Japanese Government to Move to OSS 128
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."
I for one (Score:5, Funny)
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Engrish sounds like that; I've heard enough new Japanese->English speakers talk to know that. Applying the same rules to spanglish (Scrubs does this constantly) or 'ebonics' ("I speak Jive") works exactly the same way.
Again, it comes down to: If you're offended, you're oversensitive. Get over yourself.
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*speaks jive to Ed*
Nope, he doesn't seem to have a problem here. He's laughing at me. Of course, I'm not very good at 'urban'ness.
Oh, and he says, "*grin* Al Sharpton's a scavaengerpimp.", and "Fuck that nappy-haired Jesse Jackson. He can suck my nuts at daybreak."
He's actually got a really funny rant about Sharpton.
By the way, they're offended, and thus, oversensitive. Sharpton and Jackson are, personality-wise, boundary conditions - extreme cases, if you will. They are by no means repres
I am not hiding (Score:2)
The Original poster sounded like he meant it in jest. You need to get a sense of humor. One of the worse things happen
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My lady took "English as a Second Language" - or so she thought. Instead she wound up taking Engrish as a Second Rangruage with Doctah Kah. (Khan, I think.) She has a nearly unparalleled ability to mock asians as a result. But the point is that it's 100% accurate. The stories of her class are hilarious. The woman would say "Now, this very important! Very important, you write down. Rtkhgrilghweghdljgwelfifiq2h;fhq!" meaning that she would lapse unto utter unintelligibility while everyone in the class exchang
No wonder Microsoft is scared (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No wonder Microsoft is scared (Score:5, Insightful)
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the USA was so scared of communism the were convinced that the domino effect would take place and therefore joined in several very successful campaigns in Korea and Vietnam.
now microsoft is doing it on a legal scale with patents as bullets.
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Successful campaigns? It's common knowledge that the US lost the Vietnam war. They (you?) pulled out with their tail between their legs.
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The GP was simply being sarcastically humourous.
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Sarcasm isn't always obvious in writing, as you have no voice cues or other indications, unless you also include the proper smiley.
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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.
Confuse client and server, you should not. Deceptively similar they may seem, but different forces their adoption guides.
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Could you talk... kinda... forward?
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I don't think we give Microsoft (esp. Ballmer) the credit they deserve. However unintentional it may be, they're the greatest salesmen F/OSS ever had.
If monkey boy keeps this up the open source community should do the right thing; donate chairs.
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Bill Gates will get Bush to start dropping bombs. Just kidding, they might try to get the US to make sanctions and crap against them in the UN but ultimately thats only as reliable as the countries that are willing to enforce it.
Quite frankly I'd like to see a few countries go the wa
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Who knows? It does not seem entirely impossible.
Any of the permanent members in the UN security council could veto such sanctions.
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Who knows? It does not seem entirely impossible.
To see some good precedents, look up the history of the phrase "banana republic". The US government has a long, sordid history of using military power to enforce business monopolies of American companies. The US government's complicity in building the dominance of IBM and Microsoft isn't a new story at all.
Of course, they're not the only government to do such things. Here in the Boston area, people are g
America should be the most scared (Score:4, Interesting)
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you can just call that SCO-2.0
I wouldn't worry for Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
The concepts of not putting all you eggs in one basket, and one size does not fit all apply here. I'm fairly confident that there is enough interest and use for technology that economies can't support more than one operating system. An each of those operating systems will do some thing well and some things poorly.
Windows, GNU/Linux, & Apple systems each serve a different set of needs, and therefore each will continu
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The USA has a slightly strange patent system which allows disclosure before patenting. Most other countries require the p
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They are almost certainly valid, as Japan is frequently listed (alongside the US) as one of the countries that allow software to be patented.
Re:No wonder Microsoft is scared (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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
(Feel free to disagree, this is mainly my spur of the moment opinion and not highly researched)
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I think I'd word that a bit differently. Microsoft can compete and win against any product. The problem form M$ is that Linux isn't a product. How can a large monopoly undermine something that is given away for free? Well... they try.. SCO, investing in Novel. But Linux is a multi-headed beast that any smart kid can ship for free once M$ buys out a vendor. M$ could probably kill Linux in the US with it's influence in congr
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Many time we hear of "This year will be the year of Linux" but at the end of the year nothing has happened. The only way Linux will become acceptable by the general populous is when the countries' Government makes the switch. After this Businesses start to follow because the
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I think the main tipping point for public Linux adoption will occur when...
The little devil (who has flame retardant underwear) in me urges me to point out that actually, Open Source != Linux. Linux just tends to be the most well-known "easy" OSS keyword to mention. Even considering that the Japanese are talking about server platforms (i.e. OSS like OpenOffice or Gnome are not obvious candidates).
