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North Korea's Own OS, Red Star
klaasb writes "North Korea's self-developed computer operating system, named 'Red Star,' was brought to light for the first time by a Russian satellite broadcaster yesterday. North Korea's top IT experts began developing the Red Star in 2006, but its composition and operation mechanisms were unknown until the internet version of the Russia Today TV program featured the system, citing the blog of a Russian student who goes to the Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang."
If you're a true lover of freedom, this distro is just for you!
The year of the linux desktop has finally come, to North Korea.
Is that a 2-bit or 8-bit operating system?
can we start expecting contributions to the kernel?
And how will they check them in?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I'm guessing said news program didn't consider the potential consequences for the student? (Especially if a) he's still there and b) If they consider this project to be some kind of 'national secret' which they probably do given security / the likelihood of 'cyber warfare')
2010 really is the year of Linux on the desktop!
In Democratic People's Republic of Korea, computer back door removes you!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Yet Another GNU Linux distro.
With a skin that resembles windows, and rebranded apps.
Here's an article with a bit more of information
http://techie-buzz.com/linux-news/red-star-os-linux-distro-north-korea.html
The "My Country" browser is just firefox.
Interesting is, they are in violation of the GPL. But then again, It's North Korea ...
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The article in its entirety:
Russian student back from North Korea had purchased a $5 OS disc and a $10 application disc. Based on Linux, looks like Korean version of Windows.
Nothing else.
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crickets
Or are you advised by fearless leader to just try and eat it as "food substitute?"
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I can't get to the article, but I'm going to take a swing and guess that their "self-developed" operating system is a re-branded version of Fedora with a bunch of backdoors punched into it.
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Ironic how super-strict North Korea uses Free Software, while South Korea is totally in thrall to Microsoft.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
Most of North Korea doesn't even have electricity. I'm not sure they need a firewall.
Putting moderation advice in your
Eagerly awaiting cheap shots at MS being intrinsically a bunch of communists, where as Linux isn't. Don't know how this will be pulled of, but it will, undoubtedly.
I'm all strapped down with a bucket of popcorn, waiting to enjoy the ride.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Or, in that case...
Better Red than Dead!
One that hath name thou can not otter
I'm surprised there isn't a press release telling us Kim Jong-Il programmed the majority of the OS himself in his spare time, it is the type of thing the Glorious Leader usually does.
mentions that the browser "my country" is actually a fork of FF
...splashing down into the Sea of Japan, too?
Bite my shiny metal ass!
Considering you only need to make it available to your users and all their users are behind the same firewall, it probably does.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Do they have the goofy M$ search assistant dog?
Just curious there...
--Stak
Holy happy hippy crap!
To get a copy of "Red Star", download the source code of redhat, and s/redhat/Red Star/i
. . . but the only app is Duke Nukem Forever.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Falling from the heavens like a rainbow star, the operating system appeared as a spirit of the people, willing itself into being to fight the evil west and spread true communist freedom to all people.
and I cannot stop myself of thinking - this russian student in NK that revealed the secret to the evil world - what happens to this poor soul? I mean either he was f.g silly, the regime told him to do it or the regime is already falling apart and everybody (in NK) can see it. Well I personally opt for silliness.
After all, North Korea is not known for its high technology or modern infrastructure. Well, as I'm sure the Mozilla team can tell you, developing a high quality modern browser is not a trivial task. Takes a lot of work and a lot of expertise. They have that, and have many years of code to build on. NK doesn't. So, what do they do? Rip off someone else, of course! That way they can have their own high quality browser with a minimum of effort. There's also little risk of their citizens finding out it is a ripoff and not original work because of course they have almost no access to the outside world.
If any one was actually expecting a real, home grown, innovate OS the were kidding themselves.
In Korea, only old people operate computers.
Now imagine a Beowulf cluster running on this distro. They could call it "red galaxy": Lots of red stars.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
But does it run red-starcraft? I mean it's korea after all.
I bet Slashdot just DDoS'd North Korea.
Yeah, and good luck to the FSF when they go over and try to enforce it...
