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Microsoft Government Software Linux Politics

Linspire CEO Offers S. Korea To Replace Windows 279

Posted by Zonk from the who-needs-an-ms-product dept.
Spy der Mann writes "Noticing the Microsoft threat to withdraw Windows from South Korea, the Linspire CEO, Kevin Carmony, just offered to license every computer in the country with Linspire, for just $5m. This would be around 10 cents / person. 'South Korea could save around a quarter of a billion dollars. More importantly, however, it would break South Korea loose from the monopolistic grasp of Microsoft, which the country currently finds itself under,'"
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Linspire CEO Offers S. Korea To Replace Windows More

Linspire CEO Offers S. Korea To Replace Windows

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  • A mixed bag (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:22AM (#13957008)
    While I'm sure the slashbots will shout and cry about the virtues of linux (despite being Linspire), it sounds more like a grab for attention than anything serious. While I'm sure Carmony could make a bundle on the deal, could he really support all of South Korea? I wonder if he even has a team of translators for the major world languages to begin with!

    • Re:A mixed bag (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rvw ( 755107 )
      Relax man! Carmony is just doing his job. And Koreans are smart people, so most of the support will be from local companies, probably the companies that now give support on Windows. The change won't be overnight.
      • Probably true, but if they're going to do local support why would they ever pay for Linspire when there are so many free Linux alternatives? As you said they're smart people, even paying $5 million would be stupid when you could pay $0.
        • Because no matter what the linux zealots say, Linux is NOT ready for the desktop. You and I might not have any problems setting up a Linux workstation, but when I think of grandparents everywhere trying to install Debian, nothing good can come of it.

          Linspire is targetted at Windows users. They've tried to make it easier to install, use, and maintain. Obviously lots of linux zealots hate it because they feel it's "dumbing down" Linux, but that's the only way Linux is going to capture any significant marketsh

    • Re:A mixed bag (Score:5, Funny)

      by Frankie70 ( 803801 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:44AM (#13957064)
      could he really support all of South Korea?

      He, he could. He could direct all of Korea to Linux
      newsgroups & mailing lists, where geeks will flame
      Koreans to code fixes what bugs they find.

    • No need to hire a huge support staff. He can just use all of S. Kore as his new outsourced call center for the US, and with the money he doesn't pay them, he can build a real local support center in N. Korea with people who speak the local language.

      And oh, yes, add the obligatory:

      4: Profit!!!!
    • Note the possible domino effect. Linspire goes to the ROK, perfects the OS, then targets the Korean market in the US.
      With the precedent in place, and the Unicode kinks worked out, Linspire can then target other Asian markets.

      • Re:A mixed bag (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Daengbo ( 523424 ) <daengbo@gmail. c o m> on Saturday November 05, 2005 @10:29AM (#13957318) Homepage Journal
        All my male, teen students do in their free time is play Starcraft. When I go to a restaurant near lunchtime, the TV is always on OnGameNet (AKA 24 hours CS / Starcraft). The female teens all play MAple Story (online MMORPG). The young adults that I know spend their evenings playing Kart Rider (online racing). Everybody wants to be a progamer when he or she grows up.

        As much as I want Linux to succeed here in S. Korea, HanSoft's 3.2 version is already free, and it isn't doing their market share any good.

        Not a chance of this happening in the private sector.
    • While I'm sure Carmony could make a bundle on the deal, could he really support all of South Korea?

      What is this 'support' you speak of? The article mentions licencing only.

      'Support'? 'Usability'? A Ledi craves not these things.
       
      • It's South Korea. After a year, they'll be selling US support. Millions of well-educated and disciplined geeks learning linux all at once... yipes. They'll be the evangelists to the world, not us.
    • Korea=HUGE broadband connections.

      Linspire=HUGE updates.

      This is a recipe for disaster. Linspire doesn't have the resources to pull it off. As a marketing plan, it is a good idea. As a realistic plan, it doesn't sound too good.

