How the government oss policy changes the topography of the domestic sw industry?
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| How the government OSS policy changes the topography of
the domestic SW industry? Hyuk-Jin Park (Linuxkorea, Inc). Abstract: We propose to discuss how the government｡ｯs OSS policy changes the topography of the domestic SW industry. Currently, Korean government tried to give full support for OSS industry. We will first present effects on SW industry by this movement of Korean government and would like to discuss whether the OSS upbringing strategy by Korean government can be applicable to the other Asian countries. 1. Introduction Recently, Korean government tried to give full support for OSS industry. However, if Korean government personnel mentions the OSS, there is delicate shades of meaning to the original meaning of OSS because Korean government regards OSS as a tool for fostering domestic software industry which has been distorted by the foreign software. What does the policy of OSS upbringing affect the Korean software market? Is that kind of policy good for the eco-system of the domestic software industry? And is the OSS upbringing strategy by Korean government applicable to the other Asian countries? 2. MPB announced an incentive program for OSS adoption Though OSS can save TCO, the law of games in the real world is different. Adopting OSS results in cutting-off the IT budget for IT management team and decrease of revenue for the supplier (SI company). To take the circumstances into consideration, MPB (Ministry of Planning and budget) announced a new incentive program for OSS adoption for the budget in 2006. If the government agencies save funds by adopting OSS, they can divert the funds surpluses to other purposes not to return them to MPB. It removes real obstacles (not technical obstacles) that hamper the adoption of OSS and it is expected that the use of linux will be increased rapidly in the government area in 2006. 3. Big linux references Recently Ministry of Education adopted more than 2,000 linux servers for National Education Information System(NEIS). Also recently, Ministry of National Defense announced that they have a plan to migrate existing 26 unix servers to 44 linux servers for war game. A series of big linux references by the major government agencies accelerates the adoption of linux by other government agencies. 4. Web Accessibility Giudeline In this year, MOGAHA(Ministry Of Government Administratoin and Home Affairs) announced the web accessibility that all of the government agencies should observe when they develop their websites. This guideline is based on the web accessibility guideline of W3C and customized considering the domestic internet environment The issue of web accessibility can be taken into two parts, one is for the disabled and the other is cross browsing. Korean government has tried to take care of the disabled, and most of the government｡ｯs websites have separate pages for public use and disabled. However, the issue of cross browsing has hardly been considered, because the linux users or Mac users for the desktop are less than 1% of the total desktop users. The key technical issue for the cross browsing is an ActiveX, the plug-in program that can only be used by Microsoft Explorer. Most of the plug-in program that local software vendors provide support Explorer only, which means that the users who use Firefox or Opera on linux for web serfing can not access the whole contents that government websites provide. It seems that the new guideline involving the requirements for the cross browsing takes the expansion of desktop linux into consideration.. 5. Conclusion It seems that Government｡ｯs supporting for OSS, especially recommendation on linux application(?) would cause the market change substituting unix for linux rapidly. Owing to the linux project of public institutions, domestic linux distributions could have competitive power at the market, and the change of present Korean linux distribution market led by RH would be inevitable. It would be the foundation stone of linux popularization for desktop that government has recommended the observance of web accessibility guideline. However, SI market would keep current situation without significant changes, and SI companies would make progress in adopting OSS positively. Download 10.84 Kb. Share with your friends:
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