Japan To Do Payroll On Linux

strannik writes "Yahoo/Reuters is reporting that the The Japanese Government will use Linux for it's payroll system. Fujitsu LTD, IBM Japan LTD and OKI Electronic Industry Co. will develop the system by March of 2004. The new system is expected to halve operating costs (to about 350 Billion Yen a year)."

Comments

k3wl

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't miss the battle of the century! David versus Goliath all over again as we watch SCO vs Japan! Don't miss this apocalyptical match, and it's only on paaay per viewww!

Re:k3wl

[Chundra]

Wouldn't that be Godzilla vs. SCOthra?

Re:k3wl

[ackthpt]

Don't miss the battle of the century! David versus Goliath all over again as we watch SCO vs Japan! Don't miss this apocalyptical match, and it's only on paaay per viewww!

Just so long as there's no sneak attack on Santa Cruz (as I live there), although, there might have been a mini-sub paddling around out in the Monterey Bay yesterday, which could explain THIS!

Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Matrix272]

By "Operating Costs" does that include the salary of the admins? Windows admins make a lot less than *nix admins (rightly so), so is paying more to the Linux admins included in their estimates?

Aside from that point, I don't know who would trust Microsoft enough to put their confidential financial information, especially payroll, on Windows...

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Pieroxy]

Windows admins make a lot less than *nix admins

Because:
1. They suck
2. Their OS suck
3. It's so much easier to put together a cluster of Windows machines when you don't know a lot about it that a cluster of *nix.

Seriously though, a *good* Windows admin cost probably as much as a good *nix admin

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[mjmalone]

It doesn't say in the article that they have been running windows in the past. Just that Microsoft wanted them to use it. Maybe they are already running some *nix variation and already have a knowledgable staff, mass layoffs and new hires would probably cost as much the added expense of nix admins... at least for the short term.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[jbottero]

These days, Linux admins don't really cost *that* much more than Win32 admins. It's a buyer's market labor wise, and nobody looking for a job these days is making as much as they where a few years back.

In any case, the idea that the labor cost is a significant percentage of Linux TCO may be due in part to the fact that you don't have to spend $100,000 plus for the software.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[KillerHamster]

Windows admins make a lot less than *nix admins

But you need fewer admins to maintain the same number of machines when they are running *nix.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[zulux]

It's so much easier to put together a cluster of Windows machines when you don't know a lot about it that a cluster of *nix.

Not any more! Search google for 'cluster knoppix'. Or go here

It's this simple: boot a server with the .ISO, boot the clients via network or .ISO and presto! A Mosix Cluster!

It's a facinating this to turn a Windows network into a temporary Mosix cluster in under an hour. Pull the CD's out and reboot, and your back to Windows. (Or other OS)

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[fuqqer]

When was the last time you tried to use windows for clustered computering? Doesn't happen. This should be modded down for trolling not up for insightful.

With posts modded like this, I'll change thresholds for only +5 now.

Mod this as a troll, see what I care!

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[plague3106]

I've heard that you need less admins though for linux then you do MS, so 1 linux admin can do the work of 2 windows, or something. Don't know how true that is though.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Center for the Public Domain (i.e. Bob Young's tax bracket lowering company) uses Windows to run its payroll program, actually.

Oh, and remember when Bob Young said that he *only* uses Linux? It sure looked like he was using the windows 2000 computer (kept around for programs that Linux doesn't have [dreamweaver]) and Internet Explorer to check out his stock. :-/

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[GoatEnigma]

Could you point to some data that shows the relative salaries of *nix admins vs. microsoft admins?

Thanks.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes...of course no one trusts Miscrosoft as much as a bunch of people who put your payroll system together for nothing ;)

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Zeriel]

Actually, with Win2k > advanced Server, it's pretty close to easy to set up a windows server cluster.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they're using Oracle Financials. I can totally see how they'd be wishing for a final farewell with Oracle. Last I worked with Oracle Financials it took two full time employees to administer the thing. At 25 seat license shop at that.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[LittleKing]

It might cost more for *nix admins right now, but Windows is more prevalent. As *nix systems become more common place, the demand versus supply of *nix admins will decrease, and the salary of *nix admins will fall in line with Windows Admins.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[FatherOfONe]

I might agree to that for Windows VS proprietary UNIX admins, but I in no way agree to that Windows admins make less than Linux admins.

Go to monster and do a search and compare (what few jobs are out there). You will see that Linux admins don't make that much, and in general they make as much as their Windows counterparts.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[wawannem]

The article does say
Until now, the Japanese government has relied on expensive large-scale computers for its backbone system.
I would say that it is a fair assumption that it wasn't windows... I mean, when have you known of a 'large-scale' 'backbone' windows system? My guess is that it was probably some [Sun|HP|SGI] based iron running [SAP|PeopleSoft|Oracle]... In which case it will be easy to decrease costs. Moving to M$ would have decreased costs too if I am right, but at any rate, at the risk of sounding redundant this is just another case that can be pointed to when discussing a move to linux.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[weave]

Windows admins make a lot less than *nix admins

That's not what I hear on the radio every day from some annoying computer training ads. "Earn your MCSE Microsoft certification. Microsoft computer professionals are in demand. You can earn $60,000, $70,000 or more. No previous computer experience is needed. Are you a Vet? Vets can get up to $2,000 in training assistance. Call today."

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Matrix272]

I can't find anything definitive, but you might want to look at the Salary Surveys from SAGE. It seems fairly clear that there are more System Administrators that work with *nix than Windows. As of 2000, 69.7% worked with Solaris, while 66.6% (666? a sign, maybe?) worked with Windows NT. Linux was just a bit below that, at 62.8%, while Windows 2000, having just come out that year, was behind at 45.1%.

Of course, that WAS 3 years ago, and I don't have a membership to SAGE, so I can't tell what 2001 looked like... But it seems that there's more Sys Admins out there working with *nix than with Windows... hmmmmm.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly no one understands how costs are factored in to the equation when you are a large company or the government.

When you purchase equipment, it's depreciated here over 4 years. That means if you pay 48,000,000 yen for some equipment, it's charged back to you internally over a depreciation schedule. You'd pay 1,000,000 yen a month. You don't pay for it all at once. This goes in to your running costs.

I have some old Ultra2's in production here. They have no depreciation (fully paid for), but I have to pay 200,000 yen per year maintenance. Over 3 years, it costs me 600,000 yen. (or 12,500 yen per month of running cost)

I can buy a compaq DL360 for 500,000 yen. It comes with 3 years free maintenance. (or 10417 yen per month running cost)

I can cut costs and get more powerful systems. Savings go up when you buy more. With the cost of one year's Sun E10K maintenance, we can buy 56 IBM Linux Blades, with 3 years free maintenance. This setup will kick the Sun E10k's butt, for much less cost.

Guess which is cheaper for me to operate on?

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[Anonymous Coward]

SAP,Peoplesoft,Oracle are all fairly recent products. They are probably running something that was built in the late 80's...

The reason they are saving so much is likely the new hardware is going to process the payroll 100 times faster.

Moving to M$ would have decreased costs too if I am right, but at any rate, at the risk of sounding redundant this is just another case that can be pointed to when discussing a move to linux.

Oh hell, with the Linux crowd you guys will just make shit up to prove in your heads Linux is better.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[coday]

Japan, is surprisingly techo-phobic. A large amount of business is still done on paper. My girlfriend works for the Osaka prefectural government and her pay is calculated by hand. I myself have worked for two medium size software houses and both have done their payrolls by hand.

I personally don't trust companies doing their accounting by hand. It makes it much easier to cook the books and cover their steps.

Re:Operating Costs != Cost of Ownership?

[AstroDrabb]

Oh stop spreading fud. There is not that much of price difference. A ms windows admin with 2-4 years experience makes an average of $51,907. While an *nix admin with 2-4 years experience makes an average of $66,418 $14,511 for an employee that can handle up to twice the number of servers is a damn good geal IMO. Also, most *nix admins are generally working with more mission critical servers since that is where *nix has been most used. So it is only natural to pay more. If you had an ms windows or a *nix admin only maintiaing one or two web servers, they would be paid about the same. The fortune 500 company I work for has about 5-10 servers for every one ms windows admin since it takes sooo long to patch and reboot and verify. While we have one senior *nix guy handling about 20 high end solaris boxes with very critical business processes running on it. So it is only logical to pay the *nix guy a little more since he has a far greater responsibility. $14,511 for a larger corp or a government is a drop in the bucket. The company I am at had to pay more then that to hire me as a programmer to the recruiter they hired me through. So stop believing and spreading the MS FUD with all their TCO crap. It just is not true. Especially when you price a system out that is designed to last more then 5 years. I gaurantee those MS TCO figures do not included upgrade fees.

Big Rin for Rinux!

[Pii]

Sorry... Just a rittle Japan bashing humor. Move along.

Re:Big Rin for Rinux!

[BillsPetMonkey]

"US to do Payroll on Microsoft Windows Me"

Sorry...Just a little *heough!* US bashing humour. Move Along.

Re:Big Rin for Rinux!

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

Good one ... but I bet more Japanese percentage-wise know the difference between "its" and "it's" than Slashdot editors. (See article.)

Re:Big Rin for Rinux!

[Pii]

Flamebait!

Redundant perhaps, but not Flamebait! When wiggys posted his comment mere seconds before I did, he got modded as Funny.

Besides, he didn't even fully commit to the bash... It was very timid, put into the form of a question even. I went "all in" on the jab.

Ahh... Saner moderators are checking in now, thank goodness. Well done gentlemen, well done. I fully expect Budweiser to run a "Real Men of Genius" radio ad dedicated to Slashdot moderators Real Soon Now[tm]. (Mr. Slashdot comment moderator... You know the tune.)

Re:Big Rin for Rinux!

[deaddrunk]

Sounds more like Scooby to me. Relp Raggy a rhost!

Re:Big Rin for Rinux!

[Anonymous Coward]

People who get all up in arms about how their own posts are modded compared to others make me want to punch their children in their jaws with my fists.

Darl's World Tour Continues

[zdislaw]

Would that make Japan Darl McBride's next stop on his 2003 FUD World Tour?

Re:Darl's World Tour Continues

[the gnat]

Darl's already heading to Japan to try to bully the many companies interested in embedded Linux (including Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu...). I guess the Japanese government wasn't too impressed.

How do you say "Suck it, bitch!" in Japanese?

Re: Darl's World Tour Continues

[Black Parrot]

> Would that make Japan Darl McBride's next stop on his 2003 FUD World Tour?

Yeah, I hear he's doing a trio with Bill Gates and an American ambassador.

Got to be an airplane joke in there somewhere, too.

Re:Darl's World Tour Continues

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu missed it, he's already on his way

Re:Darl's World Tour Continues

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Not sure about "suck it, bitch" but Darl McBride is "baka gaijin" (Pronounced stupid foreigner)

Re:Darl's World Tour Continues

[Anonymous Coward]

"baka gaijin" (Pronounced stupid foreigner)

I guarantee you that's not how 'baka gaijin' is pronounced.

Java?

[Pieroxy]

I'm always wondering why doesn't people use Java for such large developments... If tomorrow Linux is declared illegal because of the SCO suit (very unlikely though), you just reinstall FreeBSD and keep on going.

Multi-platform is an invaluable freedom on such projects where deployment and operating costs are so high

Re:Java?

[BiteMeFanboy]

Yes. The same could be said for Scheme, Lisp, Perl, and quite a number of other languages, many of which are better for large applications than Java.

Re:Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why BSD isn't being used in the first place is the real puzzlement.

Re:Java?

[Pieroxy]

That is correct. I guess the point is: Who cares which OS??

When a better one will pop up, we'll just switch and everything will still work fine...

Re:Java?

[IWorkForMorons]

If tomorrow Linux is declared illegal because of the SCO suit

You forget that Japan also has to recognize that it's illegal. If I were Japan, I'd tell SCO to shove their FUD and their laws up their collective ass. But, if I were Japan, I'd have a lot more to worry about then just SCO...

Re:Java?

[Pieroxy]

The problem with BSD is that it doesn't have enough visibility (or at least less visibility that Linux). Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement.