      $5 million sounds like a decent amount of money for Linspire, but for long-term support, it is just a drop in the bucket.

      I would almost guess that Bill Gates put them up to this. Watching this fail would bring joy to his holidays...
      • You need to be a genius to figgure out that it doesn't take much to move a mirror in Korea and use their "humoungous" pipes?

        • Re:A mixed bag (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bigman2003 ( 671309 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @11:42AM (#13957607) Homepage
          Move to Korea = $$$
          New hardware to handle the load = $$$
          Big pipes to service traffic = $$$ (even in Korea)
          Cost to maintain data center = $$$

          Like I said...$5 million doesn't go too far when you have to set up that type of infrastructure.

          They're not talking about something small here - they're talking about supporting an entire country. You can't do that from your mom's basement.
          • Who's talking about supporting anything? Almost none of the Windows installations there are supported either, because they're pirated. That's what started this whole thing. Presumably S. Koreans would just use and share Linspire the same way they use Windows now, only legally... though why S Korea would bother to pay the $5m to be legit, I don't know. Maybe to get the WTO off their back?
            • Are you familiar with the entire Linspire concept? It is all about downloading...that is what makes them different.

              And you don't download from Bittorrent...you download from Linspire.

              THAT is why this is a big deal.

          • "New hardware to handle the load = $$$"

            This is true for Windows Vista, not Linux.

            "Big pipes to service traffic = $$$"

            I don't think i understand what you mean. Supply chain? Network downloads?...

            "Cost to maintain data center = $$$"

            I'm sure these are lower than if Koreans go for the hardware-sucking and license-hungry Vista...
      • "Linspire=HUGE updates."

        There's this "bittorrent" thing I've been hearing about...

    • Re:A mixed bag (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fhic ( 214533 )
      And, of course, Linspire is nearly useless without the Click-N-Run subscription service. (CNR is Linspire's slick automated apt-get functionality.) TFA makes no mention of whether he's planning to give that away too. I would suspect not. All the other recent Linspire giveaways have not included CNR, or have included very brief trial runs.
    • (despite being Linspire)

      I agree you have a point here, but I think if you could move an entire country over to Linus, for even a little while, it would be a huge step in the right direction. Even if it is a terrible distro, I think a lot of people would be willing to switch from Linspire to another Linux distro. The switch from a crappy distro to a good one would certainly be easier than individuals switching from Windows to Linux on their own.

      Hell, maybe everyone will use it and decide to go bac
    • could he really support all of South Korea

      No, because they would have to bundle Cegeda with Lindows too, and support that. South Korea is effectively the world headquarters of gaming, and the PC varieties of those games run on Windows, NOT Linux. Unless you want the people to overthrow the government, you're going to need to provide them with some way of playing their games on their new Linux-based PCs.

      Of course, I would imagine that if Microsoft pulled out of South Korea, a more likely scenario is that the

  • Open letter to S. Korea (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:24AM (#13957012)
    Cool, just do it

  • I've got a better offer. (Score:5, Informative)

    by rathehun ( 818491 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:25AM (#13957014) Homepage
    click [ubuntu.com]

  • Nice marketing stunt (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IdleTime ( 561841 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:29AM (#13957019) Journal
    Really, that is all it is. I like Linux as much as other people, but I don't think South Korea, as a whole, is going to jump on this just as I really don't believe MS will pull out of South Korea. It's all marketing and jocking for positions. There is no way that MS will leave South Korea, one of the most advanced industrial nationas around and a lot more advanced than USA. Oh no, MS will never leave South Korea, it means too much to them.
    • Not quite true, microsoft will end up leaving Korea, just like it will inevitably leave every other place on the world, apart from two particular resindences in the US, where a rather pathetic and disreputable duo will mull over what was and sulk about what could have been ;-).
      • MS would either become a web services company. or a Linux vendor before they died, theyre too big to just disapear so simply... theyll find a way, even if its by Forking a BSD to build a 100% linux compatible system or something... they could do it with their resources.

