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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."
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)
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...
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
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
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?
Why in the world would you possibly think that? There are many, many reasons why they would want to do this together. China has cheap programmers, first. Japan and China have very good computer science people. And yes, there is a purpose for that distinction. The CS people develop the innovative portions of the system, and the programmers write the code that makes it all work.
Just for the language support alone it benefits both Japan and China to work together to try to replace the buggy Chinese/Japanese character input systems available. I'm not too familiar with the Windows end, but the Linux jserver/freewnn line is good but far from perfect or ideal.
How did you get modded interesting? "I wonder who is really behind this effort?" Uhm, Japan, China, and South Korea. Take the tinfoil hat off boy.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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
Japan views China as its most important future market, more important than the US. Unlike the US, Japanese manufacturers consider their entire global market before begin design and production (the US model is "build now, localize later.") This means that they are going to co-engineer their systems from the beginning.
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.
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!"