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Linux And Beijing
Headed by an unnamed correspondent, many people have written about this story: "The China Red Flag Linux has surfaced again, this time in the
New York Times. Turns out there may be some truth to the
story that Linux is being pushed by the Chinese government." I do like this tidbit, even though it demonstrates the article's overall superficial tone: "Nonetheless, Great Wall Computer, one of China's biggest PC makers, has already shipped 200,000 desktop computers loaded with the Linux operating system, which looks much like Windows though it cannot yet match all of Microsoft's features." I can think of some features we can do without ...
The issue, like all such issues, boils down to money.
The problem Windows faces in China -- as well as here in Taiwan, tough to a lesser extent -- is price. Microsoft insists pricing Windows out of the reach of all but the wealthiest individuals. Street prices of a Windows upgrade in Beijing are roughly equivalent to half a year's wage for the average laborer. If Microsoft can't figure out why software piracy on the mainland exceeds 80% (a conservative estimate) it might start with its own pricing policies.
This doesn't put a legit copy of Windows out of the reach of just the individual; imagine what it does to a business's technology budget.
Couple this with the Chinese attitude toward fine print; "contemptuous" might be too fine a word for it. The kind of "licensing" championed by western "shrinkwrap" is utterly foreign to the Chinese mentality. As far as a Chinese consumer is concerned, if he buys a copy of Windows, it's his. No shrinkwrap license is going to convince him he can't install the thing wherever, whenever, and how ever often he wants.
This attitude extends to businesses, as well. Buy one copy of Windows, install it a thousand times. What Microsoft calls a 99.9% piracy rate, a businessman calls common sense.
This explains why the largest OEM in Beijing recently reported shipping 2,000 copies of Windows last year. During the same period, it shipped 200,000 copies of Linux. If Microsoft isn't worried, it should be.
Here in Taiwan -- though the price comparatively speaking isn't nearly outrageous, given the torrid economy -- piracy is just as rampant. A few months ago I went hunting for a new PC with a *legit* copy of Windows -- not because I wanted it, but just as an excercise.
I checked out over a dozen system vendors, and not ONE sold machines with legitimate copies of Windows; even here in Taiwan, the margin between piracy and legitimacy is enough to make or break a company. And even in westernized Taiwan, our attitude toward the legal system is more closely aligned to that of the mainland than the West.
Lee Kai Wen - Chiayi, Taiwan, ROC
is the WHY behind linux in china. Basically they decided that they can't have a capitalist OS like M$ Windows being supported by a communist country.
;-)
Still...it *is* a means to an end
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
The "Great Firewall of China" which blocks a lot of news sites but not porn sites. Do they use their tweaked out "Red"hat version to firewall the country?
Free Porn! or Laugh
Ever need an online dictionary?
"Do you really want to use a communist operating system?"
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
"Members claim to be taken where they want to go today. This is an obvious lie, and a feeble attempt at brain washing"
Instead of burning books, thousands of computers and MS CDroms are collected together in public places for burning in bon-fires.
A new and special trade treaty between Haiti and Red China leads to a new research breakthrough, and the practice of acupunture on a doll stuffed with the shredded pages of a windows manual is used to render the health of Bill Gates more suitable to chinese policy aims.
A picture of Tux in a mao suit is paraded the Tienemen square
then again, maybe not .........
this might not be a good idea after all?????
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Wonder if anyone outside of China can get Red Flag Linux? It would be interesting to see how much likw MS Windows it actually is
If it can go wrong it wnetscape: Segmentation Fault, Core dumped
I would be happy to debate by by private mail anyone who has coherent and different views.
Which would require you to have coherent views. I'm sorry, but advocating exection for drug possesion clearly labels you as either a) a troll or b) a menace to society.
I won't support the execution of addicts, but facists/stalinists like you are another matter.
--Shoeboy
- One of two things could happen:
- Red Flag is always a day late and dollar short as far as Linux versions, in which case you shouldn't care what they do with it (unless you REALLY want to use it for some reason)
- Red Flag comes up with some cool stuff for their version, in which case you would want to use it.
- This case has two possibile scenarios:
- Go ahead and use the Red Flag, because they will respect the open source nature of it
- Go ahead and use the Red Flag, but then China would try to pursue legal action-- in which case the original GPL acts as your defense.
Either way, the Red Flag poses no threat to the Linux evolutionary track. In fact, having an isolated 'gene pool' behind the great wall being worked on by Chinese programmers may ultimately prove to be very interesting. The Eastern mindset, including basic philosophies, problem-solving methods, and group dynamics are fundamentaly different than westerners. Who know what they'll do with their kernel?Sai Chien,
Dave
davejenkins.com |
This kind of news is rather old... Here's a CNN story from January. Evidently, it's actually government policy in China to use Linux.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Would the NSA sign off on the use of an operating system for sensitive data by the U.S. Government if they weren't allowed to audit and evaluate the source code?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
...then you can't meaningfully speak about it with the rest of the world.
Yes, communism has that older meaning, but it also means Marxist socialism, which will always turn out to be mass totalitarian slavery because of the fundamental flaws in Marx's reasoning (that production comes from machines and natural resources, not humans).
Perhaps it became known as communism because of Marx's belief that the state would "wither away" over time. It seemed to him so natural that in times of plenty everybody would just take what little they needed and commit not crimes, that it would eventually become a true old-fashioned communism.
Similarly, democracy used to only mean direct democracy, every person voting on every policy decision. Today, republics are called democracies, and few people recognize any distinction between the two.
As I mentioned earlier, "liberal" used to mean what "libertarian" does today. This stuff happens all the time.
