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The Ongoing Saga of Linux in China
Dan Gillmor, who's currently on the road in China, has sent a report about the role of Linux in China. We've talked about this before. Dan hits on some of the high points for *why* the Chinese are interested, which makes for interesting reading.
Is this a result of the GPL?
I know this has already been posted several times but it's always a good idea to remember ;)
freechina.net
--
FreeMan [i don't think i'm going to watch the next Olympics]
I don't know anyone from China who lived there after about age 9 or 10 (all the families of my friend moved here [the US] at about that time) but I do know a good number of Taiwanese who went through higher schooling in Taiwan.
In Taiwan (at least from what I hear), FreeBSD seems to have become very popular, and to have a better reputation than Linux. One of my friends still connects to Taiwanese BBS type systems many of which are running FreeBSD.
So I'm not exactly clear why Linux making in-roads (which I'm not sure is really justified in the article--it seems a lot of if's, maybes, and predictions) in China is so important. Free software is in the Chinese speaking world and has been making in-roads for years--that is what seems important to me.
Scott
In many countries in the past, it has been easier and faster to obtain and use a pirated copy of Microsoft software than bother with another OS, such as Linux. This still appears to be the case. However, ever tightening anti-piracy methods by Microsoft may decrease the former ease of pirating MS software and lead to a [somewhat ;)] higher chance of people utilizing Linux.
You shank my Jengaship!
They don't like the Linux Chinese language support. None of the Linux boxes in the lab have chinese installed on them, in any case.
I don't know exactly what they find wrong with it, but Chinese readers who don't use Linux should take a look here; which btw is actually hosted from here and then give comments to people on sourceforge who will, given the attention this is getting, help to develop tools that better fit whatever people's needs are.
The Chinese language is very different from English and features that are hugely convenient for English users can seem irrelevant while things that it would never occur to English users to want, or which are downright inconvenient, are very helpful when you're typing Chinese. This is a situation where Linux needs.... marketing (dum dum dum) and in a terrible way.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
In anticipation of the site being /.'d, or you lot being too lazy to read it, a few quotes:
This is very pragmatic stuff. The basic message is that users want Windows, and vendors will give then Linux only if they have to for budget reasons. But the important point is the 10-15% figure, and the following:
Bingo. If you haven't tried the Star Office 6 beta, try it now. It's the killer app. For Harry Homeowner or Cathy Cubeville, a KDE/Gnome/GNU/Linux distro with Star Office 6 will do everything they need, for a fraction of the (retail) cost of a Microsoft solution. And if it's pre-loaded, why would you pay even a few dollars extra to replace that with a pirated Redmond solution?
I say this not as a long time Linux afficionado, but as a recent convert. Red Hat 6.2 and Star Office 5.2 came off my drive after a week, but SuSE 7.3 and Star Office 6 beta 3 do everything that I need. There's no way I'd pay £444 (UK retail prices) for WinXP + Word 2002, but I will pay £60 for boxed sets of SuSE + Star Office (assuming 6.0 ships for the same price as 5.2).
And maybe that's the point in China too. You can afford to bundle real versions of non-M$ software, but the M$ stuff is just too damn expensive. The choice for OEM's and purchasers is to use open source, or to pirate Microsoft. Right now, many of them are still choosing the latter, but at least they're being given the choice. I really think that when Star Office 6.0 ships, they'll find to their surprise that there's just no need to do that any more.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
In various hacker circles we have often discussed the China market for one reason: Why don't we see more stuff coming out of China?
Red Flag Linux is one of the biggest (maybe biggest of us all) Linux distributors, but you still see nothing coming back to the society. Try to think of the last time you saw a patch from a chinese developer - it's very rare.
I would really like to see the chinese hackers contributing to the environment in the future. Then it would be really interesting how Linux is doing in China.
Bo Thorsen,
SuSE Labs.
