The South Korean government is encouraging its institutions to move away from their reliance on Windows and Unix and adopt open source software. In a latest development in the country, two state-owned financial institutions planned to launch the country's first Linux-based Internet banking services in December.
The state-owned Korea Post and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (NACF) have both said their systems will be up and running for Linux users before the end of December as a part of the open source software fostering projects of the Ministry of Information and Communication.
The Ministry has been encouraging public organizations and institutions such as Korea Post, the Defense Ministry, and the Unification Ministry to adopt Linux when developing new network systems.
Until now online banking in South Korea has been available only for PCs with Microsoft's Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browsers.
"The Ministry is fostering open source software such as Linux in order to end the monopoly by Microsoft. Linux system users have demanded the new banking system as well," Korea Post official Oh Kwang-soo was quoted as saying by the Korea Herald newspaper. "We've decided to launch it because we feel responsible as a public organization. We believe that private firms will follow us once our Linux online banking system is proved successful".
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