Japan, China & South Korea May Develop OS

v1x writes "Reuters reports that Japan, South Korea and China are set to agree to jointly develop a new computer operating system as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. It is said that if the plan matures, the three nations are likely to build upon an open-source operating system, such as Linux, and develop an inexpensive and trustworthy system."

China making open-source software !?!

[Blaine Hilton]

It seems like if they want the most bank for the buck they should just work on Linux and create their own distribution. Something like Redflag Software Co. [redflag-linux.com], however I doubt countries such as China would be interested in something so open as Linux. Unless they had other motives such as installing filtering code deep in the kernel or something to block access to content they don't want you to see.

Strange

[Henry V .009]

If Japan were really planning on doing this, they would do it themselves. China would as well, I believe. I wonder who is really behind this effort?

Wonderful...

[militantbob]

Instead of corporate lethargy and resistance to change...

We'll have government beaurocracy and spy agencies trying to include sneaky backdoors!

Seriously, though, this doesn't excite me very much. Kinda like China's CPU... and DoD's Linux... although they may make interesting contributions and suggest different approaches to security. And I haven't read the article, so I'm wondering whether it'll be a joint effort with separate translations, or if they'll just go with English.

License

[nepheles]

Released, too, under a virulent license like the GPL? Would the governments have to release sources of their modificiations?

The question is;

[TyrranzzX]

Will it be open source?

Will it be an os designed to screw people over? (as in, drm, tcpa, etc)

Will they simply steal OSS and release it with few changes without honoring the gpl?

Will it be in other languages and availabe to foreigners?

These people are notorious for stealing ideas, and in most cases, modifying them into something better then claiming them as their own. I don't trust foreign companies and goverments any more, and in some cases, less, than I trust my own(US). What is the community to do if they steal it and start selling it stateside?

heh.

[Frederique Coq-Bloqu]

It'll probably end up being a Windows clone so that license fees will not have to be payed to Microsoft. However, Microsoft itself being a behemoth takes years to make new versions. Remember how long it took them to create the NT line that lead up to Windows 2000 and XP? I can't imagine these three countries being any more efficient. Though I will give them credit for their workaholic culture.

Re:Before...

[bratmobile]

You've got to be kidding me. Windows 2000 and Windows XP have some of the best Asian-language support on the PLANET. How much of Linux/FreeBSD supports Unicode? Very, VERY little. Even the FIRST versions of NT supported Unicode in EVERY aspect of the system -- file naming, font rendering, etc. Windows 2000 and XP have support for Asian IMEs, right-to-left languages (like Arabic), etc. Far, far ahead of any of the free *nixes. Only MacOS compares.

Re:So.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooner or later US will demand Asian countries to reduce piracy. So this mean that Microsoft will lose billions of future revenues.

Re:Strange

[Lemmy Caution]

Japan views China as its most important future market, more important than the US. Unlike the US, Japanese manufacturers consider their entire global market before begin design and production (the US model is "build now, localize later.") This means that they are going to co-engineer their systems from the beginning.

Re:Before...

[Vexalith]

I can tell from your previous posts that you're an obvious Microsoft apologist - but separating fact from bias - Unicode support works perfectly well on this Linux box and all of the others I've ever used. International HTML characters render correctly, I can enter unicode characters into any modern application (e.g. those based on GTK or QT).

Internationalisation has always been a responsibility of the application programmer (strings don't magically translate themselves, well at least not yet!) - so don't blame Unix systems in general just because your particular program doesn't come with a specific language translation. Microsoft can pay people to do this work, whereas opensource has to find someone with the skill and the free time to provide and update translations. Fortunately this situation will improve as more of the world "turns on" to open systems.

Cooperation is good

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

I think the OSS movement should get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize - getting China to cooperate with Japan is not easy.

I spent some frustrating months trying to swap files back and forth with a Japanese company. If we had been able to convince our respective corporate IT departments to use Linux, it would have been a lot easier.

Re:The question is;

[Vexalith]

Software piracy is a big enough problem in Asia that I suspect a government would be unwise to attempt to sell its product to its public when they'd just use it without paying anyway.

Hopefully it will also be distributed open source, but I guess only time will tell. It's interesting to consider how compatible Chinese Communist ideals with OSS (more compatible than Capitalist Democracies?).

China has RedFlag Linux

[Fuyu]

Whatever happened to China's Red Flag Linux [redflag-linux.com]? They have Server and Desktop flavors available.

Government OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me being too old or is there AdaOS written all over the article

There is small OS in AdaOS waiting to get out.
Yes, and it's called Linux

Anonymous Cowards Unite

(karmacollectortag)

Re:Hopefully they will write it in a better langua

[i7dude]

christ...this is like saying people jump higher wearing nike's than they do in reeboks.

their design paradigms need to be re-evaluated...every language you program has the SAME end result...machine code. programming in c or c++ is not going to make sofware less secure if you KNOW WHAT THE "F" YOU ARE DOING.

bottom line, c and c++ provide the flexability for system programmers to control every aspcet of thier code...if a routine call is flawed...then write a new one that isnt...or learn to program better...dont blame it on the damn language.