A few days agoi there were a post here about china closing internet bars, because they failed to censor the internet properly. Now would open-source be a bad thing for this goverment?
Since you can alter the way it work, I think it would be easy to create proxies that would make the international sites available to every one.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Excuse me for being cynical, but I know what software piracy in Asia is like. These are places where you can pick up Mathematica, STAAD, Oracle - for $20 or thereabouts. So is this bundling of Linux anything more a fig leaf from rock-bottom assemblers to not appear as selling "naked pcs" to clueless consumers?
The only two good points are -
a) since pc penetration in china is less than that of the US, the avg pc user in china is a lot more savvy than the avg us pc user. hence the chances of staying with linux is higher.
b) maybe (like the article notes) the users will dual-boot. At least the bright school/college goer will take a look at Linux and realize choice does exist.
So, isn't China the market that LinuxONE was going to corner and then use to make their millions...? What ever happened to those clowns, anyways...?
..when Microsoft OS's and applications are the biggest black market in China. I believe Steve Ballmer was actually quoted as saying that while he wasn't happy about the piracy, he admitted it was a useful foothold.
It's good to see Linux getting *somewhere*, however, and as long as the internationalization effort continues, I think we stand a chance. Just don't underestimate the task!
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
of the price, since MS software is largely pirated (piracy rates in China is more than 90%), but because they fear that MS has somehow planted a backdoor that helps the U.S. government to spy their communication channels (remember the NSAKey registry that was introduced in NT SP5?).
¦ ©® ±
Let's not kid ourselves: Nothing is as easy and widespread as Windows XP in the PRC. The internet cafe I'm sitting in has had XP since XP's launch day. And I imagine the laoban paid 10 RMB for the one or two cds and proceeded to install it on all 20 or so computers. Maybe Linux is catching on a little bit with enthusiasts (a few of my Chinese friends have heard of it, and you can easily find it in stores) but wrestling with some install and Corel's Office lookalike is just not worth the effort. The whole pile of Office XP cds can be had for 20 RMB. Windows XP and OFfice XP can probably be had for 25 RMB if you buy them together. That's three American dollars.
Though to be honest I wish he'd stuck with Windows 98. An upgrade to XP without a hardware upgrade is a speed downgrade (eryi).
Also, if I could comment on the misperception presented by these somewhat sketchy articles that Slashdot features every once in a while, the Chinese "control" on the internet isn't oppressive, it's quixotic. I can read NYT, Reuters, but not the LA Times. And there's practically no restriction on any 'illegal' content bearing sites. Please bear in mind the reporting in the mainland is sketchy -- bad news, good news, it's all blown out of proportion or deflated down to managable levels. The best way to check out the real deal is to come out and see for yourself.
China's beautiful!
An American abroad,
c.d.
There are two complementing strategies for proliferating an operating system:
1. Make it practical and easy to get.
2. Make other operating systems expensive and difficult to get.
Ironically, through WindowsXP's extreme registration requirements, it may be more of a hassle to install a stolen copy of windows than a legit copy of Linux. Linux with KDE and StarOffice is a practical solution for lots of business users now, all they have to do is discover it. Seems like several million Chinese are discovering it every day.
Can anyone say critical mass?
I'm not sure this is the effect Microsoft foresaw, but it is one I expect.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Hopw can XP and 98 cost the same as linux, when linux is free???
all you have to do is go to any alt.binaries.warez group and you can get it for free here (illegally of course).
stealing win 98 or any of the others. Legally purchasing is the bugger.
Anyone know about the other big developing markets?
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh?
Indonesia?
Arab countries?
South America?
Obviously WXP is available pirated in all these places too but it would be interesting to note the comparitive penetration rates.
They like it cos they're communists!
America is always asleep. That's why you bastards got such a shock when your "pro-Israel" and "get-all-the-oil" chickens all came home to roost on 9/11. Shit, you yanks have been paying the micks to bomb fuck out of us, out of our offices, shops and policemen for years. It's about time you lot got some.
