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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.
This is a major achievement for the free software world. Let's hope that other enlightened governments will do the same, instead of helping support the American monopoly.
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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
Sorry to be such a poopy-pants. (Has anyone heard any more about Mexico's initiatives?)
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
i wonder if, when a redhat employee reads that, if they feel like they should get a piece of that pie.. or if they all genuinely think "yay, good for them!" i mean 120,000 copies is quite a shot in the arm. open source rules but this must make some people jealous. maybe its just commercialism's power of me :-D
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
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?
This is a great win for the Linux community. This does bring up an interesting point. What kind of internationalization packages are available for Linux? The main reason for asking is, with an ever growing intall base in Asia, there will be more and more applications developed and contributions made to open source software with a need to be ported from English to say Korean or Chinese and vise versa. How easy is this to do?
--I don't mind the school of hard knocks, it's those darned refresher courses I hate. =)
In a unrelated story, North Korea will still be running MS Windows as dictated by their leader, Kim Dae Gates, or "Bill" as he is affectionatley known by the loving people of his communist country...
When I got my first computer... it was a windows 95 machine (yes, I know, i'm a very late bloomer)... and I learned that thing inside and out to where I just *knew* windows intuitively. When I learned that the entire computer world was not windows... I took my first oppurtunity downloading the slackware disksets. It was more difficult I think, because I was so used to the windows point & click interface. Now I run a combination of BSD/SlackWare/Win2k all intuitively... but I would have rather been introduced to any of the unices as my primary introduction to computers.
As for these Koreans, I think this is a major step in computer education for those new to computers. Those who are not familiar with computers whatsoever will have no problem adapting to Linux, since they know nothing else. When learning any non windows operating system... you get so much of a better feel on how computers actually work. I think it's a great tool to learn, and even as just a user... I've noticed RedHat is great for that purpose.
Most likely, what they are really buying is some form of support contract for 120,000 linux installations (and possibly that many sets of CDs and manuals). The level of support provided would depend on the price paid.
On the other hand, it is possible that some of the Korean-language stuff is proprietary, so they must buy per-seat licenses.
Or it could be that the Korean beurocracy is in the habit of buying one copy per machine, even if they don't have to.
Not quite, you have to get the US goverment to adopt linux on 23% of the newly bought systems.
:) ) )
:)
>are equavalent to 23% of annual Windows based PC procurement
Does anyone else has a problem with the figures in the little section called "About HancomLinux, Inc."
>The company now has more than 90 employees and 4 locations worldwide.
Let's assume that the 90 employees are located in the Republic of Korea and the "more than" are located in the other 3 locations worldwide.
How will they take care for those 120k desktop computers?
(Assuming, they aren't all tech-support, technicians and have other customers...
The spelling at least suggest they have no secretary and spell checker (look who's talking
I smell a job-opportunity
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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.
...and Michael Tiemann says the desktop market is dead...
You haven't heard of imaging?
I mean, besides the many ways you can script the installation process, there's certainly ways that you can image the completed installation and just copy that image to all machines with the same hardware configuration.
And yes, it can be done easily and relatively cheaply. I used to work for a consulting firm that used this process to upgrade about 3000 machines at one company over just a few weekends. Basically identified the different hardware configurations (I think they had about 8), and we ran around with floppies that booted and imaged the machine from a central server (which had a copy made previously from an installation done by hand).
Each floppy was configured to grab a different image from the server (identified by machine model). Each person in our team was responsible for upgrading all machines in one wing of one floor of one of their buildings. When done, a new wing was assigned to be done.
Each machine took about 10-15 minutes to image, but we didn't sit there and wait until they were done. We just identified machine, inserted floppy, move on to next one, then come back later to retrieve the floppy.
All of this was done with Norton Ghost to image a bunch of Windows installations, and it worked wonderfully. I'm sure it can be done just as easily with Linux installations too.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
If they're not too far to the right, you can paint linux as being a move away from capitalism, leading us to a less money-driven culture.
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.
Hmmm I see 2 scernario's here.
1)Govt. official goes and buys one copy. Makes the required hundreds of copies(there is a huge chunk of time) and then team of people installs hundreds of copies, another huge chunk of time. Now who wants to be the company doing support for these 120000 suddenly gained users?
