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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.
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!
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.
It's a nightmare getting linux to use chinese. But I have done it, at least partially... you can install language packs for mozilla/netscape to read websites, and also hack your .emacs file to make emacs able to handle chinese.
:-)
Those of us for which chinese is a second language would like to see better support for multi-language platforms. That said, I have gotten java to do Chinese using unicode. The biggest weakness tho, is input. Chinese has like 2 or 3 different ways to input characters. The only method I know how to use effectively is the pinyin method, however from what I've seen, none of the methods are supported very well. It's the same old story though, software is written in english and then translated, usually through a serious of ugly hacks.
One thing I'd really like to see is something for latex that would allow me to do typesetting and printing of characters...
I'm rambling, I'll stop.
Humorless sig goes here.
You're right of course, but don't underestimate the power of having Linux distributed to all those users, even if most of them blow it away.
The fact that Linux actually ships with the system means that users in China have a real choice to make, whereas in the rest of the world most users have no idea that non-Windows operating systems exist. Microsoft actually has to compete on merit.
As Microsoft takes steps to reduce piracy in China (including things like product activation), things will get really interesting. Nobody is going to pay the full price for Windows/Office - it's just not that much better. MS will either lose tons of market share, or they'll have to reduce the price in China. In fact, they'll probably find a compromise price to maximize revenue. That compromise will end up giving Linux a pretty decent market share.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
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.
China is a rad country (says the Canadian workin in Changchun).
And he's right about the costs of pirated software. it's 4 or 5 rmb per cd for any peice of software (10 cd visual studio with july 2000 msdn update cost me 45, office 2000 cost me 20).
Internet controll does seem half arsed to me too. Some porn sites are blocked, but not others.
A few news sites are blocked, but not others.
The store where I pick up my software, a big arsed 8 story mall, has stores that sell legit copies of software too. I believe Diablo II, chinese version, real copy, goes for... 80 yuan ($10 american, $14 canadian). Pirate copy goes for 15 or 12. Which is a big difference (and when you consider that the highest pay of any chinese person I know is 1000 yuan per month, no one in their right mind would pay for a legit copy.)
Best part is, if I were to look long and hard enough (there's at least 20 booths that sell pirate cd's, as well as some versions of linux, xteam, redhat, red flag, and I think I may have seen another few), I could possibly find every version of every release of windows since 95 osr2.
Funny thing is, Linux is the only legal software you'll actually be able to buy at one of them booths. AND it costs just as much as windows (or more, depending on the version). I picked up a copy of Red Hat (with 2 cd's, I also saw 3 and 4 cd variants, they must come with source code).
Now, to put this back on topic...
There's no way an average pc user in china will switch to linux when they can pick up a copy of windows(insert version here) for the same price. Each booth I looked at just today had between 0 and 3 copies of any linux distro (cumulative, so 2 redhat + 1 red flag = 3 copies of Linux), but at least 2 copies of each version of Win98, WinME, Windows 2000 (workstation, professional, server) and windows XP(workstation, professional, server).
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
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.
Well, given the average national income in many of the countries we're looking at... Microsoft would have to match Pepsi's (misstated) power of *bringing back the dead*, to be worth the price.
Microsoft Win 2k Pro + Office Standard, is USD 699.
That's USD 200 less than the total yearly wage in Rwanda, which is one of the countries people are considering trying to wire.
Chine has a *much* higher average wage, almost USD 3600, but that cost is still almost a fifth of it.
I know quite a few people (of those who use Windows) who consider that they should pay for it. Despite MS's illegal practices they still believe people should be paid for their efforts. But can you imagine if the package cost between USD 9000 and USD 30,000? That's the range it effectively is in many third-world countries. Who would choose to pay that voluntarily?
Not only is hardware a more reasonable cost. After all, people are used to paying money for something that costs to make, not something you can duplicate for free, but they could get a 1.5Ghz computer with 1GB of RAM and a 40GB HD for the same price. Chances are though that they'd like to pay less for the hardware and that they'd choose to buy an old computer, maybe a P1 or low-end P2. Many businesses pay to have them taken away because they can't justify the cost of inventorying them. These computers frequently end up heading overseas to be repaired and distributed.
When you could get a complete system for $50, or one twentieth of your yearly income, do you think you could justify 15/20ths of it for a crappy OS?
Microsoft then biases this further in the direction of encouraging the pirates by refusing to let the computer legally be used with the old OSes they often still have on them. If someone boots on old copy of Win95 still installed on a P1 that technically was "upgraded" to 2k they'll say you owe them for a second license, of almost the same value as the brand new OS, despite that fact that W95 aged worse than the P1s it was run on.
Pardon the rant, but the whole MS OS thing pisses me off. They have the power to be so helpful and yet they deny people everything they can, as if there's a chance of getting some poor peasant to cough up a year's wages for an OS for some old PC. No wonder those countries ignore our copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
I know you were arguing the same point, but I just wanted to point out that unless Win2k came with a ton of rations, tools, and medicine, it couldn't match the pricetag they put on it.
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.
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--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
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