Will this do?
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
... I'm talking about. The post above might have been marked (according to my system):
Informative - 0
Clever - 2
Funny - 0
Insulting - 0
Instead of all this, all I get it "-1 Offtopic". What if I want to easily read all of the funny and insulting posts? There's no option to give me that view at the moment. Jeez, I thought you guys were supposed to be techies.
Cheers,
Because there just aren't enough of them Chinese hackers. Growing up in a relatively rich enviromentin Beijing, I daresay I was one of the few first generation of kids brought up having used a computer: I used AppleIIs in the 6th grade. But it was not until 5 years later did I have another chance to touch them again, briefly. Both times learning BASIC.
:)
In college I used "BULL" system, for a intro class of computerscience with FORTRAN, then some PC, for a dBase class. That was already the 90's and a lot of my friends who went to other colleges ended up learning BASIC again, as we did in highschool, because most of their schoolmates didn't touch computer before and, I guess, there weren't enough staff members who could teach FORTRAN.
At mid 90's, the computer started to get in to people homes, and mine too, and it's merely about 5 years now.
I don't know any Chinese hacker, nor have I heard of many. And I myself am too far away from one, although I'm considered a guru. In the stead, those script-kiddies who launced the attack against US sites after the aircraft collision incident were regarded as hackers in China...
you see a lot of Chinese "programmers" in the US now, but most of us were switched from other fields in order to make a living here, and couldn't even put together a pc.
So, please be patient, people. We will make our due contribution, but first we have to make a bigger task force.
The project leader is a hacker living in Beijing.
As I know, most of chinese hackers are busy with localization of linux in chinese. Also, being a free software developer is much harder in China. Can you imagine a programmer with a $300 salary has any incentive of programming free code? So those Chinese
free software developers are real idealist and heroes in my eyes. Just wait for another 3 or 4 years. I am sure you will see patches
directly from chinese hackers
In addition, I must agree with article that cost will play no significant part in the Linux/Windows battle. As a matter of fact, I think that piracy may make Windows the cheaper choice, just as it was in the USA through most of the 90's. For example, when I was in High School everyone had an Apple II. This was a very efficient system to acquire as one never had to buy software. Each day we would copy off a number of programs for our group of users. We even put bulk orders in for a hundreds of diskettes. It was fun and simple activity. As we moved into the late 80's, the balance of easily pirated software shifted to the M$ OS as a result of the growing dominance of M$ and the introduction of the Macintosh. Even with the recent anti-piracy efforts, sales of PCs running Windows still seems to be partially driven by the availability of pirated or gray market software. This is true in the U.S., and I assume it is true in China.
P.S. I mostly use MacOS and pay for my software, even M$ Office.
"We suspected something was amiss when we received Windows XP boxes without license agreement stickers or shrinkwrapping," sobbed a survivor, "but the prospect of a new version was too tempting. My partner loaded the disc, and then all hell broke loose."
The US has responded to allegations of complicity by placing the blame firmly on the shoulders of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. "Bin Laden is an enemy of Western culture", declared a White House spokesperson, tucking a tuft of her hair back into her Microsoft (tm) baseball cap. "It was inevitable that he would try to blacken the name of our finest cultural exports."
communism and open source go hand-in-hand. ;)
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
"And don't forget plain old nationalism -- an unwillingness to be so beholden to a monopolistic foreign company -- plus Microsoft's reputation as a bully. ``There is grassroots anti-Microsoft sentiment,'' says Michael Robinson, a technologist with long experience in open-source software who's lived in China for eight years. Robinson cites ``a popular perception of Microsoft being antagonistic to the aspirations of China."
