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Why The Korean Government Could Go Open Source By 2020

Posted by timothy on from the file-formats-matter dept.

An anonymous reader writes As the support for the Microsoft (MS) Windows XP service is terminated this year, the government will try to invigorate open source software in order to solve the problem of dependency on certain software. By 2020 when the support of the Windows 7 service is terminated, it is planning to switch to open OS and minimize damages. Industry insiders pointed out that the standard e-document format must be established and shared as an open source before open source software is invigorated. A similar suggestion that Korea might embrace more open source (but couched more cautiously, with more "should" and "may") is reported on the news page of the EU's program on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations, based on a workshop presentation earlier this month by Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning. (And at a smaller but still huge scale, the capitol city of Seoul appears to be going in for open source software in a big way, too.)

7 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Not a chance by lakeland1587 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Korea is very tightly wed to Microsoft. I've seen linux on some servers and of course embedded devices, but I have never seen it on the desktop there. A huge amount of the software is Windows only, with both Mac and Linux users completely locked out. It's a pretty conservative, conformist culture - especially at a government level.

  2. "The" Korean government? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Last I checked there were at least two Korean governments.

    1. Re:"The" Korean government? by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Funny

      Last I checked there were at least two Korean governments.

      It's South Korea. The Dear Leader invented Open Source, so South Korea is behind the times in adopting.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Re:Yes. by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, I'm pretty sure that Apple will continue to swallow up 95% of the money and market-share generated from the ongoing stream of Open Source

    Apple will never be considered for this kind of program as long as they have a weak commitment to backwards compatibility. That's essentially why Korea is leaving Microsoft here (and Microsoft has a lot of backwards compatibility, you just have to pay for it).

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  4. Google I/O by tuppe666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here comes the year of the Linux desktop.

    The Linux Desktop is already here. In and amongst the pissing contest in early markets consoles; watches, home, health between Apple and Google (What happened to Microsoft). Chrome OS got Android compatibility and Office Update and its Office improved, massive Android integration, and Google Play . As well as some great adoption statistics. 8 OEMs making 15 distinct Chrome OS devices now on sale in 28 countries, 10 highest rated notebooks available on Amazon.com and Chromebooks sold to K-12 schools has risen 6x.

    The fact that GNU Linux continues to flourish is just an aside.

    1. Re:Google I/O by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Informative

      On PC desktop the QA is still terrible. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with a media player which does not work properly with touchpad and which crashes when the subtitle setting is changed. Also the ACPI fan speed control is broken for a bunch of laptops. Sure, the correct solution here is simply to switch from Totem to VLC, and use a different kernel for the fan problem. Easy enough... but soon enough, some other glitch pops up. As long as Linux desktops (not only Ubuntu) are filled with these nasty surprises, the support costs will be enormous for fixing all these bugs or finding workarounds for them.

  5. Also illegal, so far... by tlambert · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also illegal, so far... It's illegal to use something other than the ActiveX plugin authorized by the Korean government to do online banking in South Korea. The current president promised to change things, but so far, nothing has changed. Here's his promise being reported:

    http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/So...

    The problem is that Korea requires use of their own national encryption standard, which has a governmental back door (and for which exploits have already been demonstrated at BlackHat) in order to "secure" banking transactions from snooping by foreign powers (guess they called that one correctly).

    Here are some other articles about where the plugin is required to establish secure communications channels:

    http://gadgets.ndtv.com/intern...
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
    https://www.techdirt.com/artic...