    • Re:Nice marketing stunt (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NickFortune ( 613926 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:36AM (#13957168) Homepage Journal
      but I don't think South Korea, as a whole, is going to jump on this...

      It's an interesting dilemma for the S. Korean Govt. Giving in to Microsoft would be like negotiating with terrorists - if you cave in to them, it sends the message that blackmail works, and they'll do it again.

      Consequently, South Korea's might feel their best interests like in making the switch, trading the short term inconvenience of the migration against getting out from under the thumb of one of the planet's more rapacious corporations.

      This could get very interesting :D

      • Consequently, South Korea's might feel their best interests like in making the switch, trading the short term inconvenience of the migration against getting out from under the thumb of one of the planet's more rapacious corporations.

        I don't think most normal S. Koreans will even hear about this. It's not like somebody is in a position to decide all South Koreans will now switch to Linspire. It's no different than if some off-the-wall Linux distro from Mongolia offered to wipe out Windows piracy in the

      • Well, when the UK started bothering to deal with the IRA terrorists look what happened [bbc.co.uk].

        Your just spouting political [yahoo.com] nonsence [bbc.co.uk], to deal with terrorists you need to setup negotiations and cave in to some of their demands.
        Prior to the UK dealing with the IRA there was a complete ban on broadcasting [charter88.com] the words of Sinn Fein leaders and the terrorsts kept on bombing [bbc.co.uk].
        • Your just spouting political [yahoo.com] nonsence

          Now, now. Don't mince your words, say what you mean :)

          Personally, I always interpretted the "no negaotiation" business to mean non-negotiation in hostage and blackmail situations. Trying to address the complaints of your aggressors and find some common ground between opposing positions is always going to be a good idea.

          But so long as you conceed the aptness of the terrorism analogy, does that mean that you think South Korea owes Redmond some concessi

      • Well interestingly China is going to face the same dilema in a few years, piracy is rampant there as well.

        If Korea switches to Linux they will have a heck of a lot of technologists ready to support Chinese companies when they switch over to their new OS (Could be Linux could be something built from the ground up.)
    • Well it's simple, Microsoft shouldn't have dared to threaten a whole entire nation. I'm sure that *responsible* governments everywhere will have their eyes wide open now and take cue from this threat. Switching to OSS should be a national priority and a cause of activism for every concerned citizen worldwide.
  • Is that a typo on the head line? Is it suppost to be...

    Linspire will replace crippled Windows with Linux - cheap

    • Re:Crippled Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RicktheBrick ( 588466 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:21AM (#13957137)
      Linspire has a service called cnr(click and run). This service costs 49.95 a year. So are they going to charge all the Koreans that fee after the first year? I tried to download BOINC and install it but according to their bulletin boards there is a problem with installing it. It has been 10 months since this program has been released. Wine just went into beta and I am wondering if they will take a year or more to get that version into cnr. They will sell you win4lin for about the same cost as going out and buying a version of windows so they do not have much of an incentive to get the new wine out to its subscribers.

    • Re:Crippled Linux? (Score:5, Funny)

      by NickFortune ( 613926 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:59AM (#13957222) Homepage Journal
      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/01/22/register_t ariff/ [theregister.co.uk]

      Just because it's funny doesn't mean they're joking.

    • Yeahm (Score:2, Funny)

      by hackwrench ( 573697 )
      The headline currently reads "Linspire CEO Offers S. Korea To Replace Windows" which led me to wonder:

      Is S. Korea Linspire CEO's to offer?
      Is S. Korea a viable alternative to Windows?
      Are there any benchmarks on S. Korea's performance on general desktop tasks?
      Isn't this solution a bit excessive?
  • ...This is about as close to a Linux port as WoW is gonna get I think...

