South Korean government to switch from Windows to open source

South Korea’s government will move away from Windows as soon as support for Windows 7 ends in 2020, the country’s government has announced. The government will make the switch to open source software.

A pilot project for the development of an open source OS will start next year, which will be carried out by ten public and private organizations in South Korea. In 2018, an evaluation of the results and the savings involved in a switch will follow, after which the project can be expanded. The switch from Windows must then be realized in 2020, ETNews writes.

To stimulate the development of open source software, the government will support community projects and initiate research at universities. The move was announced during the Open Source Software Invigoration Policy Debate in Seoul, held by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning. There were also published the interim results towards the development of an open ecosystem that does not depend on a single operating system or browser.

This must be realized in 2017 and be based on HTML5, among other things, whereby ActiveX must disappear from sites for government services. The government also wants to release public documents in various formats, including hwp and pdf.

The move follows the end of support for Windows XP, which also affected the South Korean government. China is also banning Windows for government systems, although security also plays a role.