...but not the fastest.
http://pics.livejournal.com/ashen_rus/gallery/0000gyzd
We're talkin' North Korea here, where the only running water is tears.
How do we know they aren't distributing the code to everyone the OS is available to?
Instead of peering at each other through binoculars across the DMZ, the two countries could now clash in an epic StarCraft competition. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
What a concept. A Chinese pirated copy of a "North Korean" OS. The article does note that the system requirements to run this OS is "fairly heavy." Yeah, like electric power. And a user who can read. Oops.
I'm sure this thing is really secure. Sends data back to N. Korea in real time.
//this is a joke chrome fans
Only thing worse would be running Chrome on it!
North Korean standards of "new". It takes their engineers a decade to completely remove all of the NSA and Chinese backdoors from the hardware.
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
Since North Korea is a sovereign nation, I dont think that they have to abide by US copyright laws...
I doubt they're going to murder him for leaking information about their non-secret software if that's what you mean. Apparently North Korea still gets a fair number of Russian tourists and would probably like to not piss off the Russian government.
I ran across a bunch of pictures from a Russian tourist a while back with translated captions. I found them pretty interesting.
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/dprk/index_e.html
Dear Leader is LOL at western socialists. ... everything.
Really? They so stupid to give away the source code for nothing?
Let's pack a few suit cases of our best counterfeit dollar and donate to those open source guys.
Maybe they'll give us blueprints of ICBM, stealth fighters
Red Stars engineers' proudly showed off its ability to play Pong.
"And we expect to be releasing Duke Nukem Forever within weeks" they crowed.
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
Isn't this kind of a modified version of one of the thought experiments from the Debian legal team? If you suppose dissidents in dictatorships should be allowed to improve and use the software without the need to put themselves in danger of exposing the fact that they have the software in their possession, then the licenses should only require sending source code and patches to people who specifically request them. (Incidentally, GPL doesn't require you to advertise your forked versions or send your modifications upstream. It just requires that if you distribute binaries, you should also make the source available upon request.)
Heck, the people who came up with this thought experiment probably never thought the same principle could be actually used by dictatorships to conceal the program from the outside world...
All your bases belong us
Red Screen of Dissention.
What does dissention mean?
The desktop display of Red Star is almost identical to that of MS Windows.
This reporter is lousy... The way she describes it, it makes one believe that North Korea made a GUI from scratch trying to exactly copy Microsoft.
After finding some pictures of the GUI, I was like Helloooo? It is just a boring KDE!
http://pics.livejournal.com/ashen_rus/pic/0002whq4/g16
Also look at the browser "My Country":
http://pics.livejournal.com/ashen_rus/pic/0002yxfz/g16
Yes, it is just FIREFOX just RENAMED (or forked).
My expectation went from: "wooo, North Korean Cyberarmory" to "lame".
Said a mathematician.
amerika has executions too y'all
Actually, it just looks like a default KDE desktop. I've seen the Chinese Linux that emulates the look of XP, and someone spent a lot of time on that copying the appearance down to the small details. This, on the other hand, isn't very customized.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I'd love to get a copy of Red Star and start capturing packets from it. I'm sure it phones home with key logger info. With that expectation in mind, I'm really fascinated how it's implemented and in what manor it communicates.
Ah, I miss being 14.
Yes it does.
GPL does not oblige you to make source freely available, and it most certainly does not mention making downloadable. Basically you are allowed to modify and distribute the source code. And when distributing a program (binary) obtained from the code or a modification of it you are also required to also provide the code.
That's pretty much it. No need to make it available for the whole world.
More like: In Noth Kowea compwuta opawates you!
From the full review:
"The Windows emulator worked well too. Mikhail launched Warcraft 3, and the game worked smoothly. So did the dictionary software and a digital library available on the disk.
and
What is interesting for a North Korean product is the near-total absence of propaganda – unless you treat the word “red” in its name as an instance.
and
Mikhail did test the antivirus, however, which (along with the firewall) was built from scratch by North Korean coders rather than re-written from an open source applications. It did well at finding and killing the viruses offered to it.
Objectively speaking its a pretty decent effort. And re The comments Firefox has been "poached", the start screen is firefox, and i feel they renamed it only.Lets face it, what does "Firefox" mean?