On a large application / heavy loaded server, it makes no doubt that BSD is a lot better than Linux, but on the desktop the problem is not the same

The huge number of drivers support can partially explain the popularity of Linux on the desktop, and if the MS saga has proven anything, that is desktop leads to server, because it provides a good visibility in everybody's mind.

Re:Java?

[Surak]

Ya know, Java is not the only cross-platform development language on the planet.

First off, believe it or not, ANSI C is pretty darned portable, especially across *nixes. Think how how many Linux code written in C ports easily to *BSD, Solaris, AIX, etc. It's not 100% cross-platform, but it's close enough for projects that need native compiled code.

Now, for a massive payroll system, which is basically a database, native compiled code isn't strictly necessary. It's a database, and probably needs a client/server architecture. Database lookups are the bottleneck, on the client, so you *could* do a lot of stuff. You could make it web based, for instance, and use Apache, PostgreSQL, and PHP or Perl for instance. If you want a gui, you could do Python/GTK, for instance. All of this stuff is cross-platform, Java isn't the ONLY solution.

Re:Java?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

What a troll! How is this different if the application was written in C, or C++, or Python, or any other language with a portable (+POSIX) standard?

And why on earth would Linux be declared 'illegal'? It isn't merely unlikely, it is not concievable. Even if SCO won their suit against IBM (unlikely), and even if some offending code was shown to be in the mainstream Linux kernel (even more unlikely), then the absolute worst that can happen is that the offending code gets 'rolled back' to before IBM's involvement. So, some parts of the SMP support (for example) get rolled back to as they were in Linux 2.2, and then Linux development moves on from there. Big deal! Hardly the same as making Linux 'illegal'.

Re:Java?

[Knife_Edge]

"Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement."

Because during the dotcom boom it was tagged as the 'Microsoft killer', and a lot of people have bad feelings toward Microsoft. I mean regular people, who only intuitively know that things happen with their systems that should never occur, like bluescreens. That includes journalists, at least tech ones.

BSD for some reason did not get as much publicity during the dotcom boom, despite being a good system. There you have my theory.

Re:Java?

[Drakonian]

First of all, how does the language used for the system relate to this discussion? Aren't we talking about the OS?

And secondly, there are a lot of languages that are more open that Java. Sun could do a lot of damage to the Java community if they decided to not release any specs or improve Java at all. Similarly to Linux being "declared illegal".

Re:Java?

[sabshire]

Because Java isn't as recent on BSD as it is on Linux.

Re:Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you understand what it is the Java Virtual Machine? It's just an layer of common operations on top of something. It's a second operating system.

Java isn't that wonderful, at all. It isn't multi-plataform, because it is its own plataform. You can build a common plataform on top of how many opearing systems you want.

And if you're looking plataform freedom, Python runs on much more plataforms than Java, and oh, Python runs on Java too.

Re:Java?

[BiteMeFanboy]

Fair enough, that wasn't my impression of the original post. You're right, designed with a sutably high level language the OS shouldn't matter at all, it could be run on any system that has an implementation of that language.

However, given that Linux a) won't be made illegal in the U.S. and b) certainly will not in Japan it's the best choice for them right now. I think the upshot of the article, and the reason for mentioning which OS, is that it's a win for an open OS.

Re:Java?

[nimblebrain]

There's nothing saying they won't use Java for this project, mind you. Their WebSphere product runs on Linux and is certainly Linux-capable, and their own IBM Developer Kits for Linux feature Java 2 front and center.

Java may be a bit bearish on the UI side, but it's not too shabby for number-crunching with a decent JIT compiler.

I'd personally just love to find out what they're coding it in - they have a lot of options. They may decide to pitch some elegance for performance in the core number-crunching; financial systems make 3D Studio Max look lazy :)

Regardless of development language, I'm glad to see them deploy on Linux; it's a welcome change from all the corporate worried whispering, and it sure thumbs its nose in a hearty way at Darl-ing's visit to frighten Japanese manufacturers away from Linux.

Masaka desu!

If you can read Japanese, you can find out from IBM Japan, "Why Linux?", or heck, it might be a good time to see if they have any jobs available :)

Re:Java?

[Pieroxy]

First off, believe it or not, ANSI C is pretty darned portable

You've said it! You have to port C code!! Java is cross-platform by design, not portable.

On the other hand, porting C code is just a matter of making sure the library you use on OS A is also ported on OS B. For example porting an X app on windows is not possible (well, you can rewrite your GUI layer, but I don't call that a "portable" app).

With Java, the standard libraries are way more usefull than the common set of C libraries... (especially if you take the common set between *nix and windows ;-))

For the PHP/Python/Java/$LANGUAGE I don't really care. But please don't tell me C is portable. Hello world compile on any language. As soon as you start fancy stuff, you're bounded by the library you're using.

Re:Java?

[Kissing Crimson]

But, if I were Japan, I'd have a lot more to worry about then just SCO

Like not speaking Japanese?

Re:Java?

[zulux]

I'm a big *BSD fanboy so....

Linux is getting to the point that it's catching up with FreeBSD for servers. It still has a way to go to match OpenBSD for security, or NetBSD for portability.

There are strenghs to Linux, such that now it should be part of your tool kit:

OpenBSD for firewalls, gateways and remote boxes that you don't wat to patch.
FreeBSD for fileservers, database servers, xwindows servers.
NetBSD for odd platforms.
Linux for desktops, WINE, clusters and *supported applications*.

Let me explain the last one:
Many vendors are starting to explicitly support Linux as an alternate platform to Windows - so if you want their support, it's easier just to install their recommended version of Linux has fire away.

Re:Java?

[pmz]

Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement.

It's the penguin. Have you seen its eyes? They follow you as you walk by...sending messages into our brains!

In Japan, one day, there will be a great battle of the evil Penguin against our savior, Hello Kitty. I have read Nostradamus predicted a great peace following this battle, where cute marketing icons will lead us all into enlightenment. Only, then, will the BSD Daemon rise to join the ranks of Hello Kitty and the defeated Penguin to form an eternal Traid of Cuteness. I look forward to this day.

Re:Java?

[Surak]

Yes, C is portable. Java is cross-platform. Difference, and not a subtle one either.

But as far cross platfor:

PHP, Python, Perl, heck they could just about write it in XUL! These are ALL cross-platform. From Macs, to Windows to *BSD to Linux.

I'm sorry, I'm just sick of the Java guys always saying "Why don't they just write it in Java!" as if Java were the only cross-platform language anyone would ever consider using.

You have to look at the requirements of the project before you can even begin to say that you could code it in Java, or C, or any language. Requirements drive the design. They drive the language choice. They drive the platform(s) used. They drive everything. You don't pick Java just 'cause it's "cool."

Re:Java?

[SuperQ]

I don't know why people keep saying "BSD is better than linux, yada yada"

Systems are good for their different needs.

We have a 48 proc/100gb memory SGI linux box here, I don't think any of the *BSD can scale that well yet.

We also have a half dozen FreeBSD machines doing firewall/mail/ops tasks.. those machines do their job well.

Linux will not be "declared illegal", if there is anything in the kernel that must be removed, it'll get pulled out, re-written, and re-released. The only issue will be previous illegal code installs.. It will take YEARS in court to determin if there are any damages to be had, and by the time it is settled, kernel 4.0 will be out, and the problem will have been solved years previously.

Re:Java?

[rtaylor]

Not to mention if Linux were declared illegal, whats to stop Java from becoming illegal? I would think C would be the language of choice due to the number of compilers available AND its portable nature.

C on BSD and C on Linux are very compatible if you don't do anything silly like read directly from /proc. Notice you could screw up portable Java in the same non-portable way.

Re:Java?

[drinkypoo]

The problem with BSD is that it doesn't have enough visibility (or at least less visibility that Linux). Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement.

That's not confusing at all. Linux is moving a lot faster than any of the BSDs, or in fact all of them put together, in terms of technical development. Linux is simply gaining technical advantages at a higher rate. Why this is, however, I don't know; I do know that it was true before the great linux publicity trend.

On a large application / heavy loaded server, it makes no doubt that BSD is a lot better than Linux, but on the desktop the problem is not the same

I doubt this. BSD's one advantage - networking - has not been an advantage recently. Linux has come a long way since that was true. SMP is also more mature on Linux, for obvious reasons of the fact that it's been around longer (the SMP that is) and there's simply more Linux installations.

The huge number of drivers support can partially explain the popularity of Linux on the desktop, and if the MS saga has proven anything, that is desktop leads to server, because it provides a good visibility in everybody's mind.

The huge number of drivers resulted from the popularity of linux on the desktop, not the other way around. The popularity of linux on the desktop is due to the fact that people developed pretty shit for linux. I mean how much of a hassle was it to get Rasterman's early projects to run on BSD? He didn't give a shit, it was all Linux development. Or how about how XMMS originally required linux-pthreads?

And in M$-land desktop led to server only because the server behaved like the desktop. Windows 3.x and Windows NT 3.x looked and somewhat behaved the same even through they're totally different operating systems. THAT is what led to NT's popularity. People could sit down at NT and build from what they knew, right away.

Re:Java?

[Detritus]

Why on Earth would you use an unsafe systems programming language like C for a payroll application?

There are languages designed for business applications, like COBOL.

Re:Java?

[Xerithane]

I'm always wondering why doesn't people use Java for such large developments... If tomorrow Linux is declared illegal because of the SCO suit (very unlikely though), you just reinstall FreeBSD and keep on going.


And this is why students and people without professional experience don't make large scale business solutions.

Re:Java?

[Pieroxy]

What drives the language any enterprise app is written in is more the language the designing cell (read: the people starting the project) knows and think is the best.

Java has a good visibility/press right now and that's probably the only reason it's so much used these days.

Re:Java?

[kisrael]

The problem with BSD is that it doesn't have enough visibility (or at least less visibility that Linux). Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement.

Linux has a better name than BSD. It's a word, not initials. It looks a bit friendlier, in a magazine article it doesn't look so technical. And in the early days at least, Linux seemed to have better momentum, more and more interesting stuff happening there. So it's become the poster child for free OS and cheap-to-run *nix systems.

Re:Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the concept. But Scheme, Lisp, or Perl for large scale accounting software? Are you kidding?

Re:Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, I remember COBOL...

Re:Java?

[Surak]

You've apparently never worked in a large enterprise, working on a project where business requirements truly drove the design.

I have. We had our choice of programmers that were skilled in any number of languages and platforms. The languages chosen were based on requirements more than anything else, because we could. The design team and the programmers were too separate groups -- the design team included business domain experts and technical analysts and managers like myself who bridged the gap between the business domain experts and the programming staff(s). A lot of our code was outsourced to a contract company and they could get us whatever we wanted. And we did. :)

Re:Java?

[Drathos]

Don't forget C#! MS says it's cross-platform, so it must be true!
</sarcasm>

For me, I tend to stick to scripting languages when I need cross platform. I do use Java, but most of my Java development nowadays is J2ME, and that is just borderline in terms of being cross-platform with all the "Profiles".

Re:Java?

[eyegone]

I've been selling hardware, software, and I/T services to large enterprises for almost 10 years, and I've never seen a project where business requirements truly drove the design.

Re:Java?

[deaddrunk]

So do I, since I work on it every day, just like thousands of other programmers. It may not be pretty or fashionable but it does what it's supposed to do and that's all most large organisations need.

Re:Java?

[blibbleblobble]

"If tomorrow Linux is declared illegal because of the SCO suit"

What on earth could convince people to make that sort of statement? As far as I (or anyone) understands, SCO doesn't have any such suit, and if they did, they would be accusing themselves. SCO is like some drunken wino shouting at passers-by. So badly in fact, that they've been ordered by the courts to stop lying.

"If tomorrow linux is declared illegal". Huh. I can shout all the threats I like at the sky, and nobody will stop depending on it for light. Why should anybody doubt IBM/Linux's continued success because of an absurd threat which was universally considered false the moment it was uttered?

Re:Java?

[Arandir]

Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement.

It's all about history and architecture.

