[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“The Japan news daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun last week revealed
that China, Japan, and Korea are planning to jointly develop a new
open-source operating system aimed at replacing Microsoft’s
Windows, something that the Linux community has been trying to do
for years. Given that most of the major Japanese firms feel
enslaved in their PC efforts by Windows and that the Japanese
electronics firms have virtually pledged their future to some form
of embedded Linux, it is likely that the outcome will be Linux
derived.“Specifics of the deal will be hammered in private by the end of
2003 after initial discussions began back in March when an
inaugural meeting was attended by more than 100 software engineers
from the three countries.“Perhaps significantly the Far Eastern Bloc can do what no
anti-trust suit has so far managed and re-introduce innovation at
the PC level, where constant bundling activities by Microsoft have
held it at bay. Japanese electronics firms such as Matsushita, Sony
and Toshiba are used to establishing standards that leave a level
playing field, and lets them build their own product
differentiation at a higher level…”