Japanese Government to Move to OSS

An anonymous reader writes "Linuxworld has up an article on the Japanese government's plan to reduce its reliance on a single IT vendor by moving to open source software. 'Oracle, NEC, IBM, HP, Hitachi and Dell are among 10 IT equipment and software vendors that are forming a consortium to develop and sell Linux-based servers and computers for the Japanese market. The move by the vendors to collaborate on Linux in Japan comes from a edict from the country's government to make Linux and open source a priority for all IT procurements, starting this July.' The government has said explicitly it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platform."

Comments

I for one

[Mipoti Gusundar]

I for one am welcomming our new rinux lunning overlords. Banzai!!!

No wonder Microsoft is scared

[kamochan]

No wonder Microsoft is scared and trying to pull FOSS patent issues out of their sleeve. They really do need to hang on to their existing customers with their bare teeth... competing with products seems to be something they are unable to do these days (well, ever, really).

Re:No wonder Microsoft is scared

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't like Japan moving away from their products. If Japan does it, then South Korea may follow, and then who knows what the future will hold in the Asian market? Microsoft has had an overwhelming market share in these countries for very long, and even though Japanese designers do use Macintosh computers, there's simply no way to get by without access to a Windows PC, due to the governmental reliance and the huge amount of Internet applications that require IE6. It will take quite some time for businesses to follow, but imagine if they lost a fair chunk of their share in those markets: it would mean a big loss, both in business potential and in PR, since it's certainly not doing your company any good when an entire country is moving away from it (especially when it's a big and important one in the field of technology like Japan).

Re:No wonder Microsoft is scared

[iminplaya]

If Microsoft does try this patent stunt, I hope Japan simply claims eminent domain and puts a quick end to it.

Re:No wonder Microsoft is scared

[paganizer]

I sort of have to disagree with that.
Windows 2000 was, is, and will be (until the process of making it obsolete via lack of patches to make it compliant with new hardware is complete) very competitive with anything else, especially when you factor in ease of use and administration.
I switched from the HP-UX / Solaris world to the Microsoft world professionally in '97 when I discovered that A) I could make more money that way, and B) that I actually liked being able to work with a product I was playing games on at home.
When Win2k came along, it was like validation; I didn't at the time, and still don't, like what they did with the DNS server & Active Directory, but it DID work, and worked well.
Towards the middle of NT 4's life, and until about 6 months after the release of win2k, things were sweet in microsoft land; things worked, if you blocked all the ports except the ones you actually used you were pretty safe, and the OS did everything; search engine, internet chat server, web server, early versions of VOIP, the list goes on & on. and if you shelled out the money for a good copy of office 2000, you got a free copy of SQL server and a whole crapload of web-enabled toys to play with from the OSE.
Almost immediately thereafter, however, Microsoft obviously began to come to the conclusion that they had succeeded too well; there was no real reason to upgrade from win2k/office2k. ever.
So they started killing it. They started killing function via patch. the fully developed 64-bit patch was put on the shelf until after the release of WinXP, except for in a highly expensive version of (not absolutely sure about this) Windows 2000 database server LE. Some people think that the code "leak" of 2004 was intentional, in order to push people either to XP or windows 2003. No effort was made to make intel hyperthreading CPU's work properly (they do work, but count each tread as a separate CPU, which they aren't, causing slowdowns). and .NET.
In recent years, companies have started releasing games that fail to install on win2k; in all examples to date, the games can be forced to install on win2k, and work easily as well as they do on the target platform.
I retired from full time work for a couple of years now, but when I do consults, it's either Debian, Solaris or Win2k. Screw the .net crap and it's descendants.
(Feel free to disagree, this is mainly my spur of the moment opinion and not highly researched)

Re:No wonder Microsoft is scared

[MalHavoc]

Well, hey, at least they sold those 200 Vista licenses in China, right?

Obligatory Alice in Wonderland quote

[arivanov]

Curiouser and Curiouser

That explains the timing of Microsoft Saber rattling. One thing they forget is that it is 50+ times harder to get a patent in Japan compared to a patent in the US and many of those patents do not hold there. Unless they have decided to stop contesting the ATT verdict and turn it to their gross advantage. Hm... If a quick settlement of the ATT case follows it will definitely get curiouser and curiouser...

The other curious point is that some of the usual OSS Japanese suspects are strangely missing. Sony and NTT have many years of history of BSD investment. Both of them do not appear on the list and there are quite a few "foreign devils". Curiouser and curiouser...

Listen

[Yoda Jedi Master]

The beginning of the end, this is.
But the Empire will wake up, and strike back. Unclear the future is.

Magic words

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has said explicitly it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platform.
 
These are the exact magic words one needs to say to get a HUGE discounts from Microsoft.

I hope they are sincere about it this time!

[KNicolson]

A survey conducted just one month ago showed that barely one percent of public sector employees used Linux, despite the Japan Information-technology Promotion Agency spending untold millions on feasibility studies over the last two or more years.

V E N D O R S

[djupedal]

Pay close attention before you go running off to the front office. The vendors are doing this - not the buyers/clients/users. In Japan, the vendors tell the buyers what and when they will buy. Say it with me: v e n d o r s

C ON S U M E R S

[Per Abrahamsen]

Spell it.

From the article:

The move by the vendors to collaborate on Linux in Japan comes from a edict from the country's government to make Linux and open source a priority for all IT procurements, starting this July.

The government is a (very large) consumer, this (very large) consumer says that is will spend ten billions on mostly Linux based infrastructure. Not surprisingly, the vendors try to bid into this very large order.

Just Plain Wrong

[oddmake]

Come to see What Oracle Japan said about this news(ja_JP)
They say "Though we are strong supporters of Linux,No such alliance are planned.Recent nikkei article is wrong"

ubuntu

[lovebyte]

The japanese governement is, for now, waiting for the release of Ubuntu Tantalizing Tentacles.

America should be the most scared

[WindBourne]

For the last 6 years, the federal gov has pushed Windows throughout and this was dictated from above. They have worked hard at keeping software companies on Windows. If EU, China, Russia, Japan, And South Korea port to Linux, then they will establish a market, while the Americans will miss it. Sadly, you would think that America would have learned their lessons from what happened in the move from DOS to Windows. Many companies OWNED the dos world, but would not port to windows. When they did, it was too late. They had already lost the market.