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Japan Considers Moving Away From Windows
dm24_99 writes "According to this article at Japan Today, the Japanese government is considering abandoning Microsft Windows in a plan to boost computer security within the government. The government is very interested in alternatives, especially Linux." Of course, like the bank reform being proposed, who knows when this will actually happen.
I'm just curious, is there something that attracts asian countries to Open Source rather than let's say, North Americans?
Sounds like Japan got wind of all the stuff Microsoft and Gates have been handing out to India and want a piece of the action.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
In theory, if Linux sets up Unicode so it supports the 1,980 kanji characters and the entire hiregana and katakana character sets that every Japanese high school graduate should know (this is the Japanese Ministry of Education requirement) it can be done.
Didn't TurboLinux work like this?
have always been amazed by how almost every country pays MS tax even if they have both the skills and the industry to make their own software. Migrating to something from your own country would indeed put the money back in your pocket instead of shipping it abroad.
You think? Why do you suppose the countries have the same railway gauge, the same electrical outlet voltage, the same basic design for telephones and kitchen sinks? Because doing your own thing doesn't work in the modern world, what matters is interoperability. Spending money in your own country's software is a red herring, because it will sacrifice economies of scale and waste resources on compatibility with other country's software. If a country spends as much on development as MS but only has a local market to sell into, then everyone will be paying a multiple of what MS changes now.
Consider other industries. Protecting the US steel industry is great for American steel producers, but it kinda sucks for American steel users, like automakers, who're paying over the odds. Subsidizing European farmers is great for European farmers, but it kinda sucks for the average family, whose grocery bill is higher than it should be.
The distance from a company in the USA to EU, Japan etc. is big both in culture and in communication. Microsoft develops mainly for the american culture wich shines through the product.
The whole business world is Western-oriented. English is the global language, global corporations stock is listed in Tokyo, New York and London. You can bet that if an Indian businessman and a Japanese sit down to do business, they'll do it in English.
And Microsoft spend billions on localizing their products to local markets. They aren't an American company any more than Sony is a Japanese country: they both take a global view.
Having the development in your country should atleast in theory give a much better adapted set of applications that if you buy a ironed out fit_all_suit-everything version like Microsofts products.
Working the same way everywhere is a strength, not a weakness.
http://www.asahi.com/business/update/1116/005.html
Except Japan, where Microsoft is already dead on servers:
see here
I take this announcement much more seriously than all the announcements from China lately. The Japanese are able and willing to abandon Windows completely - unlike the Chinese.
Is Linux being used by goverments and large clients as a "bargaining chip" to gain consessions
from M$?
> the Japanese government is considering abandoning Microsft Windows
I struggle with the idea of a whole country, or even a whole administration, changing OS at midnight one Saturday. Surely this sort of thing is going to happen one department at a time, and, probably, one office at a time in a lot of cases. Most government departments have a significant amount of bespoke software that would need tweaking, if not rewriting. Even if the decision was taken on a nationwide basis, I would expect the changeover to take at least the lifetime of the average corporate PC, ie 2-4 years.
While Linux might be wonderful for a lot of purposes, I can't see all the government graphic designers being thrilled with the current choice of Linux frame-based DTP packages, for example. So you are going to have Windows (and, probably) Mac ghettos for a long long time.
And I think we can assume that the security people at least would like to be able to run all the programs the people they are spying on can run...
Virtually serving coffee
For the last couple years I have been depressed about Japan's response to Linux, because I read somewhere that MS had 90% of their webservers . . . your link proves that whatever I read was either FUD, really OLD news, or a stupid misunderstanding. Today is a good day!!!
Sorry, but who cares what the U.S. thinks about Linux and Open Source. Next year I am moving to Japan for good this time and am never looking back!
btw, have you tried Mandrake 9.0!? I just installed it on my main system today and it is EXCELLENT (great Japanese suppor)!
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
As for supporting it once it's been installed, there are a zillion open source tools that make that far easier than doing it on windows; Windows has a neat administration toolkit but it fails more often than not.