    • Re:Certainly.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nath_de ( 535933 )
      This would definitly increase the chances for games on Linux:
      • South Koreans game a lot.
      • South Koreans game with PCs (as Consoles where illegal till last year)
      • So they will continue to need current games for the OS they use.
      Sure, the currently installed Windows base won't vanish, but the change would happen when games start to require Vista.
      • South Koreans game with PCs (as Consoles where illegal till last year)

        On the contrary, in the early-to-mid 90s, consoles were quite popular, even though they were partially rebranded. Samsung and Sega agreed to market the Master System, Genesis and Saturn under the Samsung logo while Hyundai and Nintendo co-branded the GB, GBC and SNES. Sony also released the white PSOne here as well, so illegal wouldn't quite fit.

        Samsung Saturn [engadget.com]
        Samsung Master System [smspower.org]
        Check the history section [wikipedia.org]

  • Support? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mukund ( 163654 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:31AM (#13957028) Homepage

    He's going to provide support for 50 million computers at 10 cents each? Would be quite tough.

    If there is no support involved, I'd like to provide South Korea with Linux for 50 million computers in the form of either CentOS [centos.org], Fedora [redhat.com] or Ubuntu [ubuntulinux.org] for free and free with "community support".

    What's the deal?

  • Most Koreans Websites IE only (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:34AM (#13957034)
    Almost any korean website seems to be made for IE, and especially things like clubbox.co.kr, those only work with ActiveX plugins ... doubt koreans are really ready to change their oses ...

    • In Korea, Computer = Windows PC with IE (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ThreeDayMonk ( 673466 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:24AM (#13957143) Homepage
      That's my experience, too. Even if they don't require ActiveX, very few Korean websites will actually display properly in another browser - even fewer if you use a pop-up blocker. I don't think that anyone tests on anything else.

      Korean computer culture seems to be even more homogenised than it is in other countries. Everyone uses Windows; everyone's on MSN Messenger; everyone has a Cyworld Mini-hompy[1]. My iBook received interesting responses: those that had heard of Macs thought that they were tools for graphic artists.

      In addition, there's a big limitation in that SEED, a Korean 128-bit encryption system used in online banking since the days of US 40-bit-only export restrictions, is only supported in IE; although there are moves to port it to Firefox, it hasn't been completed yet, as far as I know.

      1. Mini-homepage, a sort of personalised blog/music/photo-sharing site. They are literally miniature, too: even on a large monitor, the 'mini-hompy' is limited to a few hundred pixels in each direction in the centre of the page.
      • Tell me about it. On the other hand, don't, because my wife sure does after I ditched Windows and got a Mac. Now naver.com doesn't work 100%, mostly due to Windows IE-specific JavaScript. They definitely code to the majority browser; my wife says "why should they bother with web standards if it works for IE and everyone uses IE?" I've also noticed that Koreans must like moving flashing images jumping all around, because their web pages just won't sit still ;)

  • In South Korea ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:36AM (#13957039) Homepage
    ... only old people will keep using MS Windows.

  • If you give up Windows... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MisaDaBinksX4evah ( 889652 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:41AM (#13957057)
    I'll give you South Korea.

    Where do I sign up?

  • Bah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bugbeak ( 711163 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:52AM (#13957075)
    Korea is too tied to MS for anything like this to happen any time soon. Ironically, with the exception of the Xbox, and MS Office, just about everything else Microsoft has a strong grip here. Major websites are designed for IE, Palm is hardly popular, Apple is only used by some 20K people, etc etc etc. There will be repercussions if MS has to back out of the OS market.

  • no way this happens until... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:55AM (#13957082)
    they have starcraft for linux

    • Insightful, not funny (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Froobly ( 206960 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @11:32AM (#13957559)
      This is not funny. This is true. You can joke all you want, "Starcraft kekekeke," but it doesn't change the fact that computer games are a major part of life over there, and even after all these years, Starcraft is still king. If Microsoft pulled out of Korea, their popular culture would be sent reeling.

