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Japan, China & South Korea May Develop OS
v1x writes "Reuters reports that Japan, South Korea and China are set to agree to jointly develop a new computer operating system as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. It is said that if the plan matures, the three nations are likely to build upon an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and develop an inexpensive and trustworthy system."
It seems like if they want the most bank for the buck they should just work on Linux and create their own distribution. Something like Redflag Software Co., however I doubt countries such as China would be interested in something so open as Linux. Unless they had other motives such as installing filtering code deep in the kernel or something to block access to content they don't want you to see.
If Japan were really planning on doing this, they would do it themselves. China would as well, I believe. I wonder who is really behind this effort?
Instead of corporate lethargy and resistance to change...
We'll have government beaurocracy and spy agencies trying to include sneaky backdoors!
Seriously, though, this doesn't excite me very much. Kinda like China's CPU... and DoD's Linux... although they may make interesting contributions and suggest different approaches to security. And I haven't read the article, so I'm wondering whether it'll be a joint effort with separate translations, or if they'll just go with English.
"The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants." --Thomas Jefferson
Will it be open source?
Will it be an os designed to screw people over? (as in, drm, tcpa, etc)
Will they simply steal OSS and release it with few changes without honoring the gpl?
Will it be in other languages and availabe to foreigners?
These people are notorious for stealing ideas, and in most cases, modifying them into something better then claiming them as their own. I don't trust foreign companies and goverments any more, and in some cases, less, than I trust my own(US). What is the community to do if they steal it and start selling it stateside?
Candy-Coated Knowledge
It'll probably end up being a Windows clone so that license fees will not have to be payed to Microsoft. However, Microsoft itself being a behemoth takes years to make new versions. Remember how long it took them to create the NT line that lead up to Windows 2000 and XP? I can't imagine these three countries being any more efficient. Though I will give them credit for their workaholic culture.
I think the OSS movement should get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize - getting China to cooperate with Japan is not easy.
I spent some frustrating months trying to swap files back and forth with a Japanese company. If we had been able to convince our respective corporate IT departments to use Linux, it would have been a lot easier.
christ...this is like saying people jump higher wearing nike's than they do in reeboks.
their design paradigms need to be re-evaluated...every language you program has the SAME end result...machine code. programming in c or c++ is not going to make sofware less secure if you KNOW WHAT THE "F" YOU ARE DOING.
bottom line, c and c++ provide the flexability for system programmers to control every aspcet of thier code...if a routine call is flawed...then write a new one that isnt...or learn to program better...dont blame it on the damn language.
Funny, my wife has no problems using Windows 2000 to read and type Chinese on her computer. Previous versions certainly sucked (I have first hand experience on this having lived in Taiwan for 5 years and had to set up both Linux and Windows computers. And until a few years ago getting it working under Linux was no walk in the park) but the support for the very large variety of input methods for Chinese is pretty impressive.
To control their destiny? To not have their infrastucture held hostage to foreign export controls? (Can we say PS2/PGP/Supercomputer/Clinton/USA? There, I knew we could.) And since when did American hardware/software (less than 1/20th the world's population) define 'standards'? Standards should be in the data, implementation is still free and open. That's why we have Macs, Suns, StrongArm and PCs. Right?
A 1995 Mac is still a viable platform? Slowly backs away, smiling and nodding, making no sudden moves.....
Use the HURD, microkernels are the way of the future :)
Joking aside, I hope they don't use Linux - it would be good to see this scale of effort into something new, hell maybe even a microkernel based OS.
Linux is doing fine without them, and maybe they could increase the competition...