And no, I am not typing this while Dear Leader is standing behind me.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Yeah, awesome, those Korean programmers! They can make Linux look almost identical to Windows ... by using the almost un-altered default theme of KDE3
Sounds like espionage to me.
Oh, please - a year isn't that long a time.
to hear a hidden plea for help from the programmer to be rescued from the dungeon he is being held in.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
They also aren't violating the GPL if the jurisdiction they are in does not require them to have the permission of the copyright holder to make a derivative work in the first place, since the GPL is merely a license by which the copyright holder grants someone else rights which would otherwise be exclusive under law to the copyright holder.
Since its the North Korean government operating within North Korea we're talking about, here, I'm pretty sure the local laws don't require them to have a license from anyone to do anything they want.
The Russian student paid about $5 worth of North Korean currency for the Red Star and $10 for an application program disc, according to RT-TV.
Anyone else think it ironic that a communist regime CHARGES for Linux, an OS that's FREE to the rest of the world ?
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
or was that MS-DOS?
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
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DAMMIT NORTH KOREA!!!! As if we Linux users aren't ALREADY branded as f-ing commies!!!! We have to put up with all sorts of retarded crap like this ALL THE TIME and WITHOUT retarded commies, so WHY the HELL must you make our lives worse??? Their is an organization branding nations as commies who use Linux in the government for god's sake, and all we need is more fuel for the fire. Cuba already came out with their own fucking distro! But to be fair, do you wanna know why they use Linux? Because Linux is very flexible and modular, can be freely modified, and gives them an instant library of applications, but STILL! Write your own fucking OS you bastards, and quit branding the penguin as communist! AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I met ONE communist Linux user in the forums, and EVERY OTHER USER ATTACKED THEM!!!
Since when do the north koreans have electricity, computers and access to a (not the Internet) network? They even have a search engine called "My Country BBS" ... now available at a blistering 1200 baud.
I know this having recently received a message from a North Korean
---
From: shu!king!dumb!ill!prk!megaserv386!joeshmoe
To: Me
Hello Anonymous Coward,
I am writing to you today to let you know our dear leader is a dellusional little fucktard control freak who is intentionally running our nice country into the dark ages and starving us to death.
It's probably just a respin of China's Red Flag linux distro (Which i think is derived from redhat).
It has a nifty daemon that keeps system clocks set back by 50 years.
Now say it in Korean.
Tap tap tap.
We're waiting.
If at least Slashdot could allow anything beyond ASCII...
You obviously never tried to get a third world country (if NKor even qualifies for that) into the digital age.
P3s are actually pretty high requirements when you're on a budget of, well, NOTHING, with power availability running along the lines of "kinda-sorta-sometimes-more-or-less". Ever had to slap together a UPS from a few busted ones (don't make me start the story of how we got a car battery for it...) just to make sure you have stable voltage for the time it takes to get a system up and running?
To give you an idea what you're dealing with, take a look at this welding machine. I was duely impressed by the ingenuity employed there, the gadgeteer in me fell in love with their ability to create impressive machines from what we wouldn't even consider garbage. If you ever liked watching MacGyver, you should surely take a look around that page, you might learn a thing... anyway.
Sure, it's probably a notch upwards from this in NKor. But don't take your first world equipment as the measuring stick. You have things available to you that the majority of people on this planet could not even dream of.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
Since North Korea is a sovereign nation, I dont think that they have to abide by US copyright laws...
Assuming this information is correct, it seems that North Korea has signed the Berne Convention, so they have to respect copyrights.
...that unless they get a permission from the copyright holder to use that under different terms.
You're right: they're not obliged to follow any US laws. But if they do not follow the terms of GPL they have no right to use the software.
That in theory.
I could imagine that a netbook version of this would be called Red Dwarf.
signature is pants
"...would be called Red Dwarf." No, that's what people call Dear Leader when they get drunk.
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
They are NOT in violation of the GPL. North Korea is a sovereign nation that does not have the same copyright laws. How can it violate laws it does not have?