History One) Bill Jolitz got lazy. He stopped applying patches and the 386BSD project was stagnating. NetBSD and FreeBSD forked off in impatience.

History Two) At just the time that BSD was removing encumbered AT&T code to create the world's first Free Software operating system, USL came along and bit the hand that fed it. Ouch! People didn't know how the trial was going to end up, so they avoided BSD. The trial was eventually won.

The end result of history was that BSD ended up being about two years behind Linux.

Architecture) Linux is not a single project. Consequently you need teams to do the integration. These teams are the distributions. Most distributions are commercial. Commercial entities advertise. The architecture of Linux leads directly to the need for advertisement. And since advertising creates advertising, IBM is heavily promoting Linux solely because people have heard of Linux.

There is no compelling need to commercialize the free BSD projects. The base operating systems are already integrated.

The end result of history and architecture is that Linux gets a lot of good press. So much so that "Linux" is becoming a meaningless synonym for "UNIX". You hear stuff like "Xfce is an alternate Linux desktop" when in fact Xfce runs on any POSIX/X11 system. Ditto for any other non-Linux-centric project. Even Apache is hailed by the press as Linux software, even though Apache is primarily developed under FreeBSD. Take a look at linuxtoday.com. 90% of the stories have little or nothing to do with the Linux kernel or surrounding operating system.

that is desktop leads to server, because it provides a good visibility in everybody's mind.

Unfortunately, you are correct. Geeks, hackers, and nerds know better. Engineers and developers know better. But these aren't the people in charge. Too many CEOs/CIOs think that if WindowsXP is good enough for their home email, then it must be good enough to run all of their mission critical enterprise servers. At my company we were even told by the CEO to use WindowsXP on our new hard realtime embedded medical diagnostics system.

Re:Java?

[Arandir]

I'm always wondering why doesn't people use Java for such large developments

You sound just like my CEO. He knows nothing about the technical requirements of my project, but he saw a show on the Discovery Channel about Java so now we have to use Java.

Re:Java?

[blibbleblobble]

"You've said it! You have to port C code!! Java is cross-platform by design, not portable."

Uh, I think anyone rolling-out a government-wide payroll system will know how to use a compiler.

GNU runs on pretty much every computer yet invented, thanks to automake, autconf, gcc, the GNU libraries (GTK, gnome, glibc...), and the GNU application standards. I didn't see anyone re-writing grep in java, and when people needed massively cross-platform applications (mozilla, gimp, kaffe), they weren't looking at Java for those either.

"porting C code is just a matter of making sure the library you use on OS A is also ported on OS B"

Kind of like making sure the virtual machine you use on OS A is also ported to OS B? Or that the Java AWT libraries you use in OS A are also ported to OS B?

The only true cross-platform GUI code I've seen recently is Konspire2B, and that was pure C, using an http://localhost:6065/ web-interface for the GUI. They chose not to use java because you'd need to install a java machine to use it. With C, you can just run the program as-is.

Look at any of the user-interface modules for perl, for ruby, or for java, and the chances are they'll be written in C.

Re:Java?

[molarmass192]

I have to raise an issue on the ease of portability of C code. You certainly can write a portable application in C but it's not inherently easy to do (been there, done that). The difficulties exist even if you stay on the same OS but switch architectures since pointer and casting assumptions change. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of C (although admittedly I prefer C++ over C) and think it's second only to assembler (basically unportable) where resource footprints and speed are top priorities. Regardless, you're bang on that Java is not the ONLY solution.

Re:Java?

[Jucius Maximus]

"The problem with BSD is that it doesn't have enough visibility (or at least less visibility that Linux). Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement."

Because people like cute penguins.

Seriously, I was sitting at my desk helping my sister with her homework. She looks at my screen and says, "It's a penguin!" She saw the 'linux' topic logo on the top of the slashdot homepage. I can't remember which OS I had booted at the time, but cool names with the letter X and cute penguins are a lot more interesting for news programs than FreeBSD. The same principle explains why malware with catchy names (Code Red, Slammer, Melissa) get all the press and most other ones do not.

Re:Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, believe it or not, ANSI C is pretty darned portable

You've said it! You have to port C code!! Java is cross-platform by design, not portable.

Will you be willing to take the risk of changing the base OS of your production system without testing it first ?

If yes, then you obviously haven't dealt with too many production systems.

If you the code is written in ANSI C/C++, these are the steps involved

1) Compile on New OS
2) Test on New OS
3) Fix Bugs
4) Deploy into Production on new OS.

If the code is written in Java
1) Test on New OS
2) Fix Bugs (believe me, there will be OS or
VM specific bugs to fix).
3) Deploy into Production on new OS.

You are eliminating one step, that's all.

Re:Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

C is. C header files and libraries are not. I'm sure the sole purpose behind autoconf is to have an impressive looking build process?

Re:Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java apps are pretty simple to port to another platform, or machine. Move the code base and jars, and you're pretty much done.

But. Instead of include and library hell, you have classpath hell. Goddamn! Even the order matters! Last time I was including system header files and linking to libraries, order never even entered into the picture. But with Java? Fuck me. Include this jar, and that jar. If you have a million jars in one directory, good fucking luck typing in all that shit. With C everything is included when you're coding; then you just compile and run. With Java, it is up to the person RUNNING the app to do this shit. Jeses fucking christ, what a godawful mess that can be.

And THEN, then you have version dependancies! So if some moron compiles even one class with 1.4, you gotta upgrade your runtime to 1.4. That can be a real bitch on a production system.

Re:Java?

[GlassHeart]

You have to port C code!! Java is cross-platform by design, not portable.

No, "portability" is the same attribute for both C and Java programs. Real world Java portability depends on whether the code triggers any bugs in the JVM, whether the JVM has enough memory to run the bytecode, whether it implements all the Java classes that are used, whether it simply runs too slowly on a suboptimal JVM, and so on. These are similar factors to C's portability, such as compiler bugs, memory assumptions (really deep recursion, for example), or dependencies on non-standard library functions.

Put another way, do you know of any responsible developers who don't test their Java code against every JVM it's meant to run on? If not, then Java must also be "ported".

With Java, the standard libraries are way more usefull than the common set of C libraries

Yes, and that's the difference between these two languages, not that one is "cross platform" and the other is "portable", as if they were different things. If C had a big standard library, then even big feature-laden programs can be ported with a simple recompile, much like Java.

please don't tell me C is portable. [...] As soon as you start fancy stuff, you're bounded by the library you're using.

First of all, C, even without most of the standard library, can be used to write very large programs that run on multiple architectures. See Linux, for example. As for "bounded by library", just because the standard library doesn't do everything doesn't mean the language is not portable. Java's standard class libraries don't do everything, either.

This is not to say that C is just as useful as Java at any particular application, or that C is easier or harder to port than Java. The two languages have very different design philosophies, but they both have an attribute called "portability".

Re:Java?

[dpt]

And this is why students and people without professional experience don't make large scale business solutions.

And why people who are without clue are shitcanned in the "downturn" and end up in Oregon with no money. It's not bad luck. It's genetic determinism. This is just what happens to stupid people such as yourself.

Now, where's that SHA1 encryption code? Or have you backed off from your own "challenge" after I showed it was invalid? Or did the maths go over your head *again*? Surely you can produce that pesky code if you want to make people think you know anything about "large scale business solutions".

Free clue: A "large scale business solution" is not some lame-ass GUI done in QT!

I'm betting no code will be forthcoming ... as this fucktard seemed to realize (finally) about that pesky encoding stuff! Oops!

In keeping with new Linux system...

[Anonymous Coward]

Japanese civil servants will be expected to work for free.

Re:In keeping with new Linux system...

[sloanster]

silly windoze troll - these guys don't get it.

Linux hackers get paid well, why would linux users have to work for free?

I sure don't...

Re:In keeping with new Linux system...

[blibbleblobble]

"In keeping with new Linux system, japanese civil servants will be expected to work for free."

Uhh, right. And in keeping with the new Windows system, UK civil servants will provide their employers with a 16-page EELA giving them permission to ransack the government buildings. Those who do come into work will be expected to dress in gay bright colours, and respond... very... slowly... to anybody who asks them to do stuff.

Re:In keeping with new Linux system...

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly boy... Japanese civil servants already work for peanuts...

Japan, home of unpaid overtime. Do it for the company!

Re:In keeping with new Linux system...

[FranklyMyDear]

Boss: You're fired!!!

Employee: Are you sure you want me to quit? [Yes] [No]

(Yeah, yeah, I know, they are civil servants. What the hell.)

Re:In keeping with new Linux system...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong!

They'll have to dress up as paper clips and they'll respond quickly; when anyone enters they will get up from their desks, cheerfully confront the person from a foot away and say "It looks like you're trying to [insert task here]!"

Widespeard use of Linux

[nother_nix_hacker]

Duh, who cares if Linux is making it big in the real world, gaining coroperate sponsorship thus developing quickly into a mature and usable system... what we all want is transparent windows!

half

[selderrr]

The new system is expected to halve operating costs

aaah, so they move from 32 to 64 bit then ?
(ducks for cover)

Re:half

[Anonymous Coward]

The new system is expected to halve operating costs

I'm so used to Slashdot typos I thought this said have operating costs, and I thought, "Well, doesn't every system?"

Darl's trip

[burgburgburg]

I guess that Darl's trip wasn't particularly persuasive after all. I wonder why.

Re:Darl's trip

[Lane.exe]

Honorable Darl McBride, Emperor of Evil Empire SCO,
We regret to inform you that your crass and stupid public remarks regarding the honored and revered Rinux operating system have deeply offended our nation and further disgraced yourself. Here is your tanto. Your retainer Chris Sontag will be standing by with katana to further help you complete your ritual suicide.

Sincerery,
Japan

Re:Darl's trip

[sharkey]

Poor transcript, here's the original:

Honolaber Dal McBlide, Empelol of Evil Empile SCO,

We leglet to infolm you that youl class and stupid pubric lemarks legalding the honoled and leveled Rinux opelating system have deepry offended oul nation and furthel disglaced youlserf. Hele is youl tanto. Youl letainel Chlis Sontag will be standing by with katana to fulthel herp you comprete youl lituar suicide.

Make youl time,
Japan

Re:Darl's trip

[4minus0]

ritual suicide

The following is my obligatory OT post for the week:

Better known as Hari-kari or in formal language Seppuku as I understand it from the book Shogun.:)
Interesting link here: Seppuku -Ritual Suicide

Re:Darl's trip

[Xerithane]

Poor transcript, here's the original:

While that is meant as a joke, it's entirely inaccurate. The reasoning behind the misused R's and L's in the Japanese language is the lack of distinct difference in the sounds. The Japanese language is comprised of syllables, like "Ra, Ri, Ru, Re, Ro" (Written in romaji, as that's the closest English/Roman pronunciation.)

When writing foreign words in Japanese, you use a character set called "katakana" which is the same syllables but a different glyph. To translate a word, you just do the approximate sounds. For example, "lunch" would become "ra-n-chi"

When translating, you are more likely to see L's become R's than visa versa. Also, some words are very easy to understand with a Japanese accent because of the native pronunciation of ra-ri-ru-re-ro.

Enough education... I'll stop ruining the fun now.

Re:Darl's trip

[RestiffBard]

to all the japanese out there before you flame the above, think about how many times you've made fun of american pronunciation of japanese words. You know its funny.

Re:Darl's trip

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hara kiri, and fortunecity sites are probably not the best source of information around.

Re:Darl's trip

[Anonymous Coward]

This thread is about Japanese, not Chinese... your insensitive clod!

Re:Darl's trip

[ashitaka]

Enough education... I'll stop ruining the fun now.

No, no, keep it up. Although it's fun to see these asswipes make themselves look like complete flaming idiots the less flaming idiots we have the better.

Upstart?

[HanClinto]

"For the past year, an intense turf battle between Microsoft and vendors of the upstart Linux has been raging as more corporations and government agencies turn to Linux software to run their desktop and network computer systems to cut costs."

Dictionary.com:
ntr.v. upstarted, upstarting, upstarts (p-stärt)
To spring or start up suddenly.

