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South Korea Jumps To Open Source Software
mormop writes "Following on from the news that a far-eastern Linux distro is on the way, silicon.com is carrying news that South Korea is switching $300,000,000 worth of PCs to Open Source Software.
The only question now is will Steve Ballmer be capable of covering the sort of distance needed to pull back all these switching governments before collapsing with exhaustion, or is he en route for the Air Miles record?"
The amount of savings is not the same as the worth of the PCs.
"Last month, Japan, China and South Korea met in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh to sign an agreement to jointly research and develop non-Windows, open source OS."
Wouldn't it be great if state governments (yes, I'm fixated on state governments because I work for one but also because it is the public's money that is being spent) here in the US would do the same thing? I've seen individual states start various research projects but no larger effort that leverages all the resources in all states.
Tangent: my graduate thesis is going to be on why governments should have an open source technology preferential mandate given the cost-savings and total ownership provided by doing so. Call me crazy but I really believe that government should always choose the least expensive option whenever possibe. Currently, you ask for funding for a project and once you get it the rule is use it or lose it, thus, more money is spent than is really necessary for most projects in order to keep the funding for future years.
- tokengeekgrrl
One thing that companies outside the US (Germany, China, South Korea, South American nations, etc) is that employing Microsoft is really only good for Microsoft.
But by switching to Open Source for the government, there are several benefits that "trickle down":
1. Programmers within the specified nations are now employed, which keeps money inside the country.
2. The advances that come from Open Source software can be then used in businesses inside the country, which reduces there expenses, and if more development/administration is needed, they can look inside their own country rather than going elsewhere.
3. Exportability. If you have a country with top engineers in Open Source, and another country happens to need those, you are now in a better position to export those services.
I'm not quite with the "governments should make laws forcing Open Source down people's throats", but I am in support of measures that will give them control over their own software destiny.
Granted - as long as they play by the rules of the GPL, BSD, and other licenses.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
S Korea may just be using this as a threat to get MS to negotiate on price and/or features. Until recently, govts (and large companies) haven't really had much of a credible alternative to Windows, so they haven't been able to use their incredible scale as purchasing and negotiating power. I wouldn't be surprised to see MS and S Korea come to a deal in six months time...
I have used Open-Source Software (OSS) instead of Commericial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) applications recently
First of all, COTS and OSS are orthagonal concepts. Is Red Hat COTS or OSS in your view?
Second I _hope_ you don't just download something off the net and call it a day! Free/Open requires commercial support just like non-Free/Open software.
The difference between Free and non-Free is the licensing model and the lack of "use" and "copy" restrictions. By making a dichotomy between "commercial" and "open" instead of "commercial" and "non-commercial", and "open" and "proprietary", you're creating distinctions that don't exist.
Imagine if lots of people decided to work on auto assembly lines in the spare time; what would that do to the gainful employment for auto workers?
Bad analogy: it is impossible to sustain an auto industry by volounteers. I might be willing to fix my own car, but I have no desire to waste time fixing someone else's too. However, if I can fix my car and instantly distribute the "fix" to millions of other cars, I might do that.
A better analogy, maybe: imagine that every time you had to put gas in your car, you had to pay somebody to do it. And you always had to buy a full tank, even if you weren't empty yet. And you had to buy a new set of tires. Then an "open-service" station comes along where you can pump it yourself, and it's cheaper. Sure, there are some benefits missing, and you might get your suit dirty, but it's a lot more flexible and it's cheaper.
In that case should you feel sorry for the "closed-service" gas pumper? Hell no, he was a waste in the economy. Time to retrain!
Basically I'm saying that if jobs are lost and prices come down in the software industry, it's because they were *charging too much* in the first place. I don't feel sorry for dead weight.
The India thing is another story, which probably has to do more with America's great wealth (labor is more expensive, etc) than anything else. In time this will fix itself. I compete with my Indian competitors by doing a much better job than they do. However I'm not above using their services for "grunt work".
Also, there are other forces at work: limiting OSS to protect jobs also yields great power to the closed-source software companies. It sure makes me nervous to think that my bank records, my medical history, my legal history, my credit history, my bank account, my entire life is stored across the country on computers mostly using software from one company. That's just a little creepy.
Jobs aren't lost due to foreign outsourcing, they are simply moved from one country to another country which arguably needs them more.
Clearly, jobs are lost due to OSS. Jobs are lost due to all programming, and due to all automatization. After all, it is the very point of technical progress that machines do the work that otherwise humans would have to do. Obviously, the better we make our machines (and programs), the more jobs will be lost.