      Well, for about six months. After six months, all the game manufacturers start pushing Linux in a big way, since there's no way any of them would leave Korea of their own free will -- and they sure as hell won't let Microsoft pull them out without a good fight.

      South Korea's got some 17 million PC gamers. How many does America have? If you count consoles, it's probably no contest, but I'm under the impression that PC gaming is a bit of a niche market in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if South Korea has more PC gamers than the entire US, even with only 1/6 the population.

      No, the day Microsoft pulls out of Korea is the day that Blizzard and NC Soft shift focus to Linux. Once that happens, the hardware vendors start writing decent drivers for Linux, and all of a sudden Linux doesn't suck as a gaming platform anymore, and Windows becomes an "also supported" platform.

      This is a bluff, and Microsoft stands to lose a lot from it. They've set the charges and are pushing the plunger from inside the parking garage.

  • That is EXACTLY what Linux needs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RoLi ( 141856 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @08:58AM (#13957087)
    Linux needs M-A-R-K-E-T-I-N-G

    Just look at Mozilla and Firefox and you see what a difference a little marketing can make.

    • I'd never buy Linspire, but you have to admire the chutzpah. Someone needs to call Microsoft's bluff, even if the reality would be that 90% of S. Korea would rather pirate Windows.

      Ubuntu seem to be successfully marketing their distro at Mac-coveting, Greenpeace-supporting students, we need more of the same. Bring it on...
    • Linux Marketing Quiz:

      Name 5 reasons the ordinary PC user would want to use Linux -- that don't involve negative comparisons with Windows, and don't involve Unix oogware such as latex or emacs.

      (...)

        1. Cost.
        2. Freedome (yes, i'm one of those people).
        3. Interoperability - with a GNU/Linux system I know that data I produce today will be just as accessible 10 years down the line thanks to open formats and standards, I cannot say the same for Microsoft's products. Additionally Samba lets me work nicely with Windows shares, Firefox allows me to view webpages written with all but the worst markup and OpenOffice allow me to recover old MSWord documents better than newer versions of MSWord does.
        4. Freedom (again) - I
        • Because we are talking about marketing, Cost is not an argument in Linux's favor. If you look at the distros that actually have marketing and support behind them (RedHat, SUSE), Windows is usually cheaper to buy on the desktop.

          And Firefox and OpenOffice are primarily deployed on Windows -- not an argument in Linux's favor.
        1. It costs $0.
        2. It comes with a fully functional suite of desktop productivity software, also for $0.
        3. You can download more software through the built in package manager at no cost. Ubuntu has 17000+ software packages available.
        4. You can legally share it with your friends.
        5. No vendor lock-in. Linux is supported by numerous different companies and individuals, many of whom offer support at levels up to and including programming new features for any of the standard applications.
        • Learn how to install Linux software yourself, then there's no "vendor lock-in" as you mis-characterize CNR.

          IMO its better than expecting Korean teeny-boppers (who have much better things to do with their time) to learn arcane installation techniques in order to play non-free media formats in the varied ways a modern OS does.

          The full Linspire may not be free, but you won't have people pulling their hair out linking rtsp:// type protocols to their browser, and getting threatening warnings from their friends w

  • Just this?!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linumax ( 910946 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:14AM (#13957121)
    This would be around 10 cents / person. 'South Korea could save around a quarter of a billion dollars.

    Right, and how much would be the cost of Win->Lin transition? Training thousands of people? Porting millions of lines of code? Translating all the stuff? and so forth. Whoever told this must take a look my signature!
  • Or does hatred of all things Microsoft trump this forum's hatred of monopolies and for-profit activities? Because as we all know, Linspire is making a money grab - they are not doing it to "further the cause". Seriously, do we really want governments mandating the use of a particular OS? That *cannot* be a good thing. I can't help but wonder how much howling would there be in these parts if the headline read:

    Microsoft CEO, Steve Balmer, just offered to license every computer in the country with Windows ..
    • Seriously, do we really want governments mandating the use of a particular OS? That *cannot* be a good thing.