This is completely inacurrate. I haved lived in China all my life and the Chinese are very pro-Microsoft, for the simple reason that Microsoft is such a success story in business. Also, just like the US, there is a widespread fear of linux being "hard to use". There is no such thing as a price differential between linux and Windows, because anyone can buy a pirated copy of multiple programs for 1-2 US dollars. Pirating is such a rampant practice and is so commonly done that nobody thinks twice about it. I have never spoken to a Chinese friend who doesn't use pirated software. This article is obviously written by someone out of touch with China, who is probably seeking foreign investment.
Although I'm a linux fan, I regret to say that this article is far from the truth.
$45 per U Colocation Special
Thank you. Prompt service is always appreciated :-)
FWIW, I am not American.
Bill gates said it was "communism" and "unamerican". That pretty much decided it for them.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Wired.com did a nice story about linux in africa about two months ago (here).
In this article they were talking to an ex-Xerox researcher. He was making the point that in a country such as kenya it would set you back about $900 for Windows and Office, but the average annual income is only about $250 which pretty much puts the MS solution out of pocket for all but the rich and big companies. In contrast the Linux solution is esentially free (baring the Hardware) although his company does offer a range of applications aimed at the small/medium company for $6.50.
So, what I hope that we'll see is that the developing world, whilst developing choses to rely on Open Source solutions and not M$. Just think... in a few decades (or less) Linux/BSD might well have a huge, huge user base and there will be parts of the world that M$ will never be able to conquer.
meep
$ishtoast
Given that XP costs exactly the same as linux or 98, most users go with 98.
Most computers come prepirated with a ghost image of 98se, office xp, acdsee and the other various useful apps.
this guy is somewhat correct.
In china, microsoft and linux are the exact same price ($0). Only the better of the two is going to win. Really (no matter what the zealout moderators would like to believe), the only leg linux has to stand on, is the fact that it is free (as in beer).
I can see why linux isn't popular in china. Why get an operating system that has no central location for patches and updates? or most importantly has sub-standard support for the chinese language? especially when you can get something that is supported by all vendors, and has 110% of the features you need for the SAME PRICE.
Is this a result of the GPL?
*laugh* Cute. If I had real mod points I'd give you one.
-- MarkusQ
Believe it or not, this was told by one of my friend who claim to be an insider. Don't mod me as troll if you don't like it. Just take it grand of salt. I found the second reason so funny, just laugh if feel the same. :)
:)
When you say people change to Linux because it's cheaper - actually it made little difference for people in China to use MS or Linux, they are both free(you know why). Even the anti-piracy movement targetting commercial sectors, the Government was using illegal copies of software, or at least 'unmatched' number of license. You know what I mean.
Things changed drastically one day when Government suddenly announced to develop their own operating system and planned to gradually replace MS software in Government. My friend told me it's not out of accident, it's all political.
First, it's been a floating rumor that some US printers had secret chips to guide missles when time comes, and these tailor-made printers are mostly sold to Middle-east. China Government is aware of this rumor and to their surprise their agents found out it's not just a rumor. Report said that there are actually some tailor-made hardware sold to Middle-East and Asia, I'm not sure whether it's related to missile-guide chips, but that was enough to began their worry in using US' software.
Second, and most important, MS made the originally Simplified Chinese version of MS software in Taiwan. It's a major fault of MS. I think China Government might not mind who made them, but the DO mind when some innovative Taiwan programmers took the liberty to include some 'Easter Eggs' that humiliating communists and major players in communists party.
My friend show me those Easter Eggs by a couple of secret key triggers(iirc in Excel), they were so funny, but I'm sure those big bosses in communists' party weren't amused. China Government was so angry about it and thus pushing the development of their own OS.
It's not surprising Linux is their reasonable choice.
Lessons for MS to put more efforts on quality assurance against 'unplanned Easter Eggs' and not to give development jobs to people who have opposite political believes with the country where the products will be sold.
I lived in Beijing for four years, and bought a desktop system for my kids while I was there. It was a TCL 718, SiS motherboard, pretty standard box. TCL is one of the large consumer electronics companies in China.