What are you talking about?

[That_Dan_Guy]

Funny, my wife has no problems using Windows 2000 to read and type Chinese on her computer. Previous versions certainly sucked (I have first hand experience on this having lived in Taiwan for 5 years and had to set up both Linux and Windows computers. And until a few years ago getting it working under Linux was no walk in the park) but the support for the very large variety of input methods for Chinese is pretty impressive.

Re:Sounds like a mafia swindle to me - Apple/Sun??

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone say WHY 1/4 of the world's population NEEDS a proprietary system?

To control their destiny? To not have their infrastucture held hostage to foreign export controls? (Can we say PS2/PGP/Supercomputer/Clinton/USA? There, I knew we could.) And since when did American hardware/software (less than 1/20th the world's population) define 'standards'? Standards should be in the data, implementation is still free and open. That's why we have Macs, Suns, StrongArm and PCs. Right?

A 1995 Mac is still a viable platform? Slowly backs away, smiling and nodding, making no sudden moves.....

Will this really work?

[imsirovic5]

Asia is heavily divided, and there is lots of mistrust going on between those countries. I know in my MBA program students from Japan, South Korea and China barely even talk to each other due to historic tensions and conflicts. I am wondering what level of cooperation will there be between those countries in developing this product? Will they be able to cooperate sufficiently to make anything meaningful?

Re:Strange

[willtsmith]

Granted, South Korea has some bitter feelings. Especially amongst the older generation. Saying that everybody hates Japan is just fucking idiotic.

This is certainly a relevant perspective. I would suspect a younger generation don't have as many wounds as the older. However, it's the older guys who run things over there.

I would suspect that any techie knows enough english to keep things humming. This would be the strongest link rather than trying to resolve the differences between Chin, Kanji, and Hangul scripts. However, in a way it would defeat the point.

A nationalistic or regionlistic effort would be inclined to embrace the native languages instead of foreign ones. At the very least some framework for introducing native language source code would be relevant.

Myself, I'm Euro-American, but I know that I would be somewhat resentful if I had to learn Russian, Chinese or Arab in order to write software modules. I suspect that this feeling would be present in these governments (though using kanji would probably be unacceptable to Koreans).

Otherwise, why not just use linux and do some research on better keyboards. But hey the keyboards would be different for each language anyway.

Re:Too many cynics....

[drinkypoo]

Too many cynics.... (Score:3, Insightful) by quandrum (652868) on Sunday August 31, @09:40 (#6838946) 1) An operating system designed by a committee is going to fail

Why is it going to fail? Has a committee never worked? Isn't this what happens more or less in large companies, ones that build large software systems? For every Linus, there is probably hundreds of incredibly complex pieces of code designed by committees of programmers and managers.

Let's just take a quick flyover past the primary commercial operating systems and see if an operating system designed and built by committee works.

• AT&T Unix. Written by a small group. Works.
• DOS. Written, more or less, by one person. Works.
• Windows 3.1, a shell on top of DOS, not really an OS, but does many of the things that an OS does today, like talking to hardware (through drivers.) Mostly doesn't work.
• Windows NT, designed and written by committee. Has been known for unreliability, instability, and insecurity, but mostly works. Emphasis on mostly.
• MacOS 6. Written primarily by a small team. Mostly works.
• MacOS 7. Written by a larger team. The worst pile of shit ever prepared by Apple.
• MacOS 8. Essentially an attempt to fix everything wrong with MacOS 7. Mostly succeeds. Mostly works.
• MacOS 9, nothing to see here, move along. Mostly works.
• Mac OS X. Based on Unix and NeXTStep, an OS designed and executed by a fairly small group of programmers, which worked. OS X also works, though it's taken a lot of patching to get to something stable (10.2.6.) Works.
• ALL COMMERCIAL UNIXES/UNICES: Based on either AT&T Unix, or BSD Unix. In other words, they didn't write them themselves.
• Linux. Originally written by one man. Enhanced by zillions, but still guided by that one man. Works.
• Assorted BSD clones; Based on code from 4.3, 4.3-lite, or 4.4-lite, or some combination thereof. Work.
• Let's have a blast from the past: AmigaDOS. Written by just a few people. Worked pretty well, though it was hardly stable.

There's some other significant operating systems I haven't mentioned here, like QNX for example, because I don't know much about them :) But look at the list, every OS built by a large committee has failed; Every Commercial Unix is based on either SYSV or BSD4.4 these days, except Linux which is both commercial and noncommercial, and anyway I address Linux above (though perhaps not satisfactorily for some, and certainly oversimplifying the situation.)

Let's also talk about what happens when large organizations attempt to get together and try to make an operating system: Project Pink. Now everone say it with me: HAHAHahahAHAhahAHAHAHA! Get real. This has about as much chance to fly as an airplane made out of gauze, popsicle sticks, and chewing gum. The only way it could really succeed (especially based on my list above) is to base it heavily on something that already exists, for example Linux+Gnome.