      I agree, but there is a wider picture. If the givernment mandates Linspire that's bad, but mandating Linux - with Lindows being the initial distro of choice would be a much more positive thing.

      There is an important difference between mandating "Windows" and "Linux". In the first case you are supporting a, third-rate, monopoly OS. In the second you are supporting a large number of competing supplers

      • Re:I thought monopolies were bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by LaughingCoder ( 914424 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @10:53AM (#13957397)
        Ahh, we have stumbled across my favorite discussion.

        ... because it rides on the coat-tails of Windows itself which, of course, only got where it is today by riding on the coat-tails of DOS, which rode on the coat-tails of the IBM-PC

        You see, having lived through the whole PC revolution, I contend that MS did not hitch a ride on the coat-tails of the IBM-PC. In fact in my view it is the other way around -- they drove the bus! Until MS came along the pattern was for hardware vendors to also sell you their OS. Everything was closed. Even Apple (a darling of this forum) was closed (and still is). It's "us or the highway" was what all the hardware vendors declared. As it turns out, though, IBM screwed up by outsourcing their OS and not demanding an exclusive (I'm sure they would do it differently if they could have a "do-over"). Gates was no dummy. He developed versions of MSDOS independent of IBM, which ran on IBM machines. And yes, MS got a bit lucky when clones emerged, though frankly if they hadn't have secured rights to sell MSDOS to those clone manufacturers then it would have been much more difficult for them (the cloners) to achieve compatibility. They would have had to "clean room develop" an OS, which is significantly more difficult than clean-rooming a BIOS (which was hard in itself). [note: why is that? it's because a BIOS is a middle layer which is pinned from both ends, an OS is only pinned from the bottom unless you can get your hands on every application ever written to test compatibility at the top] So basically it was MS that broke the hardware vendor's lock on operating systems. This led to competition in the hardware world, which led to cheap hardware. All of that led to Microsoft's hard-won dominance in the marketplace in a self-perpetuating spiral. One more note, by insisting on binary compatibility, MS has managed to maintain their dominance (and at the same time fostered the cheap hardware revolution) all the way to today. Intel/AMD were forced to keep binary compatibility (come out with a new chip that wouldn't run Windows? preposterous), which again led to much competition in the processor world, which led to amazing performance at ever cheaper prices. Counter-examples: Sun SPARC, Intel Itanium, IBM PowerPCs (used by Apple). None of these processors had binary compatibity with another vendor's parts and, surprise of surprises, they are all fading away. You can say all you want about MS business practices, and the quality, security and stability problems with their software, but you cannot deny their significant role in laying the foundations for cheap, compatible hardware which enabled things like FOSS and Linux to emerge.
    • your claim that licensing an operating system is akin to making it mandatory is preposterous.

  • That will need a lot of putty (Score:4, Funny)

    by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:48AM (#13957193) Homepage
    How many windows do they have in South Korea? I just had seven fitted for 500 quid. I think South Korea is getting a bargin!
  • Turbolinux or Red Flag linux would make more sense. And what would make even more sense would be the government helping to partially fund any local Korean distros that are basing themselves on Asianux (which is turn is based on DCC I believe, so it should be a pretty solid system).

    In general, I hope countries around the world try to move to localized distributors of Linux. This is the real strength of Linux.

  • Replacement? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cluening ( 6626 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @09:53AM (#13957208) Homepage
    Linspire CEO Offers S. Korea To Replace Windows

    It definitely sounds like an interesting idea, but how is South Korea going to run on my machine? Plus, having the whole country installed on my drive sounds like it will take up a _lot_ of space...

  • Generous Offer (Score:5, Funny)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @10:07AM (#13957242) Homepage
    Linspire CEO Offers S. Korea To Replace Windows

    That is one generous offer by the Linspire CEO. I give up Windows and he will give me South Korea? I would take him up on the offer but I would be kind of nervous about North Korea blowing it up. Plus Windows probably has a lower cost of operation than entire country of South Korea.

