South Korea to switch from Windows to open source

Korea IT News writes the South Korean government put things in motion to switch from Windows to open source software by 2020, the year when support for Windows 7 is to be terminated. The country also pledged to get rid of ActiveX by 2017, at present Internet Explorer is still widely used in the country because critical systems exclusively use the outdated ActiveX technology. A whopping 75 percent of South Koreans still use Internet Explorer because they are forced by law to use ActiveX for logging in online and other ubiquitous tasks like online shopping. The government promises there will be a HTML5 alternative by 2017.

According to this plan, support will be provided so that it will be possible to freely connect to the Internet with all operating systems and browsers by 2017. The HTML5-based conversion work will be done so that Active X will be excluded from public administration and customer service websites and international standards will be complied with. Documents distributed by public institutions will come in various formats, including hwp and PDF. To support development of open OS and application SW, corporations and communities will lead in supporting OS distributions. Starting next year the pilot open sources OS project will be carried out for 10 public and private institutions, and the expenses related to employee education and systems will be supported.