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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?
The three nations are likely to build upon an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and develop an inexpensive and trustworthy system.
Aka: They are going to take Linux or BSD Sources, change some strings and compile them into their own kernel.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
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
.. an OS with East-Asian language support built in. If it's halfway decent, I can see it being used in cybercafes all over the globe. It'll sure be a lot easier than, as I've some Japanese travellers have to do, log on at a cafe, trying to install Japanese character sets/keyboards . They'll be able to send emails in their native language/character set right off the bat.
Before everyone comes out to commend this as countries embracing open-source software, it needs to be pointed out that the obvious result of the effort would moreover be the creation of a system with the real, ubiquitous support for the unique Asain languages, in which Windows has always been lacking...
A framework for developing the system would be set up during meetings by government ministers in mid-September, followed by committee meetings involving private-sector specialists from each of the three nations in November.
1) An operating system designed by a committee is going to fail.
2) An operating system controlled by a government is eventually going to be oppressive and restrictive.
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
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
an OS to compete with Windows will be made in Finland.
Pull the other one.
KFG
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.
welcome to MS's nightmare all developing nations working together to do linux based OS to not only get users but alos developers...
so when is the Redmond ligths out party?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Microsoft might lose, what, $20 in revenue? Piracy is so bad in Asia, it's a wonder anyone can sell any legit software there, at all.
They will probably write it in Engrish
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
A framework for developing the system would be set up during meetings by government ministers in mid- September, followed by committee meetings involving private-sector specialists from each of the three nations in November.
It looks like a good plan, but I hope the execution is not flawed.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
1. It is not "design by committee" - it is policy making by committee.
2. It is not "a government", it is multiple governments which don't all always agree on everything.
Establishing *infrastructure* is beneficial for everyone, so cooperation like this should be welcomed. You might see policy development being slow because of government involvement, but that's how it is when large organizations are involved.
My company spent a lot of time making a Unicode version of one of our larger web applications, and it does well in the Japanese market. Japan (and I guess Korea and China) are largely excluded from the Western market (as consumers) because of the complexity of supporting their character sets (Katakana, Hirigi, and Kanji in Japan alone).
So Japan, Korea, China share the need for coherent Unicode support in their software at OS and application level. This is something missing from anything one can put together today in the West, either using Windows or Linux.
So this move makes sense, though given the history between these three countries, somewhat unlikely. Perhaps after the successful football world cup, someone has been thinking...
Anyhow, I've said several times that it seems an obvious thing for governments to do, especially ones outside the reach/grip of the US hegemony: invest in local open source, both to encourage the development of local IT and to save money by buying less American junk. China, India, Brazil: these are the countries where the likeliehood of a serious home-grown OSS "industry" is most likely.
Before the "destroying value and US jobs" mob get here, I'll just add my voice saying it's a good thing and all success to them.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
1) An operating system designed by a committee is going to fail
Why is it going to fail? Has a committee never worked? Isn't this what happens more or less in large companies, ones that build large software systems? For every Linus, there is probably hundreds of incredibly complex pieces of code designed by committees of programmers and managers.
2) An operating system controlled by a government is eventually going to be oppressive and restrictive.
WHY?! Please, take off your tinfoil for a while and go out for some air. not everyone is out to get you. Maybe they just want to offer their citizens, and especially the companies in their country a compelling alternative to American made products with poor support for their languages.
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.
Maybe I am just cynical, but how can China really be embracing OSS when they are the ones with the infamouse 'great firewall'?
In my opinion, they would simply make it so that they (the govt.) are the only ones who handle security etc, so no outside info can get in.
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.
The only OS mentioned is Minix and he refers to it that if you are tired of everything just running under Minix you might give his kernel a try. Hardly a rousing sales pitch except to geeks.
That is btw Microsofts biggest problem with linux. Where MS got to meet growth targets and keep market share. Linux is free of all that. If one person still enjoys tinkering with it it has met 100% of its goals.
Remember that it is companies like Redhat and Suse that can fail. Linux cannot fail. Neat isn't it.
Disclaimer I am talking about the kernel here. The GNU part has of course always had higher ambitions according to its founders.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.....
28FEB2003 ZDNet: "Microsoft signs pact with Chinese government allowing them to view Window's source code." 31AUG2003 Reuters: "China, Japan, Korea to develop Window's replacement." 31AUG2003 Bill Gates: "Doh!"
Saying the X-Window System is "lacking in many areas" without identifying the areas you think are lacking is baseless criticism. Berlin is unfinished and has a tiny selection of applications compared to the X Window System. Apple Quartz is proprietary; nowadays we should prefer open-source.
A reasonable first step, and one suited for such a consortium, would be to go through all major open-source software and convert it to 100% Unicode-enabled, put all the text into resources, and provide resource files for each of the national languages. Then check all the code back into the major open-source projects.
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...