But Linux is obsolete...

[00_NOP]

Use the HURD, microkernels are the way of the future :)

Joking aside, I hope they don't use Linux - it would be good to see this scale of effort into something new, hell maybe even a microkernel based OS.

Linux is doing fine without them, and maybe they could increase the competition...

Re:Hopefully they will write it in a better langua

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what you're saying is that there is no advantage in using one programming language over another? REALLY?

Why aren't we writing everything in PL/I, FORTRAN 66, ALGOL 68 and COBOL today instead of C and C++? After all, as you point out, its all machine code at the end, right?

Oh, its those language features.

Well, maybe there is a reason for picking one language over another after all. Gee, who would've thought that a language with specific features can actually assist you in the process of writing reliable software.

The bottom line is that C and C++ as languages, not to mention the various implementations and libraries, have some serious issues when it comes to writing reliable software that methadology changes alone aren't going to cure in a practical sense. You admonition to just "learn to program better" as a work around for the problems in C isn't helpful. Your suggestion to rewrite the C library, apparently on a routine for routine basis when you figure out its broken, just points to how bad off things are.

There is at least one other (more actually) language that offers the low level control of C, the object orientation of C++, more buit-in safeguards in the language to help catch bugs and prevent stupid errors: Ada 95. With GCC supporting it maybe more people will try it. It is a better language for software engineering, but I doubt that it will ever really be popular. Most people would rather just hack away than attempt to do any serious work in the design phase.

C is powerful, but like a chainsaw it makes it too easy to cut your own leg off. There are other tools just as powerful, and a whole lot safer for all involved.

Re:No justifications given

[Offwhite98]

I say Linux is dated for the DESKTOP due largely to both X Windows as well as the fact that it is based on many old ideas which have been changed and improved in newer systems. Think of it in terms of Apache 1.3 vs Apache 2.0. The new model does threading and can chain many handlers together to create a response. These features were not easily added to Apache 1.3 so they started with a new model.

For Linux, it sure can do server-based services, but it does not make it automatically a perfect OS for the desktop. The requirements for a web server, database server or desktop with multimedia capabilities is all very different. MacOS X made certain adjustments to allow it to work well for a desktop. For example, I want to play mp3 music while I read email without the music cutting out due to lack of processor priority, so it has been given a high priority and it never cuts out.

For both Linux and X Windows I am certain it will come to a point where there are too many patches or extensions and starting with a well designed alternative will become necessary. I can already see how difficult it is to get a windowing system set up on Linux involving many software and font libraries which constantly change and need updating in order to use the latest applications. Just because there are constant changes to an OS does not mean it is a good thing.

There is also a good deal of value in a system which was designed and built so well that updates are not needed very frequently. For the past 4 years Linux has changed very rapidly to add support for various devices and filesystems and those systems were not designed by a collaborative group of software engineers. They were mostly created by independent groups who were not working together or even working with the same OS. Sure the open source model can produce quality software through this bazaar, but one look at software archives for Perl (CPAN) you will find many solutions to the same problem and not one seems to solve the problem entirely. If the software is designed and the plans documented it could lead to a tighter implementation which does not require frequent updates which cause conflicts among systems.

As for X Windows, I would suggest it is lacking in terms of consistency and quality. What font libaries or windowing system should I use and what just works? What video card should I use and what should I avoid? Whenever I consider a Linux or BSD desktop I always have to be very careful with the hardware I use or it will not work well. In the past I found Linux to be extremely stable as a server, but when X Windows crashes and takes me back to the command-line that is just as bad as a full crash because now I am only one step away from the BIOS. I want total stability, not just kernel stability. Why X Windows crashed could be due to the graphics card, but what I know now is that I am very satisfied with MacOS X because I do not need to think about fonts or graphics cards. It just works and I can go about reading email, visiting various websites and listen to music.

So Linux is dated by the fact that better solutions have appeared which resolve many of the problems that exist with Linux and Linux cannot simply use a patch to make it all better.

Re:MS's Nightmare

[gad_zuki!]

>so when is the Redmond ligths out party?

Not soon, but this will hurt them significantly. I can really see the next version of Windows coming out with some kind of linux emulator so Windows based business can have the best of both worlds. Its the same in the Mac world, they have to emulate Windows too.

Whether this kills Redmond is a tough question. Many CS/IS/IT programs here and abroad are in many ways MS proprietary based, many developers know nothing but windows, etc. I think if MS fails it will be just like when they broke up Ma Bell. It took roughly twenty years before the break-up meant a competing local service provider worth the effort to go with. There's just so much mental wealth infrastructure to dismantle and rebuild first.

The nice thing about these articles is that no matter what OS they go with instead of Windows it means good news for standards. When China, Japan, Russia, Germany, etc are all using non-windows machines then then standardizing protocols will be very, very important thus putting a massive roadblock into MS's only real profitable innovation: embrace, extend, and extringuish. This means more competition, more companies, smaller businesses, and a healthier tech market for all.