:Free Software in Korea: Part Two -- The Linux Side (Conclusion)
Free Software in Korea: Part Two -- The Linux Side (Conclusion) Oct 10, 1999, 07 :15 UTC (12 Talkback[s]) (13695 reads) (Other stories by Randy Leganza)
[ The opinions expressed by authors on Linux Today are their own. They
speak only for themselves and not for Linux Today. ]
By Randy
Leganza, Special Korea Correspondent for Linux Today
Korean Government Support for Linux
A most promising development for the free software movement in Korea is the
government's Ministry of
Information and Communication announcement in late July that it will
"provide government support for the development and proliferation of
Linux." The Korea Herald, among others, reported
that the ministry "will establish a Linux consultative body composed of
software experts from the government, academic and industry sectors to
standardize Korean versions of Linux and develop a variety of programs
based on the operating system."
At the forefront of the Korean government's support for Linux is the
Electronics and Telecommunications Research
Institute (ETRI). According to Kim Hae-jin (family names are first in
Korean), who is heading the ETRI
Linux project, ETRI's plan is to "provide a highly scalable, highly
available, single system server image cluster [technology]... adaptable
from Internet [servers] to [the] mission critical enterprise."
A non-profit organization called the "Linux Council" has been
established. Four committees within the Council have been designated:
Standardization -- standardize Linux's Hangul terminology and
documentation
R & D -- promote research in and development of Linux software
Supply and Support -- support Linux in end-user markets, schools and
government offices
Education and Training -- promote Linux education and training
Kim adds that they will also sponsor more Linux forums like a recent
one held in July 1999, which was attended by Linux International's John
"maddog" Hall.
More recently, in May of this year, Tim Ney of the Free Software Foundation
visited Korea with a Massachusetts Software Delegation and "met with a
number of young software start-up companies..." According to Tim, "many of
the companies [he] saw were predominantly writing software for the Windows
platform, yet responded quite positively when [he] spoke about free
software and opportunities with GNU/Linux."
Free Software Projects
Ongoing free software projects in Korea include:
Hanterm 3.1 from the
KAIST, a Korean language (Hangul) xterm
OpenHWP, reported to be an almost
defunct Korean free word-processor
And a team of at least four package maintainers contribute to the Korean Debian Project. The Korean
Debian project has members from both the academic and business communities.
Park Chu-yeon,
current leader of the project, is working on the
Korean Debian Bible with other project members. They maintain nearly 50 Korean
Debian packages.
Linux is not the only project associated with the free software movement in
Korea. FreeBSD also has a following. Choi Jun-ho is the leader of both
the Korea FreeBSD Users Group and
the GNU Free Translation
Project. Choi reports that he first used GNU/Linux in 1993, then moved
to FreeBSD in 1995.
Korean Companies That Market Linux Products
WebDataBank
Choi is developing a unique Linux distribution, qLinux,
at his company, WebDataBank. According
to Choi Jun-ho, qLinux will be bootable from a large ext2 file image on an
existing Windows FAT partition via a loop-back device. He says qLinux will
also be able to "utilize" the Windows Registry to configure X Windows,
network cards, etc. WebDataBank is in the Linux Internet server hosting
and groupware development business. They will soon release a Korean
version of TurboLinux 4.0.
MIZI Research
Another Korean company,
MIZI Research markets MiziOS, its own
Linux version and HWPX-R4, a Linux/Unix Hangul word processor that is a
close cousin to Hangul and Computers (H & C) Hangul Windows version
(Hangul means the "Korean written language"). MIZI's head, Seo Young-jin,
was the UNIX HWPX-R4 team leader at H & C before H & C decided to drop the
UNIX version in 1997 and focus on their Windows version. Seo then licensed
HWPX-R4's source code and started MIZI.
HWPX-R4 is included on the MiziOS CDs, as either a demo version or
an official bundle.
MIZI also supports the Free Software movement with:
ManIM, which enables Hangul fonts in Netscape on X
a Hangul font server
some document viewers that will soon fall under the GPL
four Korean TrueType fonts under the BSD license
MIZI's decision whether to publish under the GPL or a commercial
license is level-of-effort based. According to Seo Young-jin, "Some
software is attractive and fun and others [requires] endless maintenance.
The latter [we license] commercial."
Under commercial licensing, MIZI is currently working on an
architectural CAD application that will be available in Hangul and English.
Seo said that he hoped to "shareware" the English version, explaining that
part of the code was licensed from another company and MIZI needed to
recover the cost.
Zion Systems
Zion Systems develops Accel, a
Korean distribution based on Red Hat. In developing Accel, Zion Systems
uses the latest kernel version and libraries, builds their packages
optimized for Pentiums and is working on a Korean GUI installation package.
In partnership with Samsung, Zion Systems markets a line of high
availability Alpha and Xeon SMP servers that can support clustering and
further plans to market a sub $1,000 Linux PC in October. Currently Zion
is working on GPLing their audio drivers and high availability management
software.
Zion is also setting up an "after service" center for its product line.
3R Soft
3R Soft produces MailStudio, a
Linux/Unix Web-based e-mail server. MailStudio's user interface runs
inside the Web browser, like Netscape and Yahoo's mail servers. MailStudio
is compatible with Sendmail, SMTP, POP, and qPopper. In their upcoming 3.0
version, 3R Soft plans to offer IMAP, LDAP, and spell checking support.
While 3R Soft does not produce any GPL software, they are compatible with
Red Hat, Caldera, TurboLinux and Apache.
Other Korean Linux Companies
At least three other Korean companies produce seperate Korean versions
of Linux:
Linux Korea markets the Power
Linux distribution and the Netspirit 2000 and 3000 Linux-based servers.
Korea Linux sells the Alzaa
Korean version of Red Hat.
ClassData offers the Class 6.0
Enterprise Linux distribution, which has an interesting glass bottle logo
and the catchy slogan, "stop paying your Bills."
In addition, Informix Korea
has a series
of Korean pages devoted to Linux, including links to downloads.
Linux Use Growing Rapidly
According to Denis Havlik:
"I have been witnessing an enormous growth of "registered Linux users" in
Korea for quite some time. (Take a look at "the Linux Counter", under "Denis Havlik's
report"...) The growth is not so dramatic any more, but still rather fast:
156% annually."
"Registered users" probably account for less than 1% of the Linux user
base(*) -- currently there are more than 3,000 registered users. Therefore,
my estimate is "more than 300,000 Linux users in South Korea" today.
Greater than 500,000 would not surprise me, either."
The Fight for the Linux Trademark
Sadly, all the positive news about Linux in Korea is not without its
controversy. The last week of August, a fight broke out over
the Linux trademark, when a lawyer for Kwon Yong-tae, who holds a Korean
trademark for 'Linux', demanded that the Kyobo Books bookstore stop selling
books with Linux in the title. Three days later, the incident became a hot
topic on Korea's popular Linux
bulletin board and it made the English Linux news sites the following
weekend.
Allegedly, the trademark was applied for in 1995 and granted in 1997.
Korean publishers, business and other interested parties are still working
to resolve the issue. For those interested, Lee Kyong-ho is maintaining an
event time line at the bottom of his Web page on the
problem, with a link to an English version of a petition.
Randy lives in Taegu, Korea and is on his third, most fun
and least stressful career. He's the QA/Test guy on a small team
supporting a large Solaris WAN integration project, with a few Linux boxes
scattered about. He gets to play with computers all day and intentionally
break them -- then complain about it, and usually see things get fixed.
When he can, he likes to fly airplanes, lift weights, hunt and fish.