The banner-ad on the right side of my screen reading that article was the Oracle/Unbreakable Penguin ad. Granted Linux has been gaining ground quickly as-of-late, but it's not exactly been an upstart.

Re:Upstart?

[Cancel]

The banner-ad on the right side of my screen reading that article was the Oracle/Unbreakable Penguin ad. Granted Linux has been gaining ground quickly as-of-late, but it's not exactly been an upstart.

Much more likely is the adjective usage, which you hint at in your comment.

adj. 1. Suddenly raised to a position of consequence. (source here)

they're saving 350 billion yen...

[phunhippy]

350,000,000,000.00 JPY Japan Yen = 2,974,249,477.00 USD United States Dollars

Can someone explain how they will save nearly 3 billion dollars by using Linux?

MS licenses can't cost that much!!! (really!)

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article. They aren't comparing that to a Windows option.

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[PizzaFace]

They're replacing mainframes, not Windows servers.

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[TSMABob]

RTA...
1. The adoption of the Linux open-source operating system, which can be obtained for free and copied or modified

2. Until now, the Japanese government has relied on expensive large-scale computers for its backbone system. The new system, using lower-priced advanced servers and personal computers, is expected to halve the network's operating costs to around 350 billion yen a year

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[phunhippy]

thanks I did...

The adoption of the Linux open-source operating system, which can be obtained for free and copied or modified, would be a blow to Microsoft Corp, which wanted the government to use its Windows system for the backbone computer.

Until now, the Japanese government has relied on expensive large-scale computers for its backbone system. The new system, using lower-priced advanced servers and personal computers, is expected to halve the network's operating costs to around 350 billion yen a year

If they are spending 6 billion now to maintain payroll and personel database they have much larger concerns to worry about.

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is not windoze licenses, it is Oracle...

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[Dark Paladin]

I wonder if they could replace them with the unsold Xboxes - I mean, once the "no mod chip needed" hack is working.

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[forged]

RTA

You must be new around here ;)

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[Sanction]

And if you don't know the difference between dollars and yen, you have bigger concerns as well :)

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[David Leppik]

At the beginning of the article it says "IBM Japan Ltd and Oki Electric Industry Co have won a 188 million yen ($1.59 million) contract". At the end it says "The new system... is expected to halve the network's operating costs to around 350 billion yen a year".

I suspect that there is a typo in there; you don't typically spend x to produce a system that costs 2000*x to operate.

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[Frac]

And if you don't know the difference between dollars and yen, you have bigger concerns as well :)

I think he does. If 350 billion yen is roughly equal to 3 billion US, and they're halving their costs to 350 billion yen, that means they're spending 6 billion US right now.

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is surely that this shows that Microsoft doesn't have a viable solution for *really* big, critical processing, the sort of stuff that used to be mainframe territory.

Re:they're saving 350 billion yen...

[Sanction]

Wow, exchange rates sure have changed since I was a kid...ouch. I stand humbly corrected.

What does this mean?

[locarecords.com]

I think clearly there is some serious thinking going on in Government circles about Open Source and technology projects. Has anybody looked at the EU guidelines? They've even set up a special body to promote open and interoperable stuff across the EU... More stuff

Re:What does this mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that other governments are seeing the value of a non US controlled resource that cannot be spiked, can become a cultural resource adapted to the host nation and improves and promotes localism.

Additionally is cheap...

Re:What does this mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that *again* Japan takes the best and brightest ideas from the US, improves them and eventually sells them back to us. All for free. Well, not free when they sell it back obviously.. ;-)

And the EU is up to the same game. One day the EU is going to be the US's biggest challenger in the global stakes and we'll have GIVEN THEM the means to do it!!!

Re:What does this mean?

[javatips]

The strange thing about the EU is that they want to promote the use of Open Source stuff while at the same time they crumbling under to the US pressure so they allow software patent!

Food for thought...

Re:What does this mean?

[danro]

And the EU is up to the same game. One day the EU is going to be the US's biggest challenger in the global stakes and we'll have GIVEN THEM the means to do it!!!

Not really.
Last time i checked Finland was a member of the EU.

So, if you are talking about Linux, you are wrong, but on the other hand the GPL is "Made In The USA"...
And without it Linux wouldn't be Linux, so I guess you can claim partial credit for that.
(And the countless manhours poured into OSS by US coders.)

Too bad this is news

[cheezus]

Company/Government X is using linux to do Y! woot!

It would be much nicer if it was news everytime microsoft landed a big contract.

Re:Too bad this is news

[timeOday]

Company/Government X is using linux to do Y! woot!

It would be much nicer if it was news everytime microsoft landed a big contract.

Why would it be nicer? Why even as nice? Linux and Microsoft aren't the same thing. It's fun to watch a big greedy monopolist lose potential sales. It means the world isn't getting more lopsided as fast as it would have otherwise.

Re:Too bad this is news

[IthnkImParanoid]

Great idea. Every time I load slashdot (or any other news site), I would really like the headlines to read:

"Status Quo Followed"
"No risks taken"
"Company X maintains same infrastructure"


I know slashdot is repetitive choir-preaching, but how on earth would it be news for someone to decide to keep using Microsoft Products. It's only news when someone switches from one to the other, and how often do companies running Linux decide to go back?

Re:Too bad this is news

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP means he wishes choosing Linux was the status quo and not a risk.

Re:Too bad this is news

[HeghmoH]

Maybe you didn't notice, but they're switching a giant system over from mainframes to Linux. If Microsoft had recieved a contract for this changeover instead, you can bet it would have been news too.

Re:Too bad this is news

[starfish23]

You missed the point of the post. He is saying that he would like Linux to be supreme, and would like a story about switching to MS to be newsworthy (ie, switching to MS would be a rare thing).

He may get his wish someday,

Dom

Re:Too bad this is news

[Quino]

I read this to mean that it'd be nice if MS got contracts so infrequently, it'd be newsworthy.

All I can say now, is give it time! MS can only continue saying stuff like "don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain" for so long, and it looks like the time of effective MS FUD is coming to an end (remember when the discussions were about whether or not X was _actually_ going to install Linux, or whether they were using it as a tactic to get better pricing from MS?). At least some governments and companies are finally realizing that they're probably always just better off with OSS (at least, for pretty much anything they might give money to MS for).

PS

And it's news to me because it's Linux, and I'm constantly curious about rate of deployment / penetration (making sure it's still making progress, you could say!)

$300mil/yr?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when does a payroll system require $300 million a year to MAINTIAN?

Must be like one of those $500 screwdriver type deals the US Govt likes to pull.

Re:$300mil/yr?

[temojen]

When it's the payroll system for an entire national government.

Re:$300mil/yr?

[captain_craptacular]

First of all I believe they're saving somewhere near 3 billion dollars...

Secondly I work for a department that supports a payroll system for about 10k Employees and I'd guess that for Developers alone we shell out about $250k a year to support the system. And this isn't even a home-rolled system, we're talking maintenance of a system that we pay for. With all liscenses included and hardware costs, I'm sure we're well over $500,000 a year.

Thats for 10k Employees, how many employees does the Japanese Govt. have?

Re:$300mil/yr?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like the PAYROLL of the whole goddamn government.

Re:$300mil/yr?

[Mostly a lurker]

Since when does a payroll system require $300 million a year to MAINTIAN?

Actually about $3 billion: and this is apparently half current costs. I know computer system costs in Japan are high, but this does seem a bit excessive. If true, today's costs are about $6 billion to process the payroll of 800,000 employees or in the region of $7,500 per year per employee!

Re:$300mil/yr?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats for 10k Employees, how many employees does the Japanese Govt. have?

800.000, straight from the article.

Simple math (800K, 6B and 10K, 500K) shows that there's a lot of space for savings on your company :)

Re:$300mil/yr?

[Srin Tuar]

Assuming that there is no economy of scale whatsoever, theyd have to have 6000 times
as many employees (60 million) to justify your cost/employee ratio.

I highly doubt that they employ nearly that many people, so that is probably a very high number even by your standards.

Re:$300mil/yr?

[duffbeer703]

Do you know anything about payroll processing or accounting? Look at the costs for software maintainance for an application like PeopleSoft or Oracle alone.

The $300 million annual cost includes things like depreciation and overhead costs (eg facilities, power)

Re:$300mil/yr?

[delphi125]

Using 'simple math' $500K per 10Kemps is $50 per employee, scale to 800Kemps the cost would be $40M - nowhere near the 3B$ saving mentioned. The new contract is worth $1.6M (design and - presumably - development) - a drop in the ocean compared to either figure.

What is more worrying is the previous cost per employee: some $7500 per year. If that figure is correct, the first $4 per hour tax of each government employee's tax goes to pay-roll service, effectively - and it will now halve... still $2 per hour.

I somehow think they have the wrong figure somewhere along the line though.

Re:$300mil/yr?

[RoLi]

Actually I'd rather think some lazy journalist has got some decimal point wrong.

A 6-billion $ system (halved to 3 billion) seems outrageous.

Re:$300mil/yr?

[Mostly a lurker]

Do you know anything about payroll processing or accounting?

Yes.

Note that, according to the article, the cost is specifically for the payroll system. AP, GL and HR systems are presumably extra.

Re:$300mil/yr?

[duffbeer703]

Then I beg your pardon, sir.

I haven't read the article, as it was slow loading for me @ work. If they are spending $800 million to print checks and transfer funds, there is something fundamentally wrong or missing.

The story can also be found...

[Pinguu]

here

Re:The story can also be found...

[Anonymous Coward]

That post rocked my world.

Watch out japan!

[PhrostyMcByte]

Is it possible for SCO to sue a country?

Re:Watch out japan!

[mjmalone]

The U.S. maybe... Japan, no way. In the U.S. I believe the way it works is the government essentially has to allow you to sue it. You can sue the government if they break a policy (i.e. a sign for road construction is supposed to be 500 feet away, it was only 400 feet, you got in an accident). But you can't sue them if they abide by policy and you still get fucked (i.e. policy says 400 feet, it was 400 feet, you think it should be 500 feet).

Re:Watch out japan!

[KillerHamster]

Is it possible for SCO to sue a country?

With Microsoft's financial support, I'm sure they could fight Japan to a settlement. Of course, if some crazy judge awarded SCO huge money from IBM, they could just hire an army and bypass the courts completely.

Re:Watch out japan!

[PacoCheezdom]

Sorta.

Since this is the Japanese government the article is talking about, here's the relevant bit of their constitution (predicated on the English translation at E2 being fairly accurate):

Article 16 - Right to Petition
Every person shall have the right to peacefully petition for the redress of damage, for the removal of public officials, for the enactment, repeal or amendment of laws, ordinances or regulations, and for other matters; nor shall any person be in any way discriminated against for sponsoring such a petition.

So, if, say, Linux could be proven to have damaged a person (it doesn't say corporation, but I'm no laywer) could sue for, or petition for redress of, damages.

Not like that'll ever happen, though.

Re:Watch out japan!

[rastos1]

Disclaimer: I have no idea what I talk about. But if Japan signed some international treaties about trademarks, copyrights ... whatever ... I don't see why SCO would have a problem with suing them.

blow away..

[geekmetal]

The adoption of the Linux open-source operating system, which can be obtained for free and copied or modified, would be a blow to Microsoft Corp, which wanted the government to use its Windows system for the backbone computer.

Has Bill Gates made a visit to Japan yet? I am sure he'll be there soon with sops for the government and money to goodwill.
Of course he will not give unless there is some surety of getting back

Microsoft, for its part, announced a trio of European government contract wins last week.

What a shame

Re:blow away..

[Anonymous Coward]

Right and the part I hate most is when Microsoft claims to donate hardware/software to schools, apparently as a public service, but actually trying to hook kids onto Microsoft products.

Re:blow away..

[Anonymous Coward]

hook kids onto Microsoft products.

That's what OpenOffice is for. Use that, and you'll be hooked on MS products :(

Re:blow away..

