Korea Struggles in Developing Open Software
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
Korea's lackluster performance in open-source software continues to hit the country both at home and abroad.
The state-run National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) disclosed Thursday the results of research regarding the international open-source software industry. Korea chalked up rather disappointing results.
Out of the four categories assessed, Korea ranked fourth when it came to national policies for open-source software, sixth in overall environment and seventh for usage of the programs.
As far as the open software ``communities'' are concerned, Korea ranked 24th out of 58 countries, behind such countries as China, Mexico and Malaysia.
Experts point out that this is bad news because such communities are about the development of open-source programs, which make its source codes available to everyone interested.
Like Linux, which is widely used for operating systems for personal computers or servers, open-source software allows users to upgrade by finding and fixing glitches.
``Korea seems to be ready to consume open-source software. But the country remains to be indifferent to its production,'' said a Seoul analyst, who asked not to be named.
``Open-source programs are gaining clout across the board from laptop system to mobile phones as amply demonstrated by Google's Android. Without actively developing such programs, we will lose competitiveness.''
According to market consultancy Gartner, the world's markets for this software are expected to grow to more than $63.4 billion next year.
This compares to a few years ago when the country pulled out all the stops to spread open-source programs _ under the stewardship of the Ministry of Information Communication (MIC), Asia's fourth-largest economy attempted to build cities and universities run solely by Linux.
Yet, with the inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak administration in early 2008, such efforts started to dwindle as some say it pays less attention to high-tech industries than it should.
Rather, the present Seoul administration, which dismantled the MIC, has been accused of channeling its resources and efforts into construction projects such as refurbishing the country's four rivers.
A total of 30 trillion won would be funneled to the four-river scheme and other associated projects, which involve the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan rivers.
Some experts point out that the lack of high-tech industry leadership is at least partially responsible for the sluggish development of the country's IT industry over the past few years.