2)Govt. buys contract for software/manuals/training/support.
Which option is gonna be a pain in the neck, and which option won't?
1 tequila 2 tequila 3 tequila floor
Most distro producers give away download editions but that does not mean that all distributions are free. On the contrary, it is IP of the producer and cannot be reproduced without their approval (for download or free editions, this approval exists.) GPL, LGPL, BSD and other licences found in a typical linux distro does not forbid commercial activity.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Is 120,000 South Koreans sending emails spreading the good word from commrade Stallman to any North Koreans who sends them .doc attachments. It'll probably start a war.
A new sense for the word defenestrate.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
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"
http://www.infrastructures.org/
Actually, it's worth all sysadmins taking a look at that site anyway.
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It appears that Hancom is going after the whole asian market, not just Korea. Versions of this office is being sold in Taiwan with localized chinese. Maybe because they have used the Qt toolkit, as it uses using unicode internally and provides very easy localization support (using the tr() ) function for those who know Qt).
look here for a screenshot. [Big5 encoding]
Running on a few megs, this might give MS a run for its money. I'm just wondering how it implements its input methods (Input methods in linux is still far behind Windows).
Hancom Office isn't free, so I don't think that Hancom would appriciate the Korean government only buying one copy for 120000 systems.
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
It's only Windows that requires a support person for every 5 desktops. Other OS's are designed to make good use of a network.
http://www.infrastructures.org/
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I think this is big enough for a PC magazine to be able to call MS and ask what their opinion is.
It will probably end up like... "At press time no MS official was available for comment." That will be enough for now.
But within a year, when the Korean goverment decides to replace windows from ALL of their machines there are chances to see a leaked internal marketing memo or something similar. Just for fun lets imagine how would it start...
"Why did we loose the South Korean market".
I know that this is unlikely to happen, but it is possible and if it happens I will be cracking myself up!
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
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I suspect that they are switching because Bill is *already* trying to sting them for NNNmillion dollars in upgrade fees.
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You forgot to factor in the time necessary to open 120K software boxes worth of shrink wrap.
The Korean government has decided to support a local company, and in the process cut its cost, cut import costs for the country, and set a precedent - maybe other Korean companies will do the same now, and thus cut imports even more whilst boosting the local economy.
Yes, a political choice, but it wouldn't have been made if the software was not up to the task. The only certainty is that Microsoft have most likely lost 120,000 * ~$300 (XP + Office) = $48,000,000 in revenue because of this choice.
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If more countries start doing this, MS is going to get mad.
They will contact their friends in the American government, who will also get mad.
They will be mad because of an infringement on their "sovereignty." Remember that the government considers its trade and communications channels part of its sovereign territory, even if it's outside the borders of the United States.
The protection of the MS monopoly is definitely our sovereign right, when it's construed that way.
Will there be an invasion of Korea? Not likely, but I could see some OS requirements being put into international trade regimes such as the W.T.O.
This is too clumsy to be a troll, so I'm just going to guess that it's almost unbelievably silly. The federal government of the United States does not have any interest in protecting Microsoft's monopoly. The decision of the South Korean government to purchase a product produced by a South Korean company, instead of by an American company, infringes in no way on anybody's sovereignty, and there is nobody in either the United States government nor in Microsoft who considers it to be so.
The United States government does consider its trade and communications part of its sovereignty. It would probably get upset if South Korea, say, banned the sale of American-made software products, because that is bad for trade. That is nowhere near the case here.
This shows what you get when people who honestly believe that corporations directly run the United States government go off the deep end.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
However, Karl Marx never defined communism as a political system, but as a relation of production in which the producers have control over the tools necessary for production. That is IMHO exactly what free software does. It prevents the accumulation of software as capital (dead labor) thus guaranteeing access to written software to those who need it in order to write new software. Yep, that's communism. What part of it you don't like?
-- look, cheese ahoy!
I've noticed that it's governments, more than any other institution or demographic, that seem to latch on to Linux the most (witness adoptions in Scandinavian countries, the NSA in the States, China and so on). However, most distributions don't specifically target government at all; they generally either go after the serious Linux user or try to focus on user-friendliess (Corel and Mandrake, as examples).