Their support was great... they had a localized copy of Suse. I wanted to install an English distro. They actually sent two guys to my apartment with all the device drivers, etc, as part of their service agreement (this for a $900 computer!). They also have a web site with all the drivers and setup information.
However, chatting with the shop owner where I bought the box, it seems I was one of the very few customers who did not immediately request that Windows be installed over the existing system. It's the shop guy who does this, so it's a lot harder to regulate than if the manufacturer does this.
"everyone should learn english"
"why should i program something i wont use"
"that is not needed"
"we will just ignore that for now and let it be filled in later"
-- lovely comments from the linux channels on irc.
of course, when china becomes the biggest software market on the planet
they will forget all they said and suddenly be experts
on i18n. assholes.
Exactly. I get a lot of chinese, taiwanese, and korean spam on one of my web sites, since it's keyworded "pacific".
Since I don't use the appropriate character sets, I have no idea if it's actually real email. I just trash it all.
I even get the virii in largest quantities from such sites.
So perhaps a lot of Chinese hackers would like to submit patches but are having diffuculty communicating with our processes. Many times obstacles are a combination of barriers on both sides - and we might need to work on making it easier for them to submit things, and listen to their suggestions for how they might change things to work for them.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
all the fucking devel platforms are fucking biased
towards A. people who speak latin-1 languages
(i know youre suse but gtk still cant fucking deal with non-latin very well)
B. people who have incredibly fast computers available, with lots of RAM
(gdb, etc are all fat bloated hogs)
GUESS WHICH OF THESE CHINESE ON AVERAGE ARE MISSING.
First of all, Taiwan is a different CONTURY from China. We stand on the biggest hardware vender of the world. We do have some BSD/Linux user here in Taiwan.
I've wrote a page about Linux @ Taiwan one years ago, you can check the Linux @ Taiwan for the old document. This is an pretty old document, and there are more progess going on here in Taiwan.
We have CLE(Chinese Linux Extension) here in http://cle.linux.org.tw/. Sorry for no English version avaliable now. From CLE, there are RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Slackware, Debian Chinese packages. You can see Mandrake Taiwan, KDE Taiwan, and there is also an i18n project for translate Linux project. A Chinese input project in XCIN Project, and a CLDP Project.
Recently, we also have a Software liberty Association for improve the opensource in Taiwan.
Above are only a few information I know about Linux @ Taiwan. As for BSD @ Taiwan, I also know few BSD committer who spent lots of time on Chinese support for BSD.
Anyway, for those who help the Chinese on Linux/BSD, I've to say THANKS to you all.
Seventeen
I lived in China for four years, where our company was building the China Internet Backbone. I came back to the States this Fall.
Based on what I saw, Red Flag is not a very popular distro. I saw it at the store for about 900 RMB (about $US 108). It could be the case that they are concentrating on large govt or corporate accounts.
Xteam Linux seemed very popular at the stores, where it sold for 38 RMB (about $US 5). They had a nice-looking poster, which was displayed all over.
You could buy current versions of both Slackware and Red Hat from the CD street vendors for about $US 1 each.
Most of my Chinese colleagues seemed to prefer a localized version of Mandrake. It looked pretty nice... all the screens/menus were presented in Chinese, and it supported an input method for Chinese characters.
Hrm. Now all we need is ESR flying off his rocker (if he has one) and deciding to speak for all Linux users in decrying the Chinese government and saying how none of us want that government using Linux.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Others have said that Chinese hackers mainly introduce support for Chinese in other packages.
I think there is also a communication barrier. I sometimes find nice Japanese software that is outside of the Western distribution circles. The documentation is in Japanese or broke English. And while well known in Japan it's unrecognized in Western societies.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I beleive according to Microsoft, there has been only 1 license of MS Office 97 that has been purchased in Asia...bahahaha
All those "lovely comments" from irc are just rationalizations for not doing it right the first time.
There never seems to be any shortage of Chinese programmers available to immediately crack any form of copy protection put on legitimate products.
