[LUAU] $300M Linux Procurement by Taiwan Gov

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

A friend of mine sent me a news clip which says that the Taiwan gov has 
mandated a requirement that all government IT purchases now must be 
certified for Windows/Linux dual boot.  Currently Red Hat, Novell/SuSE, 
and two local Linux companies have passed the certification:

http://tw.news.yahoo.com/060526/19/36g3m.html  (in Chinese)

It is estimated that more than $300M USD of hardware/software 
procurements will fall under this newly implemented requirement this year.

The main ramification is that Taiwanese hardware makers now will have to 
diligently work with Linux vendors if they want to do business with the 
government.  Since Taiwan literally controls the design and manufacture 
(directly or through their investments in China) of all the PC 
components, this news should be no less significant than Massachusetts' 
decision to move its official office format to ODF.  Also as a "direct" 
consequence, Adobe unofficially announced that they will port the 
upcoming Flash 9 to Linux.  See Emmy Huang's (Adobe's product manager 
for Flash Player) blog:

http://weblogs.macromedia.com/emmy/archives/2006/05/yes_virginia_th.cfm

Things appear to move along quite nicely.  Wayne