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds of the visit Bill Gates made to India when many of the state governments there decided to move to Linux. Was there with the sops and goodwill money to the cause of HIV. I am sure there are a lot of other nations which need that money to fight HIV more, but probably can't buy MS products. Too bad eh Bill?.

http://in.tech.yahoo.com/021006/137/1w2wk.html
http://www.aegis.com/news/pr/2002/PR021008.html

Wait

[moc.tfosorcimgllib]

They forgot to add in the costs of teaching employees how to use the new Linux system, retraining administrators and help desk employees to support the software and how in the long run it would be cheaper to just buy new software every year.

Not only that, they forgot what would happen if the community stopped support of Linux overnight, or where would they go if Linux went out of business next year?

In the end, will it really save money? I think the anser is clear.

If I missed one of the points, please correct me. I hope this becomes a huge success and only encourages other governments to adopt open-source software.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

My dear son,
Generally users users applications with GUIS and do not see what OS is under it.

Administrators : I suppose that the government will outsource that too

Stopping support : so that is like MS. every 5 years or so stop supporting.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Going from Main Frame systems running VMS or UNIX to smaller servers running Linux has less of a re-training cost then transitioning to Windows based systems. Most of the Admins will require little of no re-training. As for the help desk people, anyone that ever worked a helpdesk will tell you, updating your skills set is a constant, even more so with Windows based apps then with Unix style one (more "feature creep with windows).

Re:Wait

[The Creator]

or where would they go if Linux went out of business next year?

They whould ride on the backs of their flying pigs to la la land.

No.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

aaah, so they move from 32 to 64 bit then ?

No, they're moving from FULL SPEED to HIGH SPEED.

Re:No.

[iplayfast]

No they're going to LUDICRIOUS SPEED!

(but sir!)

What's the matter Colonel Sanders....? Chicken!

Re:No.

[c13v3rm0nk3y]

Don't you mean Kernel Sanders?

The Linux it keeps being surprised

[SweetAndSourJesus]

I verify that the Japanese government rescues many of the money of the Linux.

Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux coup?

[Knife_Edge]

From the article it seems like the Japanese government was running their payroll software on a big proprietary unix system anyway, and was looking to upgrade the underlying system. It is not surprising that they picked Linux to do this - they say one of the reasons for the selection is because the hardware it runs on is cheaper. Maybe they ditched some Sun hardware? Some other vendor?

I'm sure Microsoft wanted them to use their software, but Linux is more likely to win when the competition is another *nix. Microsoft probably couldn't meet the requirements of 'runs old payroll software' or something, no matter how low they could price their software to compete.

This is a win for Linux, but not that big of a win, considering the details of the situation. This hardly indicates an expanding mindshare for the platform, just ability to cannibalize another *nix with its freeness.

Japanese Rinuku OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Rinuku.

Then I guess a fair question would be...

[goldspider]

...would be how much would they have saved (relative to their old mainframes, of course) if they had decided on a Microsoft-based solution?

Re:Then I guess a fair question would be...

[mjmalone]

Probably not nearly as much because the MS SQL servers are nearly as expensive to license as Oracle, and they would still have to get relatively large mainframe computers to run them. They wouldnt be able to get away with desktops IMHO.

Re:Then I guess a fair question would be...

[Surak]

They wouldnt be able to get away with desktops IMHO.

I dunno, man. this guy seems to think they can get away with Xboxes. :-P

Re:Linux?

[PhrostyMcByte]

A more viable way to spell it would be "Rinikusu"

In other unrelated news...

[AtomicX]

In other totally unrelated news, George Bush has declared Japan a terrorist state. In a recently published dossier the newly appointed Chief of Staff, Gen S. Ballmer said that Japan posed a significant threat to US security, this was further emphasised by Gen D. McBride, who will be leading Operation Litigation

Re:In other unrelated news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan has weapons of mass socialization too! Just give the USA a few months to plant trailers and a gyroskope or two...

Excahnge rate/Weak Yen

[randomErr]

Just to give everyone an idea how much that really is I've ran a conversion to your local exchange rate based on 350 billion dollars:

US Dollar : 2.9 billion
UK Pound : 1.8 billion
Euro : 2.6 billion
Mexican Peso : 31.1 billion
Austrial Dollar: 4.5 billion

Re:Excahnge rate/Weak Yen

[Drathos]

Yeah.. But wouldn't you rather carry around 4,190,703,826,736,921.50 Turkish Lira? :D

Re:Excahnge rate/Weak Yen

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just to give everyone an idea how much that really is I've ran a conversion to your local exchange rate based on 350 billion dollars:"

Or 5.03e+12 lira. But not any more.

A good market

[phorm]

Well... first before I get flamed to death, I will note that I am writing from MozillaFirebird on X11 with a lot of nice graphics support (GL, etc).

That being said, however, one of the nice things about 'nix is that you can trim down the graphics or the GUI (as above, not to indicate that linux can't do advanced GUI). With windows, you're looking at the latest OS every now-and-then just to make sure it runs on your hardware... which usually included a bevy of bloated and distasteful GUI crapulence.

Now, for payroll, we're talking money, calculation, etc... a simple GUI (widget-wise, not necessarily design wise) is all that's needed for the client-side. For the server-side, no GUI needed at all... we're just processing more or less straight numerical data, except for strings on names, account ID's, etc.

As always, the beauty of linux is choice. For your accounting system, you can eliminate a lot of headache by not using the unnecessary GUI components. In windows, you often don't have as many options in that direction (except disabling "fade effects" and other silliness).

I fully expect linux to take root and grow within the financial sector more and more as time passes - as long as you don't have MS-only software, there's just no need for an MS Operating System in such an environment.

Re:A good market

[sisukapalli1]

Regarding trimming down the UI, well said. The main apps at my work I use are xemacs, gnome-terminal, and mozilla. I found gnome to be too meomory hungry, so I just switched to fvwm and bingo, my memory use went down by about 100 meg. Moreover, whenever I need nautilus, I just start it. Or, if I need a full fledged KDE or GNOME, all I need to do is switch the WM.

The interface I use on the desktop is similar to what I used about six years ago, all with the latest applications easily accessible. It speaks a lot about how one can have a uniform no frills linux installations for payrolls, with optional fancy "toppings".

Heck, on Windows XP, I cannot even disable the MSN messenger!

S

Re:A good market

[christoofar]

Okay... so everytime a pay batch is run the server is going to do a bunch of GDI graphics drawing? I don't think so.

The fact that when you launch a Windows server a GUI comes up doesn't mean that the GUI is going to sit there and drain a huge amount of resources against whatever business process you having running on the server (unless the batch is doing some GDI work, such as stamping logos on paychecks or spraying barcodes or some silliness like that).

The argument of "well, you can run Linux with no GUI" is really lost on me. The Linux box is probably going to be running web services or servlets anyway... having an idle X session on the box is no different than having an idle explorer.exe process running on a Windows machine.

Re:A good market

[Zeriel]

That idle process is still consuming system resources, either in active memory or paged-out memory.

In the case of modern windowing systems, that's usually in the vicinity of 100MB or so, IIRC.

It may be a smallish fraction of the memory on the machine (anywhere from 10% to 0.2%, I'd guess), but for smaller machines it's going to be significant.

Re:A good market

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I guess I'm trolling too, but it's weird that someone using xemacs is worried about memory usage in other apps. :)

Re:A good market

[blibbleblobble]

"For the server-side, no GUI needed at all... we're just processing more or less straight numerical data, except for strings on names, account ID's etc."

Well, Perl was successfully used to power the sweedish pension systems on linux (among others), so there's plenty of pedigree for these types of applications.

Re:A good market

[NecroPuppy]

If you want it gone for good, "Run" the following:

RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

Re:A good market

[phorm]

Ever tried iceWM? It can be fairly light, is windows-ish, and looks quite stylin' when themed. I used it with DFM (which I'm not really happy with) as a desktop.

Accountability

[darth_MALL]

Where does the "vendor" accountability lie, with open source, if the software is inherently the cause of a failure/screwup/loss? This must be a huge consideration in a public sector payroll role. Is there such thing as vendor accountability with any major dist?

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. Sounds like IBM and Fujitsu are the contractors. What kind of accountability are you talking about? Legal liability for bugs? In the software industry? Hahahahahaha!

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Accountability isn't all that relevant here ... no matter how big the supplier, you wouldn't expect them to reimburse a country as a result of some disaster caused by failed payroll accounting. The buck tends to stop with the government department concerned when something major goes wrong. Suing a supplier just isn't a worthwhile solution of any kind, as it gains neither political nor (useful) economic advantage.

The payroll technical administrators probably see it as an unmitigated plus that they will now have complete visibility of the underlying systems to help diagnose issues, even if some additional party is responsible for maintenance.

Re:Accountability

[Mostly a lurker]

Where does the "vendor" accountability lie, with open source

Is this an attempted troll? The article clearly indicates that the contracts are with Fujitsu Ltd, IBM Japan Ltd and Oki Electric Industry Co. Insofar as vendor are ever held accountable for any software "failure/screwup/loss", these are pretty reputable organisations. It is also worth noting that Japanese do not think that way. The Japanese mindset is whether these organisations are "reliable partners" not "good potential litigation targets".

Re:Accountability

[Aadain2001]

Well, first of all they are dealing with two very large and respected companies: IBM and Fujitsu.

Secondly, if you ever read a MS EULA, they blatenly say that you have no accountablility from them for any damages their products cause to your or your business. If they had gone with MS, and the OS had "eaten" the payroll system, MS would try to help of course, but there would be no legal recourses for the government to use to offset the cost of the damages (even though MS could pay for them out of pocket no problem). The same is with OSS: no implied warrenty. But since this is a big government contract, the two businesses, IBM and Fujitsu, will probably be held accountable for how their systems behave.

Re:Accountability

[Zeriel]

It lies in the fact that instead of paying $x to J. Random Corporation, you pay $.25x to your own programming staff and release enough patches and fixes to keep the community happy (and working on relevant patches, too)

Secondly, of course, is the standard software contract terms: "Vendor is not liable" no matter where you get your stuff.

Finally, they're probably paying for a support contract (from IBM or Oracle, maybe?) which is where the REAL accountability comes in, not from the specific software vendor.

Someone had to do it

[Lane.exe]

The lights come up deep within SCO's main control room...

SCO worker:Captain! We get signal!

Chris Sontag:Main screen turn on!

Japanese dignitary appears, holding Darl McBride captive

Sontag:It's you!

Dignitary:Good evening, gentleman... all your CEOs are belong to us...

Re:Someone had to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, someone didn't have to do it, you're a fucking moron.

Re:Someone had to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Dignitary:Good evening, gentleman... all your CEOs are belong to us...

Keep 'em!

Re:Someone had to do it

[crivens]

I'd moderate you up if I could. Isn't it about time we buried for good the "all your base" comments? Come on; they're boring and just plain crap. Oh and it gets worse now that SCO is appearing in posts in response to almost every story.

BORING!!!!

Re:Someone had to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? Well I can't wait until the "SCO sues the makers of Zero Wing" article since they've patented "base" as in base10, base8, base16. Thus all their base are belong to SCO.

Illegal?

[gotr00t]

You should know that BSD suffered a case like this (though it wasn't filled with such utter BS from a small and overly obnoxious company that does literally nothing productive), and the result was not that BSD became illegal, the offending parts of the code were simply taken out, and BSD remained free.

If this is to happen to Linux(however unlikely), then the same thing will happen. And even if worst comes to worst, all businesses will have to pay SCO, but it still will not be illegal.

Here we come Godzilla 2003

[PhrostyMcByte]

Godzilla 2003: SCO vs Godzilla

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, please. Microsoft is cozy enough with US elected officials that it was convicted of abuse of monopoly power and still got off virtually scot-free. If they have the sway to do that, I highly doubt they'd be unable to stop the US government from migrating away from their products.

IBM is pushing this??

[MtViewGuy]

I think you may want to look carefully at one of the major vendors that is developing this Linux-based computing system: IBM.

You know, the same IBM that spent over US$1 billion to port Linux over to run on S/390 and AS/400 hardware. In short, the so-called "Linux wins" are mostly due to the fact they're getting IBM big iron computers running Linux.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[larien]

Er, "The new system, using lower-priced advanced servers and personal computers". That doesn't suggest S/390 or AS/400 to me.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[Drakonian]

What's your point? Does Linux necessarily have to run on x86 to be considered a win?

