hankyoreh

By Kim Jae-seob, Senior Staff Writer　
　
“What is the point of just developing it? No one will use it anyway...”
Following the government’s recent announcement that it will develop an indigenous mobile operating system, in collaboration with Korean firms such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech, to rival Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, the predominant reaction from related industries has been lukewarm. Cynics point out that, in light of previous experience, not even the firms taking part in the development project are likely to choose the resulting OS. Others criticize the move as a rough-and-ready prescription that fails to fully understand either the reality or the environment in the industry.
Government-led software development projects have lost steam before completion on many previous occasions. The so-called “K-DOS” project is a typical example. In the early 1990s, when many people used 80286 PCs, the government, in an attempt to secure “software independence” that had been compromised by Microsoft, joined forces with PC manufacturers to create a Korean computer research association and began developing a Korean-made PC operating system. In 1991, the association released K-DOS. But K-DOS, whose development, as one of the “G7 Projects,” had demanded considerable manpower and funding, was pushed aside before anyone had even made a proper attempt to use it, then finally scrapped upon the appearance of the Windows OS.
At the time, even domestic PC makers such as Samsung and LG avoided K-DOS. Even after taking part in the Korean OS’s development, they installed MS-DOS on their own products. They justified this by claiming that the stability of K-DOS was not proven, but the real reason was that they were tied down by unilateral contractual conditions from MS that obliged them to install only MS-DOS.
Apathy among government employees also played a part. When a plan to test the stability of K-DOS by first installing it on the “education computers” supplied to elementary, middle and high schools throughout the country using income from redundant change left in public telephones appeared, this time it was the education ministry that applied the brakes.
One education ministry official in charge of computer distribution at the time said to reporters, “If something goes wrong with a computer that has MS-DOS installed on it, this does not cause a problem. When MS-DOS is of that standard, I cannot imagine why anyone would use anything else. But if a problem occurs after installing K-DOS, we are held responsible. People tell us we should have installed MS-DOS, and ask us why we messed things up by installing K-DOS.”
Such experiences also recurred later on. Other examples include “Korean Linux,” the “Korean mobile platform” and the “Korean router.” All of these were developed as government projects but were unable to fulfill their original purpose due to lack of support from relevant businesses, and ended up as objects of contempt.
Many point on the possibility that the indigenous mobile OS due for development is highly likely to suffer a similar fate. As the cases of Android and iOS have shown, creating a rich ecosystem is much more important than the OS software itself. Samsung, moreover, already has its own independent OS, “Bada.” This is why the response among mobile firms to the government’s announcements has been a cool one.
“It is hard to refuse the government’s plan, so we will help, but to be honest we don’t feel like it,” said an official at one company.
　　
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