Taiwan to Start National Push For Free Software

Andy Tai writes: "Taiwan will start a national plan to jump-start the development and use of Free (libre) Software, according to this report by the Central News Agency, the government news agency of Taiwan, Rep. of China. Due to high Microsoft license fees and also to improve the levels of software technology in Taiwan, this plan includes the creation of a totally Chinese free software environment for Taiwan users, free software application development, and training of 120,000 people for free software skills, as well as efforts at schools to provide diverse information technology environments to ensure the freedom of information. The original article is in Chinese; an English summary appears in this Kuro5hin article."

Comments

A new definition of "free"

[cascino]

Yes, that's free as in Û"Äèܽ.

Wrong way to have independence

[phunhippy]

What they should really do to win independence is the following:

Eliminate all free software, Give every citizen pirated copies of Microsoft Windows XP and Office XP plus a plethora of other programs as well.

MS & other big companies freak out over the rampant copyright violations and potential lost revenue and calculate that Taiwan owes them 500 billion dollars or so in license fees!

In light of this CHINA decides it doesn't want that headache of a bill when they re-unify and drops demands for unification of the two countrys(province & country what ever) and now taiwan is free to be their own country(and in trouble with all those licenses they now own)..

Of Course if they proceed to support open source software, china will notice how many good programs and programmers they are turning out and will want to re-unify faster and take the island by force..

See how this can work out only for the worst?

:)

Taiwan and free software.;

[Sarin]

Isn't that a country where you can buy most new software packages in stores for about $1?