14 DAY TRIAL // Linux has the power to unite foes. This statement is true because two bitter political enemies - North and South Korea - will team up with China in the project "Hana Linux".
Hana Linux is a distribution, which was announced at the ICMIP 2007 event in Yenji, China, last week. The Linux event that will take place in Pyongyang, North Korea, at the beginning of 2008, will report on the progress made by the team.
Besides the new Linux distribution, South and North Korea will cooperate in creating office software in the Korean Language. They've also promised to resolve differences in IT terminology, between South and North Koreans and Korean Chinese.
Hee-tak Moon, from the Korea Open Source Software Association (KOSSA), suggested the idea and it was approved by the leaders of the three IT bodies (the Reunification IT Forum in South Korea, Chosun People's Science Technology Association - North Korea, Chinese Information Society - of course, from China), who were joint hosts of ICMIP 2007.
Yenben and Dandung in China, Pyongyang, Kaesong and Hoichun in North Korea are the locations selected for the future training centers, for Linux professionals. South Korea made another step towards Linux, by using it in schools and by the migration of almost 30% of its government servers to Linux this year (as promised in 2003).
Asia seems to adopt more and more Linux this year, and companies like Novell is trying to promote its products on the Asian market. Novell is mainly interested by the government sector, which has large scale deployments, where a full-featured desktop may not be necessary. In Thailand, some of the most important of Novell's customers are Thai Airways and Assumption University. Novell is trying to make the next move in the government sectors from China and Japan.