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

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

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.

Blizzard

[lobsterGun]

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

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: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