What if focusing on government demands was the answer? Ask them what they want, or develop with government needs (security, administration, etc.) in mind. If you do it right it shouldn't be hard to convince a government, be it municipal, provincial/state or maybe even national, that it's in their best interest to use a very cheap OS with few security holes and entertainment-based distractions (as much as we love Solitaire).
If you can get government workers to be exposed to Linux every day at work, it would encourage them to use it at home (though some might try to avoid it if the experience is unpleasant). That would then increase the general user base and give more reason for civilians to use it (as their friends would use it).
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
What I've heard is that theKompany have actually made a deal with HanCom, which includes: providing HanCom with licenses of Rekall, Kivio, etc. and promoting and selling HanCom Office in the US.
Slashdot me with L$s!
Nope, first, most dot coms never tried to make a buck by selling any product to consumers. Their real business plan was to sell a two-bucks business plan to shrewed bankers who then went and unloaded it in the 401k plans of idiots. New linux dot coms were part of the bubble. Most of them "failed" like everything else, nothing particular about linux here. If you want to understand how this works, go see "The Producers".
Quite a few succeded to survive, including Red Hat and other linux based shops. Obviously, the company that initiated this thread is doing fine.
Besides, the point of free software is not to empower big capitalist firms but flesh and blood producers, i.e. software writers, consultants, sysadmins, etc. People who use software to produce, not people who sell software other people produce. Just because some business idea failed does nothing to undermine the success of free software.
Got a love it. Next time I go to Paris, I am going to wrap up a nice Debian CD in flowers and put it on old Marx's grave. Ha ha ha!
-- look, cheese ahoy!
hey folks, aren't there still two Korea's?
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The REAL reasons that the Korean government is adopting Linux is not because they believe Linux is necessarily a better OS but because Hancom's Office Software, more specifically, Hancom Word runs on Linux.
Since the early 90's, the most widely used word processor in South Korea has been Hancom Word. Before Windows 95, it ran under DOS and when Windows 95 came out, a graphical version appeared. Even today, most universities and all government agencies use Hancom Word because of national pride and preference to software developed within Korea and by Koreans. It was a brillient move to port the software to Linux/Unix(I'm not sure which version of Unix it ran under... i believe the originally the port was targeted for Solaris) and with the sudden interest and popularity of Linux in Southeast Asia, Hancom is reaping the benefits.
100% of the Korean Government is currently already running the Windows version of Hancom's Word so it was a particularly easy decision to choose free/open source operating system over M$ Windows... Meaning, that if 23% of the annual purchase is Linux/Hancom Office, it's because 77% percent is Windows XP but running Hancom's Word Windows version. It simply doesn't matter to the Korean government what OS it runs as long as it runs Hancom Word... It doesn't have to worry that 23% of its documents will be incompatible to the rest. Since every government agency runs Hancom Word, 100% compatibility is guaranteed.
Sadly, this isn't the case outside the government and education system. The majority of the Korean public run Windows because virtually all PC games run only under Windows(In my opinion, S.Korea is becoming the Gaming Mecca of the World, but that's another story). The Korean public will never adopt Linux unless Starcraft and Fortess(a korean online game) are ported to Linux (hehehe). In other words, unless either an exact counter-part or a superior standard base/software doesn't exist... people won't switch.
Anyway, this type of move would not be as easy in other countries/governments because most countries rely on Microsoft Office products. Unlike the rest of the world, the South Korean government standardized it's office suite with a korean Office suite, which wisely ported it's product to Linux. I'm not sure if China's government is using an office suite developed by a Chinese company, but it wouldn't surprise me it it did... if that's the case, it would be extremely easy to switch the OS within the Chinese government to Linux as it was in the South Korean government.
