Asian open-source standard eyes June release

With the open-source movement gaining momentum regionally, software developers from Korea, Japan and China said they are nearing the completion of a compatible open-source operating system that will be promoted as an Asian standard.

Korean software developer Hancom Inc. is working with China`s Red Flag Linux Co. and Japan`s Miracle Linux Co. to develop Asianux 2.0, which will be promoted as the standard open-source system in the three countries. Asianux is ahead of time in development and will be released in June, two months earlier than planned, according to Hancom officials.

"By June, we will be able to come up with an open-source system that is comparable to Suse and Red Hat," said a Hancom spokesman "The date of release was rescheduled considering the Korean government`s adoption of NEIS, a database of the country`s high-school population, which will be around the second semester next year, apparently a huge opportunity to introduce a new open-source solution."

Open source describes software for which the source code is freely available, allowing programmers to develop the system independently.

Asian governments have been intensifying their efforts to promote the development of open-source software, attempting to gain independence from the dominance of U.S. software developer Microsoft Inc.`s Windows operating system on desktops and servers.

In April, government authorities from Korea, Japan and China reached an agreement to support the joint development of an open-source operating system in the private sector and to set compatible platform standards for the alternative technology.

The open-source software market has been growing rapidly in Japan and China. In Japan, the market for open-source software is expected to grow 20 percent annually through 2008 when it will have a market share of 17.8 percent among operating systems, compared to 9 percent in 2003. Government officials in China believe the open-source market will grow 46.7 percent annually over the next five years.

Microsoft has withheld the source code for its programs since the 1970s and based its business model on proprietary software ever since. The Windows operating system runs on more than 90 percent of the world`s desktop computers and is frequently the target of malicious attacks.

It remains to be seen to what degree alternate technology will affect Windows` dominant hold, with open-source software having a limited reach worldwide in most corporate sectors.

However, some industry insiders predict that more companies will take a chance on open-source software if the technology is backed by sufficient financial and administrative support, which could neutralize the fear of betting on an unproven project.

Linux, the world`s most successful open-source program, was developed in 1991 and is used by multinationals such as Merrill Lynch, Verizon and Boeing. Companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell have also done well in the U.S. market selling Linux servers.

(thkim@heraldm.com)



By Kim Tong-hyung