I still prefer the BSDs as small-to-medium-scale server-side platforms, for their much more controlled lif
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Just a note. Whether or not this is the year of the Linux Desktop is questionable, but last month was the Month of Feisty.
Year of Linux... (Score:2)
The answers that they came up with are totally irrelevant. The very fact that groups of stay at home moms are sitting around even talkin
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I'm very glad to see this kind of move. Th
Obligatory Alice in Wonderland quote (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Obligatory cheap shot at Microsoft (Score:2)
That explains the timing of Microsoft Saber rattling
Bah... A real /. reader would know that Microsoft has long since moved beyond mere saber rattling. A Microsoft Ninja will pick up a chair and handle it, weighing it, carefully checking it's balance with an expert eye that makes it obvious that he will throw it at you the instant you fall out of line. Be especially careful of Microsoft Ninjas who have risen above MCSD rank, they always score clean headshots.
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Not to mention that Sony has linux builds for its consoles; they have no problem with Linux at all.
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Listen (Score:5, Funny)
But the Empire will wake up, and strike back. Unclear the future is.
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Confident in the outcome you have become. But an easy battle this will not be: if multiple vendors of
Magic words (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the exact magic words one needs to say to get a HUGE discounts from Microsoft.
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How much and how long could they keep disscounting (Score:3, Insightful)
In 3 or 4 years down the line comes negotiation time again and the Japanese Government (or any other entity that obtained a big disscount) threatens to go to Linux again.
There is a point where MS can't keep disscounting. THat is a short term fix for their broken bussiness model, they have to fix their corporate culture in a way similar to what IBM had to do in the 90s.
Or perish, as unimaginable as that may sound now
Put up or shut up (Score:2, Interesting)
However I am deeply sceptical of this whole claim, and find it very suspicious that Microsoft has not given any details but prefers to stick to vague sabre-rattling. Until specifics are published, we will have to conclude that Microsoft is merely bluffing: trying to frighten off the weaker and less determ
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Or just move to OpenSolaris. I know Linux fanboys like to ridicule Solaris but in my low level experiences with both OSes, the Solaris kernel is way more stable and solid. Stuff like the implementation of Asynchronous IO on RHEL has been and is a cruel joke! There is very little patent controversy around Solaris too and it plays nice with other Unices
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Not that simple (Score:1)
Vague FUD is scarier than specific claims, so Microsoft won't hurry to publish such a list.
I hope it is that easy. Software patents can be so overbroad [eff.org] that there is no way to avoid infringement. For example, patent 6,243,373, "Method and apparatus for implementing a computer network/internet telephone system," is a VOIP patent, one of a fe
I hope they are sincere about it this time! (Score:4, Interesting)
The Japanese are slow decision makers (Score:2, Interesting)
I once worked for Fujitsu, so I know. Once the Japanese government and major companies embark on the open-source bandwagon, they will become sharp warriors against Microsoft. It may bring Microsoft Japan down by sheer popular pressure. The people go with the government there. This decision may become even a new theme for the comic books (manga) that they read on their way to work, so the people will learn quickly about the new status quo.
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Great. It'll be the OS-tan version of (Infinite) Crisis on (Infinite Worlds|the Civil War|Marvel).
I can aleady see it - The four well-known MacOS-tans (OS 9, Panther, Tiger, Leopard) team up with the eleven well-known Linux-tans (Fedora, RHEL, SUSE, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Arch, Debian, Mandriva, Linspire) and engage in bloody wa
Suffering for the master. (Score:3, Interesting)
How about another sort of conversion... say trying to implement an affordable healthcare system? Hell, I would love to be able to afford health insurace.
How about a more thouroughly reviewed/reviewable patent system, not just for software, but across the board?
Most other 'first world' nations have these things. Their implementations differ. Some work better than others.
All of these issues are related.
If you can cite a reason that America lacks these things other than special interest profit motive I would love to hear it. Maybe you could also apply that reason to my governments consistent resistance to acknowledging human influenced environmental change (many highly placed officials deny it exists!)
Congratulations to the Japanese for joining the ranks of countries taking measures to fortify and secure their information systems through diversification. Not to be unpatriotic or anything, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that this move and others like it will do serious harm to certain American companies, and force some true competition for government contracts here in the states.
Regards.
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As for a complete conversion like this, lets hold our applause until they've made a SMOOTH transition. The last thing the U.S. needs is to be offline for god knows how long because something went wrong in this transition you want so much.
Universal Hea
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Unfortunately, Christianity has been plagued for almost 2,000 years by many of the same problems that Jesus had with Judaism. The downward spiral started once the personal creed of the man known as Jesus was developed in dozens of competing
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A lot of evangelical Christians think so (oddly the evangelicals tend to be the fire and brimstone types, go fig). At any rate, you were crucifying (ahem) Christianity for a story that isn't part of its canon.
