Linux City and University in Korea

The (South) Korean government plans to select a city and a university late next month where open-source software like Linux will become the mainstream operating programs.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) announced the plan for building up the city and university, which will operate as test beds for the open-source programs.
"We will start to receive applications next week. After screening candidate cities and universities, the test beds are likely to be decided by late March," said MIC director Lee Do-kyu.

The selected city authorities and university will be required to install open-source software as a main operating infrastructure. The MIC has earmarked 4.1 billion won this year alone for the project.

At the moment, Linux accounts for about 1 percent of Korean desktop PCs and about a fifth of the server market. The Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency wants to increase the rate to 5 percent for desktop PCs and 40 percent for servers by 2010.

This project is part of an on-going effort to move away from Microsoft, after the company decided to stop issuing security patches for Windows 98, thus exposing 13 percent of South Korea's 27 million PCs to malicious attacks.