There are many countries in the world that violate the laws of others countries. The US is pretty hot on that list with its state killings, oops executions. It is against several international agreements to kill children, the US kills children, but hasn't agreed to these agreements.
International politics are often hard to understand because people are unable to think beyond their own country. No, not everyone in England has infinity points on their driving license because they drive on the wrong side of the road. In England, you get points for driving on the right side of the road. It is their law that counts, not yours.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
Do you really think the North Korean government is all that concerned about western copyrights? They steal commercial technology all the time. What makes you think they fear the FSF? Honestly, what would Richard Stallman do about it?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Don't get me wrong, South Korea is far more free then its joke of a neighbour but SK is not exactly the most established democracy in the world.
Basically, SK is what you get if the Americans win. Vietnam is what you get if the communists win. Which only proofs that in war, there are no winners.
Both countries got their oddities (Vietnam vs SK, not talking about NK in this bit) were live as an ordinary citizen is not as an American (and to a lesser extent a European) would expect it.
The east has a lot of experimentation done by the west, giving it some really odd countries. Hong-Kong, a capitalists wet-dream in a communist country. If you wrote it in a piece of fiction, nobody would believe you.
They are interesting places to visit, but it is best to leave your western expectations of how the system is run behind. Just as an american might find the dutch system of 20+ political parties confusing, and a dutch person has a hard time seeing the difference between the soviet system "you can choose between this guy and this guy" and the US system.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Objectively speaking its a pretty decent effort. And re The comments Firefox has been "poached", the start screen is firefox, and i feel they renamed it only.Lets face it, what does "Firefox" mean?"
"Our Country" is no more silly than "Iceweasel".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
On the subject of propaganda, does an American view the Super Bowl as basically a couple of hours of propaganda? The "this great nation of ours" message is spread a bit thick. Is it propaganda to have the color red in a communist country but patriotism to have the US flag on everything in the US?
But hey, I agree, this is just a re-branded Linux. Just what is the big deal? And ripping of windows? It is just a basic KDE layout. If they ripped of anything, they ripped of Apple, and Xerox before. It is basic stuff. Did everyone go "ooh windows 7 all of sudden has HUGE icons only on the taskbar, how OSX like?".
If any other country launched its own linux distro, we would applaud. NK does it, and apparently it is a bad thing. Sure, there are plenty of bad things about NK but can we focus on those issues on their own. It kinda feels insulting to the people dying from hunger and being tortured to bitch about the country rebranding firefox as if it matters.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Wow the guy that is taking the photo's seems to have been indoctrinated pretty well.....
It's funny that he tries to note that only the U.S. did terrible things during the Korean war.
He also fails to mention that it was acctually the americans that defeated the Japanese not the Soviets.
it is written the oppisite of every other travel blog i have seen to NK
'incessant flow of tourists'
'freedom to walk around'
'everything is contstructed well'
... who the hell goes to North Korea for their higher education?
I don't see where he said 'only' Americans did bad things during the war, and I hope you realise that it was in fact the Soviets who liberated Korea from the Japanese in WWII.
Your other points put into context:
'incessant flow of tourists' - 'The flow of visitors (to the birthplace of their founder) is almost incessant and consists of tourists, pioneers, and soldiers. Most are in groups.'
By pioneers I think he means party members. Between them and the soldiers I can believe an incessant flow to the birthplace of the guy who's birthday is year one in their calendar.
'Interestingly, all construction in the country is done by the army. As we can tell from the results, it is done rather well.'
I'd say from the photos it doesn't look too shabby, but anyway it was just a sideline comment where he was discussing their military service. It's not like he made a big deal of it.
'freedom to walk around' - you mean when he said the exact opposite, 'I will point out that in DPRK foreigners are not welcome walk around the city without attendants. However, no one was holding us by the hand, a liberty we used sometimes (described below).'
I guess you'll say I'm brainwashed now :)
If its Linux, then they didn't develop it. The shmantzy-pants fonts and icons and even the window dressing is just all crap filler. The underlying os is Linux. The blurb says they developed and OS. OH? Did they build a virtual machine? Did they develop a memory management system? What algorithm did they use for the task scheduler? Did they develop a task scheduler of their own? ....It says they developed an operating system. Did they really, or just corral a bunch of nubes to change a few fonts and twist a few knobs on the user interface? It says they built an OS, but I think they just twisted a few knobs (not the same thing, not by a million miles).