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When an argument starts like that, you know it's faulty. Cost reduction would be another way. We pay twice as much as anybody else per capita and have worse results by most metrics. The reason our costs are so high is that insurance companies make such huge profits, both on health policies and on malpractice. Big pharma's profits aren't helping, either. Outside of insurance and pharma, universal health care would be a great thing for most businesses.
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There is of course an argument that goes a little like this:
If all the people in a society are relatively healthy, they are better consumers and better workers, meaning that the rich will get even richer off of the average citizens life activities. Onl
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You deposit so much money per month into a fund for paying for emergencies. Once the account reaches a certain limit, pe
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If they were required and taken out of your paycheck every month by the gov and put into a fund for you... well supposedly that's what we do already.
The hardest part would be covering the interim. We are set up now so that there is no time to develop this emerg
V E N D O R S (Score:4, Informative)
C ON S U M E R S (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article:
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.
N A T I O N A L I S M (Score:2)
The Japanese Govt. had yet another nationalistic fit (that's what they do - that's their job - happens to be one of their standing orders.), and what you're relying on for your FTA is the press release to mask the flag waving ("The government has said explicitly it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platf
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IF a government or other large body demands something in particular, most companies would try to find ways to satisfy the demands in effort to participate in the market. Microsoft doesn't do that. Especially in the case of Linux, they have historically attempted to change or block the market's direction.
There have been many jokes in the past about "Microsoft Linux" and the like. The joke was one of absurdity -- it would never
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The big Japanese vendors make their big money out of middleware, not OS's, so it's no big deal for them to supply Linux-based rather than Microsoft-based systems. They can continue to lock in public sector clients to their middleware. One example is the systems for registering citizen data (koseki); the different companies' systems are still not fully mutually compatible despite a national database for citizens.
METI and the IPA have often made "anti-Microsoft" comments but then toned them down. My informa
Curious mix of vendors... (Score:3, Interesting)
With the possible exception of IBM... all the other vendors above are the worst offenders when it comes to NOT promoting choice, adherence to standards, avoiding vendor-lockins etc. which is what the Open Source philosophy is all about. These vendors have Linux offerings and Open Source partnerships more as a PR exercise, than to promote the Open Source philosophy. Even IBM still maintains separate Linux and AIX offerings... and still maintains ambivalence over it's future... whether it will have 2 separate OSes or just AIX or Linux.
Does not bode well for Open Source in Japan, I guess. RedHat might've made a big impact, but it's not listed.
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Even IBM still maintains separate Linux and AIX offerings... and still maintains ambivalence over it's future... whether it will have 2 separate OSes or just AIX or Linux.
I don't think IBM is really ambivalent. It's quite clear to me that IBM's future is Linux, not AIX. They won't actually come out and say that, to avoid scaring big AIX customers, but I think the plan is to keep AIX investment to the minimum level required to effectively support existing AIX shops, while recommending that new systems be deployed on Linux. At some point in the future AIX will be discontinued, but I'm sure that is many years away. IBM supports its products for a long time -- OS/2 Support
Just Plain Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
They say "Though we are strong supporters of Linux,No such alliance are planned.Recent nikkei article [nikkei.co.jp] is wrong"
ubuntu (Score:5, Funny)
Why not moving the clients? (Score:2)
Then you find out that they are actually going to think to plan to move the servers to Linux.
For every server they run they also have dozens of clients running some
Vista caused this? (Score:1)
It seems that all this pro-Linux/OSS talk from these big companies like Dell is coming right on the heels of the disappointing launch of Vista. It must be depressing for Microsoft to realize that their wonder-OS has turned people off so badly.
Hopefully this news will be
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Microsoft doesn't want to look clues.
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Now lets see, can This happen (Score:2)
but, despite linux community's challenge, they are not saying what infringes upon their iS., neither they are suing, yet.
lets say that major players migrated to linux, then, lets say that there REALLY was code in linux infringing microsoft's, and then microsoft sued these companies.
now, at this poin
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In other news... (Score:1)
New Patent (Score:1)
Monopoly Politics (Score:1, Offtopic)
Instead we "elected" Bush, whose Justice Department never met a monopoly it didn't love.
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100% Offtopic
Japanese government moves to OSS to avoid the American MS monopoly. American government declares it a monopoly, but does no such thing. That's the topic, monopolophile TrollMods.
Seems like a sensible, intelligent move (Score:1)
Or, as Bill Hilf would say... (Score:1)
The answer is obvious (Score:1)
companies are starting to trust open source a little more
to general consumers is higher than ever before