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[Anonymous Coward]

And what's the problem? Do you have anything against IBM? Or should we have to be against IBM too?

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[Anonymous Coward]

so? a win is a win?

I guess financial institutions have always been going with IBM (look at how many banks still use OS/2 on IBMs).

Do we want Linux being pushed into the same arena as OS/2? Linked directly to what people consider a cludgy, worthless OS, that "no one uses" (I am too lazy to search for the Interview w/Gates when the interviewer sounded like a moron).

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[drinkypoo]

Compared to many things, AS/400 is a lower-priced advanced server.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[duffbeer703]

I know of US municipal utilities that use AS/400 platforms for billing and accounting.

They have 0 IT people. An IBM guy setup the system, the application vendor setup the apps, and nobody touches it for 5-6 years at a time.

That screams "value" to me.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[Sabalon]

Depending on what they had, "lower-priced advanced servers" could mean almost anything. If they were currently using some real expensive mainframe, an i or z series may be cheaper.

Plus - if they are running Unix and some modern app, then they PC part may mean that instead of having a bunch of terminals hooked up to all that mess, that instead they just us a PC to TCP/IP.

Basicly, way to sparse on details.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[Sloppy]

You know, the same IBM that spent over US$1 billion to port Linux over to run on S/390 and AS/400 hardware.

Got a source for that? As you might guess, such a number is very difficult to believe.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[MtViewGuy]

By today's standards, IBM's AS/400 machines can't be considered high-end servers. Yet IBM has ported Linux over so it runs under AS/400.

From the story it appears IBM may have sold a bunch of servers of varying capacities running Linux to the Japanese government as part of the deal with the two Japanese partners in the project.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[yaar]

IBM's having invested US$1B in Linux didn't legitimize Linux, though it did further communicate and buttress existing legitimacy.

throw me a frickin bone here

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[Anonymous Coward]

Big iron? pfft, the AS/400 is a cabinet. Eniac is BIG IRON.

Re:IBM is pushing this??

[Anonymous Coward]

YES! Hell, everything else in the world is primitive technology compared to God's own platform: OS X on a 17" PowerBook.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

WAR?

[locarecords.com]

I think it will be interesting when historians look back at this time and register it as the end of technological supremecy for the US and the start of EU/China/Japan who are all profiting from the massive transfer from the US of their advantage in technology, skills and people who can produce complex operating systems...

What will happen to these Open Source/Free software principles when war is declared? Everyone knows everybody elses secrets... and faults...

I just hope they all stay friends....

Re:Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux cou

[TopShelf]

The truly understated point in most of these "Linux gets chosen for X" stories is that in the short- to medium-term, Linux is taking marketshare from other *nix solutions. The battle with Microsoft for the enterprise desktop is still a long ways off.

bored at work

[tomzyk]

bastard. I was in the process of converting the amount to different currencies, but you beat me to it.

now I gotta go find something else to do for the next 2.5 hours... :D

Payroll Systems

[yintercept]

Payroll systems are generally about databases and applications--not about operating systems. I suspect most US payroll systems are in whatever OS the company uses for other applications. Big companies do their payroll on big equipment. Small companies do their stuff on MS or Linux, or whatever. There is a lot of outsourcing in the industry...out sourced payroll seems to end up on big Sun boxes etc.

Since payroll was one of the first big applications to be put into computers, I suspect that there is a ton of different legacy systems out there on a variety of machines.

Regardless, payroll is a data application, so I find it odd that the OS is the primary consideration in a payroll application.

Re:Payroll Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they want to run it as a kernel module or something...

RTFA, dipshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Fujitsu LTD, IBM Japan LTD and OKI Electronic Industry Co. will develop the system by March of 2004.

And then I'm sure they'll run and hide and provide no support for the system they developed, right?

Fucking moron...

And They Say...

[tds67]

...there's no money in Linux!

Re:Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux cou

[larien]

Yup, but the choice is between Linux, proprietary *nix (usually AIX or Solaris) and Windows. In some cases, linux is beating both Windows and Unix.

BTW, the mention of "large systems" suggests mainframes to me, so potentially no-one's lost on this as it was probably IBM mainframes.

"Halve operating costs" is somewhat deceptive.

[markv242]

Where are these savings coming from? Surely not entirely from switching to Linux.

I'd be willing to wager that most of the cost savings will be in manpower, usability, etc, of the home-built software itself. Additionally, unless they're deploying Linux on the exact same hardware that their old system was running on, you can't credit Linux with the operating cost savings.

For example, let's say that they were running the old payroll system on some cluster of Pentium 2 or Pentium 3 machines. Those machines supported X concurrent users. With today's hardware, you can support X concurrent users with half the amount of hardware. Remove half the hardware, and you can potentially remove half your support resources. Congratulations, you've halved your operating costs.

I think "using Linux" is just a side-note to this story. Systems evolve, and get easier to use, more powerful, and require less support, regardless of which operating system they're using.

Re:"Halve operating costs" is somewhat deceptive.

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

I disagree with your point. Taking that same old tired hardware and installing Linux on it will actually allow it to DO MORE with the same amount of hardware. There is SIMPLY no dispute that WINDOWS is slower than Linux on any given machine...PERIOD. Simply becuase it doesnt have the OS OVERHEAD that Windows has. Thus given X # of cycles Linux will be faster. So it probably will result in a huge savings for them. Since they can continue to run the PERFECTLY good older hardware and get new life out of it. Instead of having to upgrade every couple of years just to be able to run the OS. So i do beleive that you've missed out on the HUGE savings that is offered by Linux. Also please note that Linux does not demand money every few years for its NEWEST/GREATEST versions unlike MS. Yet MS will drop support for its older version and DEMAND that you upgrade (and pay them) they will also create a new version that will not load or run worth a flip on your older hardware. This is not the case with Linux. So simply put the savings are easy to find. Lastly, the other factor is UPTIME. The Linux system will have more up time than ANY WINDOWS system....how do i know this...Well i have lots of windows systems. And rebooting (even in XP is required, just not as often as before, but still) where as my Linux boxes just run run run....course so does the Xserve....hmmmm could this open source thing really be true....

Re:"Halve operating costs" is somewhat deceptive.

[Zathrus]

Surely not entirely from switching to Linux.

I'd be willing to guess that nearly none of it is from switching to Linux... yes, the OS is free. That's nice. The support is not, and anyone who thinks that the Japanese government is going to run their payroll system without support on every single bit of the system is living in some alternate universe. It may be that the support costs for Linux and the other software (database, payroll, etc) are dramatically lower than it was for the old mainframe systems though.

Additionally, unless they're deploying Linux on the exact same hardware that their old system was running on, you can't credit Linux with the operating cost savings

Well, credit Linux, no... but that may very well be a substantial portion of it. Imagine the cost savings of moving from a few ancient water-cooled mainframes to a modern AS/400 or eSeries server. The water and power savings will be immense.

Overall I'm sure you're correct - Linux is a side note here and not the primary cause of cost reduction.

Troll troll troll troll....

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Don't mod trolls funny, it only encourages them!

Re:Troll troll troll troll....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its offensive if they're moderated funny. Moderating them Troll is what encourages them! It gives them sense of accomplishment.

Re:Troll troll troll troll....

[Marx_Mrvelous]

no, actually moderating them "funny" means that they get past everyone's filters (unless you penalize "funny" which makes slashdot hard to read!

I give up though, slashdot moderation is one of the biggest failures that I've seen from an experimental system.

I would look at another OS...

[tevenson]

I don't know... the best accounting/payroll OS I've seen so far is OpenVMS !

Speculation on slashdot.jp ...

[BillsPetMonkey]

"Government Personnel and Payroll maintained with Linux"

(translation) "Looking at it as a basis for investment in the long term, (it) can also be used for marketing ERP solutions. In time, might these also be provided for with open source?"

Use Linux for a payroll system?

[Junks Jerzey]

I would think that Linux is better suited to what it is designed for: task switching, virtual memory management, memory protection, low-level services, etc. Oh, wait, this is about a payroll _application_. In that case, what does it matter what operating system its running on? If you use portable languages and portable GUI toolkits, then the OS itself matters very, very little. You could run a solid payroll application under Windows, OS X, BSD, you name it.

Re:Use Linux for a payroll system?

[tomcio.s]

Of course it does.
You have to have a backend.
I personally wouldn't want the backend that is supposed to figure out how much to pay me to run on windows. Would you?
As for client... Who cares? As you said it should be techincally cross platform... (The developers can have their linux, and beancouters their windows).

Re:Use Linux for a payroll system?

[janda]

You can probably run a solid payroll application under newer versions of < InsertOSHere >.

If their current system runs under something like 98, or ME...

Re:Use Linux for a payroll system?

[FLoWCTRL]

If you use portable languages and portable GUI toolkits, then the OS itself matters very, very little. You could run a solid payroll application under Windows, OS X, BSD, you name it.

Of course it matters: why would you want to develop and run your application framework on an OS that costs you licensing fees, requires proprietary hardware, has a security track record that resembles swiss cheese, has frequent downtime or requires constant babysitting?

The OS does matter.

Re:Use Linux for a payroll system?

[Junks Jerzey]

Of course it matters: why would you want to develop and run your application framework on an OS that costs you licensing fees, requires proprietary hardware, has a security track record that resembles swiss cheese, has frequent downtime or requires constant babysitting?

You're letting your zealotry show through. You can run Linux on non-proprietary hardware? What CPU are you using (hint: It cannot be from Intel, AMD, or Motorola; they don't produce non-proprietary hardware)?

Re:Use Linux for a payroll system?

[jotaeleemeese]

You are unemployed, aren't you?

Your computer skillzzz look pretty rusted...

Re:Use Linux for a payroll system?

[FLoWCTRL]

I was refering to the hardware required to run things like AIX, HP-UX, IRIX...

Java on FreeBSD

[markv242]

I can't speak for the other BSDs, but under FreeBSD, Java is in utter shambles. Anything beyond the 1.1 JDK requires you to run the JDK under FreeBSD's linux compatibility layer, which does two things: eat up a whole lot more RAM than it needs, and slows things down, noticeably under load. The FreeBSD group needs to approach Sun and ask them for a native license-- I have to believe that a back-port from Mac OS X won't be that difficult.

Besides, where in the article did it mention the language? Since IBM is in the fray, they're most likely using Java under Websphere.

Re:Java on FreeBSD

[Arandir]

There is a native Java 1.4 (and 1.2 and 1.3) for FreeBSD. There just isn't a native prebuilt binary, simply because Sun is being weird. But the source is all there and it works great.

Re:Java on FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Sun doesn't feel like distributing binaries for an OS with only about 10K users, plenty of which don't need Java

Re:Java on FreeBSD

[markv242]

That's news to me.

http://www.eyesbeyond.com/freebsddom/java/jdk14.ht ml

"The JDK 1.4 patchset for BSD is currently considered of ALPHA quality. It should be considered a work in progress and use in a production environment is at your own risk."

That's not what I mean when I say I want a native 1.4 JDK. I want a production-ready JDK.

Re:Java on FreeBSD

[Arandir]

Then stick with 1.3 for the present. Point is, FreeBSD has more available then just 1.1.

Re:Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux cou

[powerlord]

True Linux usually wins when up against other *nix systems that need replacement, but this is still a good thing. If this project is successful (and I imagine it will be), then it will be another instance of Linux acting in an Enterprise manner. This is the key. The more it is seen as a worthy Enterprise level OS, the more it improves mindshare and makes available other opportunities.

Mod parent DOWN, astroturf.

[Anonymous Coward]

They forgot to add in the costs of teaching employees how to use the new Linux system, retraining administrators and help desk employees to support the software and how in the long run it would be cheaper to just buy new software every year.

If they're currently running a Unix system, those costs are negligible. What makes you think they forgot to calculate those costs?

Not only that, they forgot what would happen if the community stopped support of Linux overnight, or where would they go if Linux went out of business next year?

Probably the same thing they'd do if a commercial vendor stopped supporting their software "over night". Migrate.

