“Following the trend of the nation’s government agencies, universities and post offices, the South Korean military is considering jumping onto the open-source bandwagon,”this Korea Times article says.”Open source refers to programs, of which source codes are available for use or modification by anyone. The codes are not owned by an individual or company.The Army yesterday said investigations are now underway on the viability of using many open-source programs rather than using them only for trials, as it does now.”We’ve checked whether open-source programs work for our systems,” an Army spokesman said.”But we have yet to make any decision.”He refused to elaborate on the probability of the Army adopting open-source programs for its mainstream operating system, although the idea has been discussed.The Army has shown interest in open-source programs, such as Linux, over the past few years, and it began two pilot runs with Linux recently.It plans to invest up to 400 million won this year to build an education center for open-source software and establish systems to run war-game simulations based on Linux.In addition, Army computer officials met with Linux experts at the state-backed Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA) late last month to delve into the feasibility of its Linux scheme”.Further,”the Korean government is working to reduce its reliance on Windows by strengthening the presence of Linux and other open-source programs.Korea Post, the country’s postal service provider, last year started a four-year program to install a Linux-based operating system on thousands of PCs in its nationwide branches.A new online information system for schools, dubbed the National Education Information System, also opted to use Linux-powered platforms on its 2,331 servers last year.In addition, earlier this year, the government designated Kwangju City as a Linux city and the Gangwon Provincial University as a Linux university. The two organizations have installed open-source software as their primary operating systems”.

Army Considers Shift to Open-Source Programs

“Following the trend of the nation’s government agencies, universities and post offices, the South Korean military is considering jumping onto the open-source bandwagon,”this Korea Times article says.”Open source refers to programs, of which source codes are available for use or modification by anyone. The codes are not owned by an individual or company.The Army yesterday [...]