Japan, China, S Korea Agree To Standardize Linux

Ooi writes "Japan Today News reports: 'The governments of Japan, China and South Korea have agreed to work together to come up with an alternative computer operating system to reduce reliance on Microsoft's Windows, the Yomiuri and Nihon Keizai newspapers reported Sunday. According to the reports, the three countries will help their private sectors develop Linux, an open-source OS that can be copied and modified freely. The agreement was signed in Beijing on Saturday by senior government officials from the three countries.' Australian IT has an article on the issue prior to the meeting." A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Asia OSS meeting in Hanoi of which the three gov'ts above are also members. There's a very serious commitment to OSS especially among the governments represented there.

Alliances...

[MrRTFM]

so here are 3 countries which have tradionally been 'not too friendly' with each other that can agree to standardise on a single installation of Linux...

This is cool, but the $24,000 dollar question is - will they go with KDE or Gnome as the default ??

Surely this should be a slashdot poll!

Asian distro defaults...
(o) Vi and Gnome
(o) Vi and KDE
(o) Emacs and Gnome
(o) Emacs and KDE
(o) Cowboy Neal is my interface and text editor, you insensitive clod!

Re:Yay!

[TwistedSquare]

now the easter countries

I'm just hoping Christmas Island joins in too.

Look out, Far East

[KidCeltic]

SCO will have you in its sights now!

Buy those licenses now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan, China and S Korea: that's a combined population of over 1.5 billion, multiplied by $699 equals BUY SCOX!

Does SCO know about this?

[AtariAmarok]

(1.2 billion Linux users) x ($699) =
PROFIT!

Geez. With this, Darl might approach the riches of the head of Ikea [thetick.nl], who recently bumped Gates off the "richest dude" list.

Re:Yay!

[AKnightCowboy]

Linux is starting to get serious government atterion that it deserves here in the US.

This is horrible news! With Sweden claiming the world's richest business man owning IKEA here [cnn.com] , Bill Gates needs all the support he can get to jump back on top. If we all work together and pledge to purchase a copy of Windows XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro we can make the dream happen... we can put Bill back on top and win one for America!! Down with crappy swedish furniture manufacturers and up with global monopolistic software giants! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

SCO filing 1.3 billion lawsuits then?

[192939495969798999]

So in the near future, will we see SCO/RIAA file 1.3 billion lawsuits , 1 for each person in China, Japan and Korea? That would be a fabulous waste of money. They can just issue 1.3 billion trial delays, and SCO can take a rest for 30 thousand years!

Re:Mainland China

[Ronan_The_Barbarian]

These govts. are known for their thight-handedness and disregard for world law. Once the OS is ready they will ditch GPL and use the OS as they fit. Will SCO sue them? Will Linus Torvalds travel to Beijin to "implement" GPL and "force" them to comply? I seriously doubt it. He "may" have an unfortunate "accident" which leaves him brain-dead. Darl McBride would be declared "enemy of state" and incarcerated and spiked in a Bamboo shoot -:)) I for one think it is dangerous

Re:Alliances...

[ndogg]

You can run Gnome and KDE on top of Emacs?!!! Is there anything Emacs can't do these days?

(disclaimer: I happen to love Emacs, but I can't resist a good joke)

Re:Alliances...

[prash_n_rao]

On RMS's behalf I would like inform you that Emacs is the perfect option for both text editor and user interface. KDE and Gnome WIMPs are for wimps.

Ehrm.....

[ardor]

According to the reports, the three countries will help their private sectors develop Linux, an open-source OS that can be copied and modified freely. Dude, this is SLASHDOT. In Slashdot, EVERYONE knows what Linux is :)

Re:Yay!

[nomadic]

This decision does however have the potential to shrink the market share of a certain technologically stagnated and sloppy American OS vendor but that is only to be expected when this American OS vendor's product sucks bigtime.

Aww. Red Hat's not THAT bad...

Slashdot icon for Ingvar Kamprad of IKEA

[AtariAmarok]

Here is my suggestion for an icon for the head of IKEA, since Gates is no longer Top Borg:

click here [thetick.nl]

Re:But will it be OS

[nomadic]

Wow, if the People's Daily said it, it must be true. What a bastion of fine reporting, accuracy, and journalistic integrity. I mean, go to their site and search for Tiananmen or Falun Gong or Tibet and you'll see what a reliable paper it is.

Re:Alliances...

[I Be Hatin']

You can run Gnome and KDE on top of Emacs?!!! Is there anything Emacs can't do these days?

Load in under 10 seconds?

Re:Yay!

[ignavus]

Like one of my work colleagues said about international ocean-going yacht races:

"Wow! Our ruling class is better than your ruling class!"

Unfortunately..

[dj245]

Unfortunately the OSS conference at Hanoi quickly digressed into an argument on which country would wind up being on the bottom of the tower at the end of 7 moves.

Re:Communist OS

[tacarat]

Easy enough to negate that. Have some of the Japanese contributors make a manga/anime girl mascot. If they really want the sysadmin to dig in, encode a hentai version of her somewhere in the source code. If you make it so applying a patch will decrypt a new pic for them, you'll also solve most future stability/security issues...

Re:Alliances...

[bogolisk]

my-box% time emacs21 --no-site-file -q -f kill-emacs

emacs21 --no-site-file -q -f kill-emacs 0.15s user 0.05s system 56% cpu 0.351 total

Re:Slashdot icon for Ingvar Kamprad of IKEA

[Dutch_Cap]

IKEA furniture is not crappy, goshdarnit!!!

Ah, now look what you've made me done! I smashed my desk to bits.. again.

Apart from one major issue... this sounds ok..

[theendlessnow]

Apart from the Chinese limitation on the number of child processes that can be forked... this sounds like a reasonable proposal.

Re:But will it be OS

[aminorex]

Then try going to the NYT to get the scoop on Dimona
or the JFK assassination or Lyndon LaRouche.