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?"

Comments

Simple

[blitzoid]

MS will just buy an airline to keep from paying those high travel costs for Balmer. It's the sensible thing to do!

But I wouldn't wanna fly on it... they'll probably innovate the control systems with .NET and Passport, so if someone were to check their hotmail they might accidentally trigger the CRASH_INTO_MOUNTAIN subroutine.

Re:Simple

[airConditionedGypsy]

So, this isn't too far from the truth.

Remember the big power outage in the northeast a month ago? (of course you do)

Well, the next day while I waited with a bunch of other folks in the sweltering subterranean heat of Penn Station, I was horrified to see that all the ticket machines had friendly little Windows dialog and error boxes popped up, screaming about not being able to restart properly.

What a ubiquitous piece of software.

Re:Simple

[Geek of Tech]

> But I wouldn't wanna fly on it... they'll probably innovate the control systems with .NET and Passport, so if someone were to check their hotmail they might accidentally trigger the CRASH_INTO_MOUNTAIN subroutine.

I don't see your point. What in your history with Microsoft make you think that their CRASH_INTO_MOUNTAIN subroutine would actually work? :P

Summary misquotes story

[DeepRedux]

The summary says that "South Korea is switching $300,000,000 worth of PCs to Open Source", but the story says that "if the change is successful, we will be able to save about US$300m a year."

The amount of savings is not the same as the worth of the PCs.

the last paragraph is most intriguing....

[tokengeekgrrl]

"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

Re:the last paragraph is most intriguing....

[nsda's_deviant]

I'm not positive about the cost effectiveness of open source (yet) but there are two issues in south korea that must be taken into consideration that is more unique than the US. First, SK is hugelly dependent on MS everything, penetration in UNIX-LINUX-MAC OS X is almost negligible and the past 2 years of worms have devestated the tech infastructure to the point that billions are lost consistantlly when a MS worm is unleashed. Using Linux would then offer a new possibility of being MS independent so they can patch when they want as soon as possible. The Second problem stems from the huge dependence on IE. South Korean portals like Daum.net and hundreds of others are designed almost exculusivelly for IE. There will have to be huge changes made to site infastrcture-design and even business models for web companies if a signifigant minority of the population starts using Mozilla.

The proclimation is interesting because it doesn't guarantee anything. Future prospects of a success would be monumental and could set a future example for dozens of countries. Here's hoping the South Korean population can make the switch

Re:the last paragraph is most intriguing....

[dubStylee]

Wouldn't it be great if state governments ... Did you read about Oregon's open source bill? It didn't make it through the legislature but it came pretty close. One great thing about the bill is that the actual wording mentioned not only cost savings, but the issues of local control, of keeping public information resources accessible, of preventing spyware or adware being installed and others. More info here

Logical for Non-US companies

[Dark Paladin]

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.

OSS unemployment?

[bladernr]

I am in a position of managing development and procuring hardware and software. I have used Open-Source Software (OSS) instead of Commericial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) applications recently; I have moved some of my development overseas to India recently.

In hindsight, what I notice, is that I did both for the same reasons. While the COTS applications have lots of advantages (support, professional services, a vendor to yell at), OSS' price was right, and it was good enough. There are a lot of problems with off-shore development (time, politics, control), but, its good-enough, and the price is right.

I know of COTS software companies whose chief competitors are OSS solutions. As a customer, I have picked OSS over COTS. The companies have had layoffs. 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?

I'm not advocating anything, I just think that it is important to remember that jobs are lost due to OSS as well as foreign outsourcing. On /., we focus on losses due to outsourcing, but ignore the OSS losses (because this community, including me, tends to be pro-OSS and anti-offshore). In some cases, those losses are the same, when OSS work is done in foreign countries. If you want to be protectionist by making it harder to off-shore work, shouldn't you also be trying to limit OSS?

On the other side, if you want openness, shouldn't we have openness in labor markets as well as software?

Just food for thought...

Re:OSS unemployment?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:OSS unemployment?

[Master Bait]

You forget that many COTS companies have also lost their livelihood due to the monopolization of commercial software by Microsoft.

Re:OSS unemployment?

[AxelBoldt]

jobs are lost due to OSS as well as foreign outsourcing.

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.

Or bluffing as a negotiating tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Blizzard

[lobsterGun]

I would think that this would mean that we will be seeing more games coming out for Linux (at least from Blizzard).

I'm coming from the perspective...

[tokengeekgrrl]

...that I am currently re-writing proprietary applications bought from vendors, (one client-server app based on Oracle powerbuilder and another 32-bit windows-based). Once my team is done, we will own the code but the technology underneath (I'm thinking of Oracle specifically and other middleware applications) will still be owned by someone else. Once say Oracle decides to no longer support whichever of their products we are using, we have to upgrade and re-program it again if necessary, etc...

Basically, I think the cost-effectiveness will be recognizeable in the longterm because of the total ownership over the technology and investment made into resources so I understand your point in regards to open source by itself not necessarily being cost-effective. I have worked in the state government for 5+ years which, while not an extraordinarily long period of time, has revealed to me the expensive process that is endured with throwing money into "current" technology only to have it fade away within a few years and require replacing.

But you are quite right in that open source does not guarantee anything but it does offer great potential.

- tokengeekgrrl

Excuse me.

[Jayson]

I'd like to agree that JoeLinux appears to be a total loser. Geopolitics, indeed. What do you think this is, Kuro5hin?

And what is this crap he says about no trustings at ACs? Comments like his are why /. can such giant monkey cock at times.