Since you bring up IBM, IBM bought this company Tivoli a while back which has an enterprise management package which is actually quite good. It allows you to do monitoring, scheduling, hard and soft-ware inventory, software distribution, and a number of other tasks from one centralized point. It runs on many different flavors of Unix plus OS/2 (needed it for a couple big contracts and to appease IBM) and NT. It has supported linux (first unofficially, then officially) for quite a while, is built from a common code base for all platforms, and is a CORBA application. It's also got a good GUI Abstraction system so you can make GUI customizations in exactly the same way across all platforms, and if you pay extra (ha ha) you can get a product which makes it fairly easy to extend the product.
Tivoli's "competition" is CA Unicenter-TNG. I don't think I need to go into that, ha ha.
Anyway if they talk to IBM Japan one assumes that IBM will try to sell them Tivoli, which actually doesn't suck and makes the administration of vast numbers of machines much easier.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I will back it up with my experiences. They reflect the original post.
My experience with MS has been that is requires much more baby-sitting than GNU/Linux. And when something goes wrong it was sometimes impossible to trouble shoot, but with GNU/Linux the openness made it possible. Sure it took some time and research, but it makes me a better sys admin to be able to solve the problem myself with open help versus waiting on an indefinite fix from MS.
In the evolutionary scheme of things MS will become a niche product and open source will rule the common domain. This is of course if our legislators allow the freedom of evolution rather than trying to keep us stupid.
just my two bit.
I've always suspected that free software would appeal to Japanese people. It seems to be "honte" which afaict is roughly equivalent to "the Right Thing to do". (Not that I know much, all the Japanese I know I learned from Anime and Go.) Over here in North America, and in China too, and much of the world, it seems like people often look no further than "the easiest, quickest way to do it". I get the impression that the Japanese like to think of themselves as more honorable than that, sometimes. Which might lead them to be more inclined to look at technically superior solutions even if it takes a little extra effort to evaluate and implement them.
Many others know more about this than I, but I didn't see anyone address this point yet so...
Once upon a time in Japan there were a dozen PC manufacturers, whose names you all know well, each with their own version of DOS which effectively kept their customers tied to their own hardware, accessories and software. In those days you'd easily spend twice in Japan what you'd need to pay in the U.S. for an equivalent setup. This strategy was regarded as essential by each manufacturer to protect their own share of their market, and the US competition, MS and Apple, were not seen as a factor. Apple always had a good Japanese language interface but were not a big factor in the market. MS took longer to develop a good J interface but have it now, and now they dominate the Japanese market. Now the various DOSs are mostly gone, and there is almost no difference between the U.S. and Japan in cost of hardware and software, and there are not a dozen versions of each software application to distribute. If you get to Tokyo, be sure to spend at least a half day in Akihabara to see what I mean, and because it is really a kick.
It's not hard to find exploitable servers of any OS, be it Linux, BSD, Solaris or even Windows in Japan - the Far East's insecurity is legendary.
The point is, you can't expect any OS to be secure if you don't keep up with the latest security patches.
Probably true, but standardizing on Linux has its advantages in the long run. They can build up their own Linux development and support, and thereby tailor the security themselves instead of relying on someone else to do it for them.
They would be better off using the money to train their admins to some degree of competence.
They'll come up to speed... trust me. People laughed at the Japanese doing cars in the 60s and 70s... who's making some of the best cars around nowadays?
"The Japanese are able and willing to abandon Windows completely - unlike the Chinese."
Do not underestimate the Chinese. Piracy is still rampant in China, and you can still get any M$ product you want for $4 per CD. On the other hand, M$ is getting serious about "product activation", BSA love letters, and other anti-piracy initiatives. The Chinese may have been willing to tolerate the security and stability issues at $4/product, but full sticker price is another matter entirely.
If you don't read Japanese, you can find a summary of interesting results in Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! ; look for the text starting with "A Japanese survey found".
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)