  • More importantly, however, it would break South Korea loose from the monopolistic grasp of Microsoft, which the country currently finds itself under

    if there is another product for sale (linspire) then MS does not have a monopoly.

  • Free publicity, and not too shabby a deal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pvera ( 250260 ) <pedro.vera@gmail.com> on Saturday November 05, 2005 @10:17AM (#13957275) Homepage Journal
    It was a bold move, and it did not cost him a penny to do it. If he pulls it off he'll be 5m ahead of where he is right now, since his market share in ROK is pretty much zero. If he pulls it off he also gets to use it as a precedent to go country-by-country offering blanket licenses, which will make Linspire some good money and will royally piss off Microsoft.

    Regardless of the merits of Lindows v. all the other Linux distributions out there, this is all about marketing, and it was the right thing to do. Microsoft cannot even afford a counter offer, since this will set the same kind of precedent and every government in the world is going to demand a blanket license like that.
  • It doesn't come with GCC, you do everything as root and are dependent upon the company for updates. Linspire is horrible shit, it's leeching off the OSS idea while pretending to "promote" it.

  • Interesting for gamers? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Xarius ( 691264 )
    Korea is largely considered, next to Japan, to be one of the gaming capitols of the world. If they all dump Microsoft I wonder how the game publishing/programming houses will react?

    This could be a good thing.

  • Not gonna happen (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, 2005 @10:31AM (#13957330)
    I'm currently studying abroad in South Korea and there's no way Koreans would give up Windows. The whole society LOVES Windows. Internet Explorer and excessive use of Active-X are king. Everybody here has Cyworld (a Myspace type deal) and you can't access about half of its content without using Internet Explorer on Windows. Plus Nespot, the nation's largest free wireless service, requires you to be running a Windows machine to use their client. PC Bangs all use Windows as video gaming is huge here and every game runs off of Windows.

    Hell, almost every machine at Space 9 (a huge technology store) comes with the latest Vista beta installed. It's going to take a lot more than offering Linspire to the whole country to make a switch like that. I agree it's just free marketing.
  • *vamping* Microsoft goin' down! Down, down, down! Microsoft goin' down! Down, down, down!
  • Isn't this a cheap stunt? It's not as if there's the remotest chance of South Korea accepting the offer. And if they really want Linux, there are plenty of other flavas to choose with no license fees attached at all. I guess I'm just surprised that this guy didn't throw in a bearded lady, a two-headed cow and Rocky the giant raccoon. I guess the South Koreans are too well mannered to have suggested to him where to go.

    After all, Microsoft is a bully. If they are going to beat up a country, it will be an i

  • maybe they need a different master (Score:3, Interesting)

    by at_slashdot ( 674436 ) on Saturday November 05, 2005 @01:34PM (#13958185)
    "Although the basic GNU/Linux system is free software, most of the GNU/Linux versions now available include a small amount of non-free software--just enough to spoil them as a way to attain freedom. But Linspire is in a class by itself; large and important parts of this system are non-free. No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master."
                                            -- Richard Stallman

  • Realisticly we'd probably be looking at government and edu pc's replacing Windows, with hobbyists or poor, law abiding citizens maybe using it for the computer basics Linux is perfectly capable of (aside from the already mentioned ActiveX snafu's some would experience). The rest will still be able to A) pirate (like a lot of the rest of the world) or B) purchase abroad.

    Personally, I think its a great idea. I can be used in a lot of places and the real-world $$$ savings would significant. But everyone dum
  • I remember reading articles about the internet cafes and net culture in South Korea (check this out http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/10/07/korea .onlinegameaddic.ap/ [cnn.com]) South Koreans love playing online games. Not for nothing, but at this point, Linux just doesnt have that kind of support for games. This sort of thing would never fly in South Korea.

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