By pioneers I think he means party members.
More like Communist Indoctrination Scouting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_movement
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
...which is only slightly more time than it takes for Redmond's finest to remove all the backdoors they -didn't- authorize from their own software.
Where are the ISO's at?
or now known as ESTRELLA ROJA... IT'S ACTUALLY AN ARGENTINIAN LINUX... OR SO SAYS DISTROWATCH... Just see a red star and little red commies start catching up to you?? Bad reporting... nothing else...
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=estrellaroja
They also have an excellent nationwide camouflage, since they think they're still at war...
I invented electricity! Benjamin Franklin is the devil!!
Your argument makes sense. I am willing to accept that USA might have less prisoners per capita than North Korea. Once again you demonstrate why you are the land of the free, congratulations!
Wow! Only 4 years to create a Linux distro! Those N. Koreans are really on the ball! We should all copy their methodology.
Wow, a highway with more lanes than cars! How are these people going to threaten the Microsoft empire, again?
When you run "My Country", it lets you see the website on the other computer.
You only have to disclose the source code to those to whom you are distributing the binaries. Therefore the firewall is irrelevant. ;-)
Just keep swimming.
Lest we forget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie's_Angels_(film)
Perhaps the Supreme Leader simply wishes to be invaded by Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu.
there are a few issues here that I'd like to point out (one raised by another poster)
1. why would a Russian student being going to North Korea for higher education?
2. Why would they be letting him just carry that stuff out?
3. Why is he apparently free to just wander around, take pictures, and carry things out and write about them? North Korea controls people way too much
Now, onto the OS.
one thing I noticed right off is that the browser is called "my country" . Certainly means my country, but Koreans wouldn't say that, especially not the ones in the north.
They'd say " ". Our Country, my country conveys a sense of individualism I can't imagine them putting in an operating system.
computer is spelled which differs from the spelling in South Korea . Possibly legit, but North Korea takes a harsh stance on foreign words creeping into their vocabulary. Much like the french with their language thugs. Konglish use is small in North Korea and its caused issues for North Korean defectors trying to integrated into South Korean society. I'm noticing several instances of Konglish in those screenshots, and it seems excessive.
One article points out the lack of propaganda. Seems odd.
Why is this guy checking it out in the embassy? He couldn't have installed it on whatever machine had outside the embassy and taken some screenshots? If they let him carry CDs into the embassy he should be able to put screenshots on something of the in country BBS and share those.
I'm noticing the lack of a download.
If this guy has a copy, why is he holding on to it? Put it out there.
This looks like an extremely small customization job, and other than a couple icons, I can't really see what makes this "red start" or some kind of north korean OS.
Does it count as fulfilling the obligations required by the GPL if you make your source code freely available and downloadable but your entire country is behind a firewall and no one can access it? :)
As long as the source is accessible to the OS users - they comply with the GPL. GPL doesn't force you to distribute the source to the whole world. It requires you to make it available to your users.
sed 's/Red Hat/Red Star/' ... Kim Jong Il got Oracle's playbook
There is a .kml file that you can plug into Google Earth that shows all kinds of interesting things inside North Korea (including a rather small but very quiet water park, presumably just for Kim's kids to use).
If you look for the power lines, you'll notice that they only lead to areas where the elites live - areas with special compounds, like Kim's estate that has it's own rail spur and station.
One of the funniest stories is that there's a high speed road built only for the Dear Leader to use to escape to China. Apparently they ran a test to make sure it was drivable and found that there were a bunch of turns that were to tight to make at speed, and things like trees and livestock in the road. Needless to say, I'm sure heads rolled (although that probably happened later at a prison camp as a warning to others).
Anyway, it's logical to assume that if only the elites have reliable electrical service, and only those and a few showplaces have access to the Internet, that any firewall (Dear Firewall?) would be to keep the elites in line.
Putting moderation advice in your