus a market consisting of only 4 firms with shares of 30%, 30%, 20%, and 20% has an HHI of 2600 (30 x 30 + 30 x 30 + 20 x 20 + 20 x 20 = 900 + 900 + 400 + 400 = 2600). The HHI ranges from a high of 10,000 (a single-firm monopolist) to a number approaching zero (an atomistic market with, say, hundreds of very small firms). "Moderate" concentration is said to begin with an HHI of 1000 and "high" concentration at 1800. Id., pp. 69-70. The latter is roughly approximated by a top-4-firm share of around 50%.

Thus Microsoft's 95% desktop market share gives an HHI index greater than 9025, which is WAY above the high market concentration expected to lead to constrained competition.

Good for Self-Sufficiency

[Tadster]

It doesn't really matter what the incoming OS is, as long as it is open enough for the national IT infrastructure to develop self-sufficiency.

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.

Re:Major achievement

[VAXman]

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).

Re:what's MS gonna do?

[mother_superius]

...The United States government does consider its trade and communications part of its sovereignty. ... This shows what you get when people who honestly believe that corporations directly run the United States government go off the deep end.

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?