I think you'll get a lot more mileage out of recognizing the profound distinction between communes and communist states. Note that nobody ever called Russia or China a "commune", just "communist". Let the word go.
After a hundred years of widespread misuse, the misuse becomes the proper use. Who knows? Maybe fifty years from now we'll all be using "literally" to emphasize metaphors (ugh, I hate that, though).
Right, so communists countries don't have a history for inhuman spy tactics on their own citizens. At one point in Soviet Moscow, one in eight people worked the KGB. China is the bane of everything ragingly liberal and righteously conservative. They unabashedly mock your human rights case and are the bane of capitolism. If the average person wasn't so apathetic and stupified by CNN(insert favorite govertainment news source here, BBC, NBC, etc) we would have already gunned them down.
errr I think that as Mozart died in 1791, and Chopin in 1849, then they would both be out of copyright by now, although then again if they had done something REALLY artistic, like; to pick a wild idea out of nowhere, say draw a cartoon of a mouse, then it may still be copyright by the company^h^h^h^h^h^h^h ummm estate.
~ppppppppö
After reading these comments, I see what was suppose to be a discussion about Linux and China become a discussion of how "evil" the Chinese government is. Apparently anything having to do with the Chinese government gets people going like this. I conclude that the American newspapers have brain-washed the American public into believing that the government of China is totally "evil". Your all a bunch of racist!
My god you're an asshole, you complain about how I have no life doing nothing but posting on slashdot, and then you waste even more time trolling. And you're calling me immature? Sorry for being 15, I mean, I can't control when I was born, at least I'm doing something productive with my time, and what are you doing, trying to 'debunk' everything I post.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
If you're worried about the Chinese Gov. not respecting free as in speech software, you just don't get it. This is a government that doesn't respect free speech period. Much as I dislike GPL violations, it sort of pales next to the imprisonment and torture of political dissidents.
--Shoeboy
They do use our alphabet, in a system called 'pin-yin' romanization. Pin-Yin is taught in schools in China right along with Han-Zi. Your 'translation' might make sense for a few phrases, trying to communicate anything substantial in Chinese with roman characters requires you use the correct spelling, or at least something close to it.
I realize that flaming people about something you know nothing of is common practice on the Internet, but that doesn't make you any less of a moron.
We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
s/capitalist/corporate/ and everyone on Slashdot will agree.
there's going to be a misunderstanding here...
China is no more a communist country than the US. In fact, if you've ever lived there you'll find its probably more capitalist.
Anyway, the Chinese govt isn't embracing Linux because it is Open Source. It's embracing it because it is FREE. As in Beer.
the 50 quid a machine that Microsoft charge OEMs is a lot of money for the average Chinese. Multiply it by the number of PCs that belong to the Chinese govt and the effort they spend promoting Linux is well spent.
Communism is inseperable from totalitarianism:
1)because every government that has called itself communist has turned out to be totalitarian (not exactly a logical proof, but if it walks like a duck...)
2)because in a totally communist state, the government controls all productive functions, not just simple industrial or agricultural ones, but also intellectual ones.
Free markets and free speech go together, because speech, thought, and persuasion are really just more market products. Since humans are always the true basic "means of production", communism is total slavery. Communism (especially under it's inexplicably friendlier name, socialism) is always sold under the vague premise that the machines will do the work, and why should anyone but the government own the machines? Marx based his whole theory on endless plenty coming from automation (he didn't anticipate the way human desires grow with every slightest whif of prosperity; what we consider terrible hardship of the modern Russian is a paradise of material wealth compared to the widespread poverty and starvation that Marx saw).
No newspaper regularly prints articles calling its owners crooks and calling on people to attack them, so why would a government-owned newspaper act differently? After all, they own all means of production; even if you go out on your own and build a working newspaper printer out of nothing, they then own it.
Besides,democracy doesn't preclude totalitarianism, only dictatorship. Totalitarianism and libertarianism (used to be called liberalism until that term was converted into a code-phrase for moderate socialism) are the proper opposites.
Totalitarianism/libertarianism is a matter of the degree of government control versus individual choice (the liberty issue).
Democracy/dictatorship is a matter of who sets the laws of the states: the general population, or a single individual (the control of government, meaning violence, issue).
Capitalism/communism is a matter of who owns the property: the government or individuals (the control of means of production, meaning labor, issue).
They are distict, but not completely seperate. Communism and totalitarianism go together like stupidity and ignorance. Democracy tends toward liberty, until the plebs learn that they can vote for bread and circuses... and it works, for a little while ("We, the weak and stupid, contributing little anyway, and unable to earn what we think is our right (since that's what the best and brightest get and we're just as good as they are, right?), vote to have the strong and intelligent do all the work and just give us what they produce." bread and circuses? general purpose welfare and health care? it's the same message either way).
Problem is that we don't even know yet if the GPL holds in the US, and just because it holds in the US, doesn't mean the Chinese government will play by the rules.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
I must say that I find the widespread adoption of Linux in Countries like China and India interesting (to say the least). If it's true that open source really does enable the un-guided cross-breeding and sharing of (software) ideas, thereby transforming a centrally run engineering process to the sort of creative/fruitful chaso that we see in organic systes (and I for the most part believe it is), then the long term impact of two countries with together 2 billion people joing the computing scene will be enourmous.
...
Between the two of them (or even by themselves), they have numbers to (statistically speaking) produce a quite few geniouses and quite a large number of superbly intelligent people. Open Source, being software without secrets that can be understood and analyzed if one is determined to spend the time, enables these people (and anybody else who cares to) to join the programming feast of Linux, Apache, BSD, etc. I would think that over in many ways we will be starting to see the center of gravity of the software world shift away from silicon valley