Since it doesn't seem anytime soon MS will port MS Office so I guess we just need to develope a better Office suite.(keep up the good work guys)~
I wonder how many of those copies of windows were legally purchased licensed copies? Thought so. Not even our government pays for all it's software. We're going to see alot of this as M$ cracks down on unlicensed copies, and tries to exrtort more and more money from it's customers. More and more businesses at the top level where only one thing counts (the bottom line), are going to go with whatever can even theoretically get the job done as long as it's cheaper. Of course you say "Well why haven't they done it yet? Linux is so ready for prime time." Lets face it, as much as I love it or you love it, it still isn't ready for the masses. But soon, my pretty, soon... or somethin' like that...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
From the press release: ... , has announced that they have concluded an agreement with the Central Procurement Office of the Korean Government to supply the 120,000 copies of desktop Linux office packages in this year.
January 9th, 2002 in Seoul, Korea - HancomLinux,
[warning: lots of strong worded opinion ahead (-:]
Piss-poor Slashdot reporting at work again. Read the press release, people. The Korean government is purchasing 120,000 copies of the proprietary, closed source commercial office software, HancomOffice. Linux is free. They're not paying for free software. They're not paying for localization work done by the KDE/Qt people. They're not paying for the RedHat Linux distribution. No.. They're paying for proprietary software (with proprietary file formats) and related support services. This is NOT what Linux needs. The article does not mention the cost, but even at a very conservative estimate of $10 per copy x 120,000, that's $1,200,000 and I would guess that support services are extra. Does the Korean government realize that if they took that same amount of money and paid say.. 15 top Open Source programmers for one year to work full time and perfect KOffice or OpenOffice, that they (and the entire rest of the world) would never have to spend another dime on office software?! But instead, they've just locked themselves into an upgrade cycle, even if it does use Linux and is a much better/cheaper product than Microsoft's. Proprietary software is damned stupid and totally uncalled for. And it makes me sick to think of how much the US government spends of my own tax dollars on proprietary software as they make the same type of mistakes.
Open Source programmers need to wake up, quit their day jobs and realize that the world is in great need of their services. Yes, it will take innovation and initiative. Yes, it will take new business models that are purely service, support, and consulting oriented. But as this article shows, the money is out there.. loads of it. And you can help change the world for the better at the same time. Once software is set free, it's permanent. Obviously small companies (hence with small programming staff) such as Hancom and Gobe have been successful in producing high-quality office suites in a relatively short amount of time. Why? Because it's not that difficult! Here sits Microsoft's cash cow sleeping on a grassy knoll, just waiting to be tipped over. And yet the various Open Source productivity projects are moving at a snail's pace because nobody has taken a strong enough initiative to get the job done and over with once and for all.
As a sidenote, anybody else think Slashdot editors are going a little bit soft on proprietary Linux software these days? *cough*va*cough*
Linux is definitely much more of a "do it yourself" system than Windows is. That's viewed as a liability by most corporations in the US, but it's an advantage where skilled labor is cheap.
There's a parallel in the construction industry. In US, labor is more expensive in comparison to construction materials than in, say, Mexico. In the US, construction uses as many prefabricated, pre-assembled components as possible in order to minimize on-site labor. It's cost effective to manufacture, stock and transport a large variety of pre-fab parts to minimize on-site assembly. In contrast, where labor is cheap in comparison to materials, you find that it's more common to bring raw-materials on-site and create what you need from them, since it's cheaper to pay a skilled laborer to do it as-needed rather.
The same thing applies to software. It does suprise me that countries like Korea and China like Linux where having skilled on-site talent is more cost-effective than paying large license fees to MS.
Governments and corperations tend to buy machines in bulk and upgrade them in bulk too. I'm sure they'll make sure that the few models of PC's they have are fully supported. If they aren't, I'm sure a userbase of 120000 would convince Hancom to write drivers.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Incredible. The poorest desktops will then be the first to embrace all the goodness of freedom and be technically superior. So while government cubicles in Korea have ssh, X, compilers of all types, postgress, mySQL, multiple virtual screens, multiple workplaces, multiple and superior image manipulators, multiple and superior file and web browsers, I at a fortune 500 US company will be stuck with an w2k machine with all of it's fundamental and implimentational flaws. No real user accounts, no real file permissions, no encypted remote login, no real GUI export, no real image manipulation, one quirky file and web browser, no real shell, no grep, no find, and no compilers. How much of that do I really need to get my job done? None, but I don't need anything other than a knife and a match to cook dinner. The match is optional really, I could just eat nuts, berries and grass.
