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.

Comments

Why asian contries in particular?

[Slashdotess]

I'm just curious, is there something that attracts asian countries to Open Source rather than let's say, North Americans?

Seems like a ploy...

[vjmurphy]

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.

Re:Unicode, unicode, unicode...

[MtViewGuy]

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?

Re:Getting some industry back?

[sql*kitten]

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.

The Asahi Shimbun Japanese version of the article

[paku]

http://www.asahi.com/business/update/1116/005.html

Asian countries except Japan are Microsoft-centric

[rseuhs]

Actually most Asian countries are pretty Microsoft-centric.

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.

Bargaining chips ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Linux being used by goverments and large clients as a "bargaining chip" to gain consessions
from M$?

All in one go?

[melonman]

> 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...

Linux is widespread in Japan - here are some stats

[dwheeler]

There's actually quite a bit of Linux use in Japan. A Japanese paper called the Linux white paper 2003 found that overall use of GNU/Linux jumped from 35.5% in 2001 to 64.3% in 2002 by Japanese corporations, and GNU/Linux was the most popular platform for small projects. It also found that 49.3% of IT solution vendors support Linux in Japan, as well as a number of other interesting statistics.

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".