In fact, however, community support is irrelevent because they have contracted with two little IT firms named IBM and Fujitsu for the system. Perhaps you've heard of them?

In the end, will it really save money? I think the anser[sic] is clear.

They seem to think so.

This particular line of FUD is especially tired and hasn't made any sense since 1999 when IBM started supporting Linux.

Honestly I can't care less...

[WegianWarrior]

...what the underlaying OS is for the system as long as I get my paycheck.

Still, it saddens me somewhat to see that the Norwegian Armed Forces - who pay my paycheck - are going to switch to yet another windowsbased system as they are changing the system for keeping track of the money (Prosjekt GOLF). Off course, I know why too, the entire intranet for the Norwegian Armed Forces (FISbasis) are running Windows NT something or other.. you know, the one that looks like Win98...

On the bright side, it appers that a number of the systems I'm not allowed to talk about, running stuff that I'm not supposed to know about *smiles* in places that don't exist, are running on a somewhat modified and customised Linux, since it's considered a better system with regards to uptime and so forth.

Re:Honestly I can't care less...

[Anonymous Coward]

not allowed to talk about...not supposed to know about...in places that don't exist

Yet another example of the deep seated conspiracy that is pervasive in the norwegion gvnmt. We all know about the WMD, and everyone knows Norway has a lot to hide!

WE DEMAND THE TRUTH, YOU NORWEGION SCUM!!!!!

Re:Honestly I can't care less...

[Anonymous Coward]

"it appers that a number of the systems I'm not allowed to talk about, running stuff that I'm not supposed to know about *smiles* in places that don't exist"

Reminds me of touring Stockholm in 1989 (yes, I know it's next door in Sweden) and our guide talking about how the main Swedish naval base was out in the archipelago and "only the Navy and the Russians know where it is" :-)

Seriously, there's no way I'd be running critical, classified national work on Windows given the possibility of US-mandated backdoors.

With great honor...

[Anonymous Coward]

...please to the saving of expediture taxpayers.

Re:Linux?

[koh]

Wouldn't they say rinakusu ?

On Line bill paying

[NetNinja]

The Japanese have had an online bill and payroll system for about 10 years now.

Need to pay your electric bill? Pay it at the bank
Need to pay the phone bill? Pay it at the bank

Most companies in the U.S. are just starting to implement this or worst they are starting to charge for it.

Re:On Line bill paying

[/dev/trash]

Uh, I can pay my phone and electric bill at my local grocery store. And have been able to for 15 years. And I live in the USA.

Re:On Line bill paying

[Malc]

That drove me nuts when I lived in the US. I've been paying *all* my bills via my bank's web site for years. I did it by phone before that. So much more convenient. I found the banking system so backwards in the US. It was like stepping back in to the 70s or something. I remember trying to get a foreign currency bank draft from my branch of the most popular bank in Colorado. They told me that there was probably a branch of some other bank in downtown Denver that could do that, but it would cost me and would take a couple of days. I was used to just strolling in to my local branch before I moved to the US and asking for foreign currency drafts on the spot - 5 minute job.

Re:On Line bill paying

[MrWa]

Need to pay your electric bill? Pay it at the bank
Need to pay the phone bill? Pay it at the bank

I hope you saying pay it at the bank online, because waiting in line at a bank in Japan is not something you want to do on a regular basis.

You can pay your phone and electric bill at the convenience store around here; I can get my bills for phone, cable, etc. electronically through my bank.

US still uses COBOL programs...

[Anonymous Coward]

...on S/390 mainframes.

Not much of a change

[Anonymous Coward]

Thier currency is worth so little that that practicaly are working for free now. maybe this way they can claim to be charities and their employer will not have to pay tax?

Re:Linux?

[fussman]

trying to be a righteous eye-for-an-eye troll? try again.

They will need a whole new Phrasebook!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how you say "Fix it yourself, you have the source" or "RTFM, newbie" in Japanese ?

Re:Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux cou

[pmz]

This is a win for Linux, but not that big of a win, considering the details of the situation. This hardly indicates an expanding mindshare for the platform, just ability to cannibalize another *nix with its freeness.

We should check back in two or three years. A payroll system is potentially a very high throughput system of many thousands of financial transactions each pay day. If they are successful, in the long-term, with this "upgrade" from UNIX to Linux, then many myths about Linux would be dispelled. Using this as a case study, selling Linux should get much easier.

I know I would still hesitate using Linux on a high-throughput system today, but in three years, I don't know. However, which Linux to use will remain a critical question, as Red Hat, for example, seems much less pure than Slackware, for example. For a server, I would still prefer a BSD for its utter simplicity and clean layout; for Linux, the same attributes would be attractive.

Japan vs Microsoft

[Vegan Pagan]

Considering how badly Microsoft treated their Japanese Xbox employees, maybe part of this decision was the Japanese government wanting to part ways with MS?

Translation...

[TheConfusedOne]

How do you say "Suck it, bitch!" in Japanese?

Same as you do in the US... ...Microsoft. :-D

Re:Linux?

[slide-rule]

A more viable way to spell it would be "Rinikusu"

Quick note for those who haven't any knowlege of Japanese alphabet/pronunciation: they don't have an "l" sound (in fact their "r" is somewhere inbetween) nor an "x" sound. The alphabet, when written in a romanized form, consists of consonant-vowel combo sounds (ri, ni, ku, su), and pronunciation of the "u" sound generally drops off to nothing between, say, a k and s, and at the end of the word. so the parent's romanized spelling would be pronounced similarly to "rinux".

Borrowing more from comments on slashdot.jp ...

[BillsPetMonkey]

According to Doripush (rated "excellent"),

"Of course, Fujistu almost certainly offered Solaris first. However the great and the good in the government said 'Yes, well and good but the OS with the most popular appeal is Linux.' So they went for Linux. When offered by three companies, Linux is also easier to swallow."

See the Japanese are not the only ones who can play copycat!

BSD is dead, thats why :)

[Srin Tuar]

Linus Torvalds said BSD is a dead end, so thats why noone will use it :P

I think he may have inadvertently legitimized the "BSD/dying" meme.

Re:BSD is dead, thats why :)

[Pieroxy]

Almost. He said the BSD license is a dead end, not the OS.

Re:Linux? - stop getting off on details and ...

[BillsPetMonkey]

translate something useful from a Japanese source. Or get back to your Kanji study.

The *REAL* reason Japan chose open source...

[TheConfusedOne]

They're hoping that this Mozilla creature can do something about their bi-annual Godzilla invasions.

Re:The *REAL* reason Japan chose open source...

[darrylo]

No, thed need to talk to the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division:

http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=354

(You have to go to the strip after this one to get the joke.)

Re:Does this still work?

[Anonymous Coward]

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
this is just a testiclejsadkfjsldfj ajsdkfljaslkf jdsak fjas sjdf jfska jflawjreiyrou 08f0zyd a ewa 0ya0ewy0awer0afd aa aewr
Do I Fail It???

Some thoughts

[SamBC]

1. I'm sure others have already commented on this, but I find it interesting that they take this decision while SCO have a representative (to say the least) around. Okay, he's not visiting them, but I think it relevant.
2. I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the TCO (or operating costs - is there a difference?)
3. I'd really love to see some technical details of the solution as soon as they are available.

Future or Japanese Politics?

[Ridgelift]

If Japan's running communist open source software, does this mean they're going to abolish democracy in Japan soon?

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the poster was making a comment more about the grammar in the post than anything else...

it's

It's (OT/Grammar Nazi)

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't say "their's" or "her's" or
"hi's" or "our's", so why would you say "it's" ??

it's == "it is"

- Your friendly Grammar Nazi

It is truly a blow to Microsoft

[FreeUser]

I'm sure Microsoft wanted them to use their software, but Linux is more likely to win when the competition is another *nix. Microsoft probably couldn't meet the requirements of 'runs old payroll software' or something, no matter how low they could price their software to compete.

It is unlikely the GNU/Linux is going to be running their old software either (hence they are "developing a new system" for deployment by Q2 2004), although they may be able to reuse some code. However, coming from a mainframe environment to a Linux environment doesn't really imply that they will be able to reuse much more code than they would have had they chosen Windows instead.

However, given Microsoft's incessant moving targets, incompatible windows releases, forced upgrade paths, forced obsolescence, licensing limitations and costs, and labor intensive administrative and maintenance requirements, stealth DRM and backdoor technologies, and woeful security record, it is unsurprising that governments are chosing Linux over Windows.

Microsoft themselves have said they are focusing the bulk of their efforts on combating the adoption of Linux in government ($CO is but a sideshow of this effort ... the real movers and shakers are flying to Munich, or having the president of Peru come crawling to them in Redmond, and paying bribes...excuse me, campaign contributions... to keep Linux deployment at bay).

It is quite telling that despite all of these efforts on the part of Redmond the stream of countries dumping Windows as well as older mainframe and *NIX platforms in favor of Linux and other free software efforts (FreeBSD, etc.) is quickly becoming a torrent and shows every sign of escaliting into a flood.

Don't kid yourself. Wins like this are big for Linux adoption, and they are a huge blow to the monopolists of Redmond.

Re:Tard! - MOD PARENT BACK UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster was a tard. So what if it's a flame?

Why do people suck at moderating?

[cheezus]

hey, dumbass moderators!

As numerous replys to my original post indicated, I'm pointing out that linux still has a ways to go until getting a big contract is no big deal. flamebait? how? I long for the day where another big linux win is normal and thus not newsworthy

sheesh

Spoken like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone with 5 years of experience.

What would you write something big in? C? ha ha. C++ ha ha ha ha. COBOL. ha ha ha ha. Oh wait. Fortran. H ah ha ha hah.

Or Java. Hmm. Ha. Hmmm.

Hey... it... makes.... sense.

Why, yes. Yes, I *do* build large system. And I have for many decades.

Re:Spoken like...

[Xerithane]

Spoken like someone with 5 years of experience.
Spoken by an Anonymous coward.

What would you write something big in? C? ha ha. C++ ha ha ha ha. COBOL. ha ha ha ha. Oh wait. Fortran. H ah ha ha hah.

Yes, I have written large programs in C. Thanks. Never coded in COBOL outside of school.

Or Java. Hmm. Ha. Hmmm.
Hey... it... makes.... sense.

Yes! Lets use Java for EVERYTHING! Any large system obviously needs Java to run smoothly. Nevermind that every VM has issues, or perhaps every server also has issues (Tomcat, WebObjects, etc.) -- lets just keep using it and pretend it's the only good solution for their problems.

Why, yes. Yes, I *do* build large system. And I have for many decades.

And this is why all of the major eCommerce sites are written in Java. Including Google.

Oh wait, they're not.

Re:Tard!

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole "its" and "it's" thing was, to my memory, never taught while I was in grade school. I try to avoid the words because I'm still not really sure how they're used, or why "it's" is incorrect when "foo's" would be fine. The English language sucks.

It's the GPL

[RoLi]

Why is linux getting all that good press is the real puzzlement.

What you BSD-guys will never understand is that Linux is a safer investment than BSD, Windows and most other systems.

Why?

Because the GPL gives the guarantee that nobody runs off with the source and forces an incompatible de-facto standard down people's throats.

You know, just EXACTLY what happened to Unix in the 70's and 80's, so please don't tell me that this can't happen.

Just a few weeks ago, many big corporations have formed a Linux-embedded initiative (it was on slashdot). With BSD this simply wouldn't be possible. Each corporation would be afraid that some other corporation would be working on their own stuff and then release it themselves. - Again look at Unix, it already happened many times, it would happen again.

This is just one example of many, there are already a lot of mulit-corporation GPL initiatives while there are hardly any BSD-based ones.

That was the major big reason.

The minor reasons are commercial, easily installable distros, commercial support available, better hardware support, better software support and bigger mindshare.

Darl can speak japanese?

[Anonymous Coward]

I grunting sounds the same in English or Japanese.

Dumb frigging moron.

EU promotes conformity

[Anonymous Coward]

European custom is to always looking for standards. This is not for the reason that you might think; standards are a barrier to entry to new companies.