Somehow, I don't think this competitive advantage will escape corporate America forever.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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The domino theory was that they newly aquired slave states could be put to use spreading the interests of the Soviet slave state. This was seen in Cuba, which supplied the USSR with sugar, and fighting men for troubles in Angloa, as well as subversives for the rest of Central America. The whole country was made into state property controlled by Fidel, who therefore owned it all. Free speech and press were eliminated, those opposed were liquidated, universities, schools and presses all became tools of the party which was ultimatly rulled by people in Moscow. The reward for this slavery is one of the lowest standards of living in the Americas, matched only by slave states in Eastern Europe and Asia. So while these unfortuanate places became horribly inefficient, all of the effort could be directed at conquest. China agreed with this assesment at the time and was rather upset about North Korea and Vietnam, which they viewed as an extention of Soviet power. China had designs of it's own.
In the software world, M$ is the slave state. It is an all embracing company that sees itself getting between you and anything you want to do with computing machinery so that Bill Gates can extract your money. M$ is one of the largest proponents of the inaptly named "Digital Rights Management" movement that will strip you of ownership of your intelectual property. M$ has already written software licenses that forbid use of their software to criticise M$ (see Front Page story Slashdot ran a few months ago for evidence of this blatant corporate censorship). All M$ licensess are written so that M$ may terminate your use of their software at anytime, though they would never dare test it in court. Those who fall victim to M$ software inadvetantly spread it as M$ jurry riggs their file formats to be impossible to impliment on other platforms. All money and efforts spent on M$ software is effort and money furthering the M$ slave state.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Each user gets a nice looking box.
Each user gets some kind of printed documentation.
Each user gets some nice looking CDs.
Each user gets a phone number with maybe a bit of handholding and support behind it.
The vendor gets some funding.
This is being bought for "users" not "hackers".
I really don't know what you are after. The GPL would prohibits you from certain usages of open source software in your closed source shop. As long as you comply with the GPL, go get rich to your heart's content. I wish you all the best, really.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
You do know that they hired Sam Lantinga, right?
Now, they didn't hire him for Linux development, but if anybody can show how to do cross-platform game development in SDL, he's the guy.
I work as the only foreigner in a Japanese company and frequently have to work in either language. To switch languages on my Linux box, I simply log out and log back in, selecting the other language when I do. On the NT machine, I have to reboot.
If I want both English and Japanese on the NT box, that means I have to have two seperate licenses and two different installs on the same machine in two different partitions.
I had heard that Win2K lets you choose between languages and related that to a friend who was buying a PC here in Tokyo, but that simply isn't the case. (At least not for J/E.) MS apparently does make such a version, but it is only available to corporate customers, not via retail.
As for software, apps are being made in other languages and sometimes 'ported' to English. Sylpheed (http://sylpheed.good-day.net) is one such package, a really good mail client (MUA).
Other packages have been translated well enough that a non-English speaker may think it's a native program - Webmin comes to mind, as does Sourceforge's website.
There are probably others that are similar, but I haven't realized that I am not seeing it in the developer's native language. (I get a lot of my software from the Japanese Linux magizine CDs' monthly picks, so it's not always clear what the 'original' language of a package is.)
Funny thing is, I've never seen Mandrake in these distro magazines - I hear it's one of the most popular in the US, but have yet to run across a copy here. I've wondered if it's an i18n issue...
IMHO, multi-lingual envronments is one area (critical for me) that Linux outshines its closed-source alternatives. (Want Icelandic Linux? No problem. Windows? No can do.)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
My that'll be drafty.
This of course points only to the evil cabal of insulation manufacturers, electricity generators, and natural gas producers, all of whom will clearly benefit by the transition from hermetic glass membranes to the newer & not yet proven cd-rom membrane technology.
Thank god I live in America, where you can pry the Windows from my warm, vibrant home over my dead body!
:)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
That argument makes as much logical sense as saying that a country that purchases 120,000 TV's is going to be the next Hollywood.
