Koreans to showcase open source experience in Cebu summit
By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 16:14:00 06/14/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The local community will get a first-hand account of South Korea's open source experience from government and private executives visiting a national meet in Cebu later this month.
Different groups from South Korea -- including Hansoft, one of Korea's biggest software firms -- will be attending the national open source conference on July 23 and 24.
This was confirmed by Bonifacio Belen, executive director of the Cebu Education Development Foundation (CEDF-IT), a private-government IT consortium in the province.
The Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA) will also send a group of executives to the conference.
"They will be coming over to present the open source strategy in their country," Belen told INQUIRER.net by phone, after just arriving from South Korea.
KIPA has been actively pushing open source use in government. One of its projects resulted in a local version of Linux (called Buyeo) now used in nearly 200 schools in South Korea.
KIPA is likewise working to make Linux more readily available to companies in Korea. It has publicly stated its goal to run 40 percent of servers in the country on open source.
"In Korea, a lot of government agencies are using open source, with assistance from private sector companies," said Belen who is one of the lead organizers of the Cebu conference. He said at least 200 people have registered to attend the conference.
By itself, CEDF-IT is following this tripartite model by linking together government, private companies and the academe in Cebu.
Hansoft, meanwhile, will also be sending speakers to the conference. The company is one of Korea's biggest software firms and has active participation in various open source projects, including Asianux, a Linux version targeted at Asian markets.
|