If your explanation -- not enough developers to be able to make a contribution to the world -- is valid, how do they find the developers needed to illegally sell (illegal by China's own laws) cracked versions of almost every copy-protected commercial product ever made?
Programmers in China are like chemists in Colombia.
This isn't meant as a troll. It's a genuine observation. A lot of my family still lives in China and, frankly, I don't hear "help make the world a better place" expressed very often by the Chinese as an important personal or national goal. This is true even among those whose incomes would put them solidly in the middle class in the Western world.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
the whole middleware model -- whether java or .NYET -- is about having a underlying object hierarchy in a known, unmodified state.
once you have that, you can do things like digital rights management...and NSA backdoors, maybe even MS backdoors, for sale to the highest bidder.
So, MS sells Goldman Sachs a backdoor into Smith Barney...or maybe the NSA gets a backdoor into various research computers at chinese universities. Or daddy gets his porno interests examined by the FBI.
Seems entirely possible, and if it's possible, it will be done. There is not a single entity that should not be afraid of "MS World".
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
make that thirteen out of fourteen.
Well, there's your answer. Put troll in your name, and go for the title of karma whore.
Since linux is open-source, I think the solution is to make it attractive to geeks in China to contribute code towards making Linux friendlier to Chinese users. Maybe this is what Red Flag is doing?
At any rate, 10-15% isn't that bad, and considering China's population, it's quite likely that a critical mass will be reached, and then we'll see plenty of localization patches and contributions coming out of China.
Security, that's all.
A year ago there was one article written by a former Cisco-China employee. Basically he had a 3 month business trip to Cisco HQ in CA for a project, during that trip he noticed there were a special mystious group of people work in Cisco, who use special badges. Out of curiousity he asked his Taiwan friend who they were and he was told that those people were from Pentagon and their job was to plant code in chips that routers use so they can be controlled by special sequence of packets. He was shocked and after he went back to China he sent an email to president of Cisco china, unfortunately he was told to keep his mouth shut, then he quit his job and post that article on Internet.
I am sure Pentagon has people work in Microsoft and trust a foreign company to build the fundation of a nation's security system is just insane.
We all know that Pentagon monitors our communications all the time. what would be more efficent than back door in your router and OS?
go figure.
This is marginally off-topic, but I thought y'all might enjoy this photo I took in Hong Kong. It's of an advertisement that I saw on the streets and in the subways:
x ad.html
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~hertzman/pics/china01/hk-linu
Aaron
The article is pretty out of touch with the real situation in china, as most of the linux in china articles are. Like most have said, piracy adn the ability to buy virtually any software for 1-3 dollars (at least in Beijing in 2001) make linux no cheaper than MS. The past year i was in china, i met zero people who use linux. The people who use linux in China are the same types of people who use Linux in America. If Linux really wants to gain marketshare on the desktop, it will have to address the same problems it has to address in America.
There's another dynamic, which I haven't seen mentioned: gaming. Gaming is getting pretty huge in the major cities with the highest percentage of people playing games that run on windows. It's pretty scary how popular it is; when i went to the internet cafe after I was done partying in the weekend, I'd find the place mostly full at 3am with people who had been glued to their screens playing games.
basically, this article is full of it.
The Microsoft input function worked fine, into Microsoft products. Unfortunately, a hard drive reformat eliminated some software for which there was no backup disk, and I installed StarOffice to take up the slack.
Japanese character input continued to work, but Microsloth's IME simply didn't include Chinese when trying to put text into StarOffice applications. It was as if it had never been installed.
People complain about ease of use in Linux, but when "My Computer" does stuff like this it makes configuring locals and xcin seem like a really fun project.
By Cromm, I loath the infantile "My Computer" paradigm. F*ucking moron Bob interface.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Are the Chinese so lazy that none of them can be bothered to do it ?
Or are there no good programmers in China ?