Linux and Main: Interview: Bart Decrem -- Leveraging Desktop Linux

"LaM: So what's going on with you and Hancom?

"Decrem: I've been in Korea for about eight months. I came out here after Eazel shut down. I wanted to travel, and my wife is Korean-American and I wanted to learn Korean, learn another language, and ride out the stormy weather in Silicon Valley. So I ended up working for a company called Linux One, not the U.S.-based Linux One that everybody has talked about, just a company that happens to have the same name, which is kind of poor marketing. It's a Linux-based system vendor in Korea. I worked there for about six months, helped them with strategic planning and stuff like that. Thre wasn't so much for me to do there because it's really a Korean company with Korean customers. So I moved over to Hancom about one month ago, and here there's lots of stuff for me to do.

"LaM: Hancom is known and successful throughout the Far East because of its handling of two-byte character sets. Are there plans for a broader U.S. and European presence?

"Decrem: Let me give you my view on the world on that issue. This is my view and not company policy at this point. The way I describe the company is that we're a provider of Linux-based productivity solutions. I'm not saying that to talk fancy, I'm saying that because we're not necessarily just a Linux desktop company, because what we're doing with Sharp and the Zaurus is really important to us. It's not really a Linux computer -- it's a handheld device that happens to run the Linux operating system..."

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