In the European view, you use something like ISO or ANSI to look at a technology for years until its no longer relevant and people will agree to anything as long as they can go home.

In the US, the way its done is companies battle over the best technology, and once something "wins", then standards are put around it.

Its why the US invented the Internet and why France invented Minitel. What's more, the French are proud of it, mostly because you have to speak french on their system.

Do you think ?

[XpPrincess]

Dont believe it.. I dont think the consumer will see any of the HUGE operating savings .. this is just another add for people to switch to Linux.

A bit naive

[Moderation abuser]

The biggest cost savings come from systems architecture reorganisation. If you can architect your systems so that they require only log(N) support rather than N support people per box then you can make some very large savings.

You don't necesssarily cut your costs in half by reducing the number of systems or even staff by half.

It's very easy to architect Linux systems to require just log(N) support people, it's far far more difficult to architect Windows the same way.

So you've got to get the architecture right and yes, the OS can make that easy or it can make it difficult or even impossible.

had it been the other way ....

[twitter]

They're replacing mainframes, not Windows servers.

Had it been Windoze, they could have expected to drop 5 billion dollars. If they were moving to Windoze, they can expect their costs to drop to zero as no one will ever get paid again.

WIndows isn't the question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its more interesting to figure out why Norway bothers to spend money on an air force.

Just what do you think you'll do with it?

Re:WIndows isn't the question...

[BigBadBri]

They've got to have something to back up the dragon boats with.

Which Norwegian was the first to discover North America? Leif Ericsson, long before your ancestors even thought it was Japan.

Please say "Thank Jesus"

[Anonymous Coward]

If Jesus were alive today, he'd killed Allah's ass.

He's smarter, tougher, and you never, ever, underestimate a jew. Even if he is reformed.

Cost

[c0ol]

to about 350 Billion Yen a year thats what, 5$ USD?

Re:Cost

[Malc]

Didn't you know that the USD is really weak at the moment? I get paid USD and had a 16% pay cut in the first few months of this year alone, just due to the exchange rate fluctuations. The local currency isn't any stronger, it's just weak USD.

inverse is true too!

[twitter]

Japan To Do Payroll On Linux

also, Linux development is now on Japan's payroll.

Appgen anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of Linux and payroll. I've got a question. I've read some remarkable reviews about AppGen as a full back office system for small to medium sized companies. The reviews sound nice, but has anyone actually used it? Does it work well?

Re:Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux cou

[Jason Earl]

For years Microsoft's server growth has, in large part, come from UNIX to Windows migrations. Microsoft used the high price/performance ratio from x86 chips to steal marketshare from UNIX. The fact that Linux is starting to capture these sales is a big deal for the folks at Microsoft. Microsoft currently has a price/earnings ratio of 30. That means that if they want to keep their stock price up where it currently is that they have to show a significant amount of revenue growth. Even if Linux doesn't cut into Windows' server marketshare it is still robbing Microsoft of growth potential.

As for the desktop, Microsoft already has nearly 100% of that market. Part of the reason that Microsoft changed their licensing scheme is that raising prices was the only way to get any growth out of the desktop market. Microsoft doesn't have anywhere to go on the desktop but down.

It's payroll system

[Evil_Way]

The Japanese Government will use Linux for it's payroll system
Unfortunately, Japan will continue

Re:Linux?

[Uber Banker]

You are such a fucking bastard I will stick my finders into your eye sockets and pull your 'brain' out in two pieces. I will then shred and fry your brain with some garlic and eat it with a glass of Chenin Blanc.

Oops

[Evil_Way]

The Japanese Government will use Linux for it's payroll system

Unfortunately, Japan will continue to use Slashdot for it's grammar checking system.
(And it seems that I should do the same)

Re:Linux? - stop getting off on details and ...

[slide-rule]

I got your translation right here: "Anata wa mijuku na desu."

meta on topic: Good lord, if just one person found what I added interesting or useful, moderation or no, it was worth my time to post it. How much quality did you contribute?

In Other News...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the Bush Administration, responding to pressure from Microsoft, has added Japan to the list of countries comprising the Axis of Evil. President Bush has refused to rule out the use of military force to remove the terrorist tool Linux from the island nation.

Re:Linux?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Red wine goes with red meat, fanboy.

Payroll, Leo and Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first business computer (Leo, in the early 50's) was designed to do payroll and inventory. Its massive 16K mercury delay tube memory (and 17-bit word valve operated processor) was enough to do the job.

Perhaps a modern operating system or hardware manufacturer would like to produce an equivalent machine - with the speed that modern technology makes possible.

One of the Leo machines replaced the Treasury department in producing the tax tables after the Budget - it could do weeks of work overnight.

Where were IBM and Unisys while all this was going on?

Yankee machines are bollocks - only proper British machines will do.

Look at yourselves

[Cyno]

Just look at you.

How much money do you spend to count your money?

And you still profess capitalism to be the best system every developed? How long ago was it developed? Don't think we've learned anything since then?

Re:Look at yourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

So true. The world would be a better place if we were all commies.

I could certainly try to top Stalin or Mao in the Death count tally.

Starting with my fellow commies.

Just like they did.

Re:Look at yourselves

[Cyno]

Your a moron if you think the dollar bill has anything to do with freedom.

Was Germany communist under Hitler's rule? Is that why so many people died?

Why do I bother?

I'm not talking communism, you freak, I'm talking humanism. They can be synonymous.

Re:Look at yourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Your a moron...

Yes, you're my A Moron. Fact.

Hitler was a piker compared to us killer commies. Fact.

Why do I bother? Online, it may be your lack of knowledge and snarky pinko personality.

Offline, it might be your lack of dental hygiene. Supposition.

YHBT Fact.

Re:Look at yourselves

[PeeCee]

Just look at you. How much money do you spend to count your money? And you still profess capitalism to be the best system every developed? How long ago was it developed? Don't think we've learned anything since then?

So I guess you suggest everyone just go grab as much money as they think they deserve out of the big rich all-knowing all-seeing all-owning State. Or should we abolish money altogether? I'm sure you'd like to have the same remuneration for being responsible for the operation of thousands of productive systems than for wiping floors. That's a hell of an incentive.

Re:Look at yourselves

[Cyno]

I don't think there's a need for money, but there's a requirement that everyone become educated before it can be eliminated. I think managing currency or even just monetary value itself is inefficient.

We should be managing our resources, products, schedules, etc. Actually, our computers need to be configured to do that for us and we need enough volunteers to do the work that needs to get done. Then all the other people's "job" (nobody really is forced to do anything for food, shelter, etc) for the immediate future would be to automated all the jobs people really don't want to do.

I think there are jobs people naturually like doing, like playing music, being artists, musicians, doctors, computer scientists, etc. And I think there are a lot of jobs people don't like to do. But I think we could use technology to eliminate the jobs we don't like and provide everyone the tools and education to allow them the freedom to grow and experience the life they would choose to have.

It would be great if everyone could do what they want and be supported by everyone around them all the way, assuming that it harms noone. But I don't know how all of the details can be accomplish, I just have a few ideas. I just think if enough people really worked hard at this and put their ideas together, they could make a system work without money and without corruption.

Re:Look at yourselves

[PeeCee]

*gasps* Wow. I must say, first of all, I'm amazed, I was expecting to get my ass flamed back real bad :) Congratulations on a well-thought response.

Anyway, amazingly enough, I agree with you on pretty much every point. I think on the (really) long run, money might not be necessary. However, in the immediate future, I don't think there is any way to get around it. Money is needed today as a measure of how much our work is worth to society (and whether that's fair or not is an entirely different question and is not money's fault but something inherent in ourselves).

I too long for the day machines will be doing the hardest and most dangerous work (spare me the Matrix comparisons), and we'll be taking care only of supervising them and doing the most interesting and creative work (primarily scientific R&D and the arts). I definitely think that's the society we should aspire to and it's what we should set as the highest of our goals. But in the meantime, when we have children doing nearly slave work, there's a lot more to worry about than getting rid of money (something impractical which will not solve any problems today). It is not the root of all evil, although maybe we are - and we're the solution too.

edit!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is just so dismally badly edited. The word is "its," not "it's."

Pot. Kettle. Black

[stud9920]

to about 350 Billion Yen a year thats what, 5$ USD?

5$ USD (5dollar US dollar WTF ?) that's what, 2 EUR ?

Re:Tard!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not =that= fucking hard:

It's: Contraction of "it is"

Its: Possessive of "it"

It's only irregular because you have a contraction that is identical to what would normally be the possessive so the possessive is changed to what would normally be the plural. Since the plural is highly impractical, it doesn't cause a problem. If you're still confused, always spell it "its" and always write out "it is". That way, you'll never be wrong, though some people might wonder why you never use a contraction.

If it wasn't taught in your grade school, sue your teacher for malpractice.

all your yen are belong to us

[Rock Ridge]

Sure glad we buggered the software to give us a small cut of everything. Who says free software doesn't pay.

OT: GrammarFairy says: it's a lot to remember

[GrammarFairy]

Poor strannik. Confused by that mean old bugbear "its vs it's", and now looks silly with his article submission.

The main question with its and it's is, when it's posessive, and when to leave its apostrophe out?

First, remember that the two things that those three little letters and a possible apostrophe can represent are a posessive (something belonging to it) or a contraction for "it is".

Once you know that, this little mnemonic will help you out:

The only thing the posessive doesn't posess is an apostrophe.

Once you've remembered that, all you have to do is see if the words "it is" fit in replacement of the "its or it's" in question. If they do, it's a contraction, and you should apostrophize! If not, revoke its apostrophe and continue. Pretty soon, it's going to feel like second nature to you, and you'll wonder how you ever left a contraction without its apostrophe in the first place.

Magical Grammar Fairy Dust for you:

.,'.`',.,'"',.',."'.

GrammarFairy

Re:Linux? - stop getting off on details and ...

[BillsPetMonkey]

That translates to "You (effeminate) are a uninformed."

You're using that dictionary too much and not looking at grammar enough - put a noun in there somewhere.

To this topic, I posted this.

Whoopdeefuckingdo

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for all the non-zealots when I say, who gives a shit about this.

Re:Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux cou

[Anonymous Coward]

> However, which Linux to use will remain a critical question, as Red Hat, for example, seems much less pure than Slackware, for example.

Eh? "Pure" in what sense?..

no way

[Juln]

Linux isn't ready for the enterprise. Stive Ballmer told me so! You commuinists can't take over cause we programmer s have to continue to rip everyone of on upgrades. Japan is going to be reall sorry when ther Lenux breaks and all they can do is a call Fujitsu who will tell them they don't have any support because Linux is too hard.

This is japan they use *MAINFRAMES*

[Mongoose]

They use mainframes in Japan for this now, so don't start confusing the issue. Even in the article they imply that... if you read the article. =(

They're not using windows for their payroll I assure you. These machines have been up and running for decades in some cases. =)

[OT] Mnemonic

[sbszine]

Another good way to remember is that its (no apostrophe) is a pronoun, just like his or hers (which people don't seem to have the same trouble with).

don't know whether to laugh or cry. . .

[Chaset]

Darn you! Before today, I didn't know slashdot.jp existed. . . now I have two timesucking sites to read every day.

Just to stay on topic, it looks like the slashdot.jp frontpage story has a little more info. Regarding this.

Thankfully, my Japanese reading comprehension borders on pathetic, so I won't spend too much time there.

how about

[LimeColoredSloth]

an icon for Japan-related articles? I think that would be pertty cool...

Re:Truly a blow to Microsoft and a great Linux cou

[pmz]

Eh? "Pure" in what sense?..

Slackware and OpenBSD, for example, are simple and intuitive to work with, but Red Hat is less so (in my experience). Red Hat seems to add complexity under a guise of user-friendliness and is approaching Windows in that respect. It always seems that I end up fighting a bit more with Red Hat to get it working just like I want to versus Slackware or OpenBSD.

OpenBSD, by the way, has very good documentation for those not too lazy to read it.

SCO FUD.

[jotaeleemeese]

Stop spreading the FUD please.

If SCO wins what happens is that IBM pays billions and Linus removes the offending code from the kernel. A couple of weeks and we would be all done and ready to go.