TOKYO -- Japan, China and South Korea have agreed to cooperate in a project to boost research and development of software for operating systems other than industry leader Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, a Japanese trade ministry official said Friday. ... The Japanese government has already earmarked 1 billion yen ($85.5 million) yen for the project and plans to back an open-source software forum to be set up by major Japanese electronics companies such as Hitachi, Matsushita, NEC and Fujitsu.
[ September 05, 2003: Message edited by: Mark Herschberg ]
Originally posted by Thomas Paul: There's a good way to piss away 85 million bucks.
You think it's a bad idea? I know many countries fear being dependent on Microsoft. And certainly for $85M you can clean up an OS like linux to make it friendly and usable by non-tech people. Do you object to the goal, or just think the cost isn't justified? --Mark
You think it's a bad idea? I know many countries fear being dependent on Microsoft. And certainly for $85M you can clean up an OS like linux to make it friendly and usable by non-tech people. Do you object to the goal, or just think the cost isn't justified? --Mark
You know what a cleaned up, easy to use, user friendly OS like Linux is? Windows And you think that guy that pourd $$$$ into the project is just going to sit back when the project is complete and say "That was money well spent." NO, he will be saying "Now how can I make my money back? Ooohhhh, I can charge people for my software and liscense it."
You know what a cleaned up, easy to use, user friendly OS like Linux is? Windows
That's funny, I thought it was called MacOS.
Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
And you think that guy that pourd $$$$ into the project is just going to sit back when the project is complete and say "That was money well spent." NO, he will be saying "Now how can I make my money back? Ooohhhh, I can charge people for my software and liscense it."
Really? Cause the US government and appropriate industries didn't actively try to recoup their R&D in jet power, radar, computers and networking, and --insert favorite DARPA grant here-- . Heck, the Japanese industry has a history of providing government support for particular industries, where the government knows that in the long run, it will work out without worrying about the immediate payback. And China, of course, is a state run economy. Now let's suppose for a moment that the technology is only given to the companies that participated in this, and there is no open source benefit. We still win! How are they going to make their money back? Certainly not by charging double what windows costs. It'll be a new OS, so to get people to switch, it will have to be very cheap. They keep lowering the price until people start to buy it. Then what happens? Microsoft responds by either lowering its price, or offer more features (and actually useful features that consumers are willing to pay for). To say this is not good is to say that competition is not beneficial and to question the free market system. --Mark
Really? Cause the US government and appropriate industries didn't actively try to recoup their R&D in jet power, radar, computers and networking, and --insert favorite DARPA grant here-- . Heck, the Japanese industry has a history of providing government support for particular industries, where the government knows that in the long run, it will work out without worrying about the immediate payback. And China, of course, is a state run economy. Now let's suppose for a moment that the technology is only given to the companies that participated in this, and there is no open source benefit. We still win! How are they going to make their money back? Certainly not by charging double what windows costs. It'll be a new OS, so to get people to switch, it will have to be very cheap. They keep lowering the price until people start to buy it. Then what happens? Microsoft responds by either lowering its price, or offer more features (and actually useful features that consumers are willing to pay for). To say this is not good is to say that competition is not beneficial and to question the free market system. --Mark
All very good points. I can't help but agree. And I hope you are right.
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