Seriously though, it reads to me like you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder. Those of us willing to work with a tenth rate OS have at least gotten it to the point of being third rate. Eventually it will get to first rate, just relax, and let us continue developing it.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
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.
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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.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
How about paying for 1 copy (or, say, 10) and copying it to all the machines that need it?
The excess money can go to pay for a real service, like to employ free software programmers.
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Actually, Unicode does have different glyphs for the different forms of the same character, for example:
Traditional:
Simplified:
Japanese:
And without Unicode, you wouldn't be able to see all three characters in one page without doing a lot of messy stuff. Also, most chinese can usually read both sets, and many write simplifed on a daily basis (the difference is just like handwriting/printing, with thousands of variations, not just 52 alphabets :)
In the later versions of Unicode (3.x), almost ALL necessary characters are included, including obscure cantonese swear words... If you are concerned about how the fonts are shown based on the different cultures (like missing a dash here and there), you can use a japanese font instead of a chinese font, and just map to it.
The main problem is that Unicode CJK characters usually take 3 bytes while other character sets like Big5 and GB only takes 2. And also, almost all legacy systems, including many business and especially cargo shipping software in south east asia uses their local character set, not Unicode. This will not change for a long time. However, the trend is to use UTF8 in the data storage layer and converting it to the local set (and just replacing a character not in the local character set with a '?') for the user in the display layer.
StarCraft allegedly runs under Wine. (which means it runs under Linux.)
Get those Korean geeks working on Fortress, and then we will own Korea.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahhaahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
120K new open mail relays ; )
If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it. -- Calvin Coolidge
Looks like they are replacing desktops from the article. I guess this may be a test to see the compatibility and if it works then maybe they'll deploy them everywhere. I think in the long run it may be cheaper than a SUN or Windows solution.
I think the real issues is that this is a Korean software company and the goverment is supporting their own. Why pay money to the US when they can support, monitor, and control an OS in their own country. They have the source and can make it as secure as they choose and add in monitoring software into the system if they choose.
I think we will see more countries adopt Linux for the fact that it can help support their own econemy in their country by having a software company in thier country. Unlike Windows which is in the US. Kind of a way of keeping money in their own country an dkeeping their econemy going. That along with the fact that there are less srtingent licensing issues with RH/Linux.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Writing software is labor. And hence, written software is the product of labor. It is also a tool that can be used to do other types of labor, such as writing new software or even writing a letter. In that respect software is a mean of production. All tools (means of productions) are the result of prior labor.
Capital is created by the private appropriation of the means of productions (prior labor). The result of capital accumulation is that would be producers (workers) cannot produce on their own. They must contract with an owner of capital. The result of this contract is that the value created by production is shared between labor and capital, in a ratio determined by their relative power.
In communism, Marxs said, the means of productions will be owned collectively by the producers. Thus, they will not need to negotiate with capital owners the right to use them in production. As a result, they will enjoy a better share of the value they produce through they labor.
This is essentially what the GPL does. It creates both directly (to the GPLed work) and indirectly (to derivatives,) a public ownership of prior labor (means of production)
Marx wanted to do away with capitalists altogether. Whether it is possible, or even desirable, is not relevant here (I am rather agnostic). The GPL certainly does not destroy Capitalism. However, in harmony with the model, you can think of the GPL as creating public means of production, that you can use without having to negotiate. That strenghtens the negotiating power of labor vs. capital owners.
Compare two models of a deal.
In the first one, A, who owns rights to software tools, hires B to write, using those tools, a new tool, which A sells to others.
In the second one, A hires B to use public tools to write some new tool (most likely public), with the intention of selling B's labor as consultancy to the future users of the new tool.
You don't have to be a genius to realize that A will have to pay B a larger share of the value produced in the second case, because in the second model, A's contribution is smaller.
Now that is sweet ( if you are living off work, naturally.)
Again, this is not the kind of communism that will make Stalin smile (on the contrary). But it falls within Marx's model nonetheless.
When the producer is working on his own, the whole issue is moot, safe that public software makes it indeed easier for people to work on their own. That is the whole point. There is nothing wrong in making money. The only problem is workers without bargaining power.
I hope that discussion made sense to you.
-- look, cheese ahoy!