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Beijing Snubs Microsoft For Municipal PCs' Software
jsse points to this Gartner article which says "that on 28 December 2001, the Beijing municipal government selected among seven vendors to provide operating system (OS), office automation (OA) and antivirus software for government PCs. Beijing selected six bidders, including Red Flag, but rejected the seventh bidder, Microsoft -- the only one that was not selected. Gartner listed several reasons why Microsoft lost the bid, but missed out the famous rumor that Microsoft has built a bad relationship with China since the first Chinese Windows 95, which was written by Taiwan programmers, contains Easter eggs carrying anti-communist messages."
That's a pretty funny rumor, whether it be true or not is of course another story....
The article points out that China can greatly benefit by not having a powerhouse like Microsoft established in China. Chinese companies will have a much better opportunity to gain a foothold in China now.
Electron Pulse...indie rock/jazz/blues
It appears that the Chinese understand the importance of a domestic software industry in the 21st century and are taking steps to improve their own. Choosing Linux immediately gives them a worldwide devloper network that rivals any private corporation, including Microsoft. If we gaze into the crystal ball to 10-15 years from now, the sheer savings in licensing alone will catapult them into the world arena. They have a captive market of 1.2 billion users that rivals North America, Western Europe and the Pac-Rim. Granted, it may take 20-30 years for the network infrastructure and standard of living to rise to a 50% market penetration of PCs but I don't see this as a good thing for M$.
We have seen several different governmental organizations move to Linux over the past year, if the trend continues, does this increase the chance of Linux becoming the major OS in schools? Apple made a strong push to introduce the Macintosh to the education market, and as a result, they are still the primary computers at many elementary, middle and highshools in America. This could be a great way to introduce Linux to the general population.
Geeze, don't be so paranoid, nobody's accusing you of being a communist...
Careful reading will reveal that these contracts essentially effect only Beijing, not the rest of China. Shanghai, for instance, recently negotiated a contract with Microsoft for Win2000. What remains to be seen, however, is how the seriously the Chinese government will crack down on pirating (the major reason for Windows' prevelence in China, as is the case for much of the world outside of the USA and Western Europe) and whether this will prompt a widespread movement toward Free Software. Sure, China is oggling free trade, but will it (or can it?) curb pirating?
:Peter
The second-to-last sentence in the ChipCenter article explains a lot:
One of the many things that distinguish Americans from the rest of the world--and particularly from Asians--is the American social construct of "just business." I hope you understand, the tycoon says to his beloved, I had to destroy your father's empire and bankrupt all your siblings--but it was 'just business.' This is central to the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movie, "You've Got Mail"--Hanks's character is a big-block bookstore tycoon who wipes the small businesswoman (Ryan) off the map--but she falls in love with him anyway. It is practically impossible to explain to most Americans how oddly this strikes practically anybody in the rest of the world. Particularly in Asia.
Nothing, in China, is "just business." You cannot trash-talk a country for their laxity in intellectual property rights and then expect to sell them software licenses. But you also cannot even begin to think that the son of the Chinese President is to be treated as just another vendor. The presence of Red Flag in the bidding guaranteed that Red Flag would win the bidding. That's how business is done in China.
What's instructive in this, however, is that six other vendors also "won" in the bidding--it might be very interesting to see what they offered (such as what OS and what word processors). It might not be particularly surprising to discover that one or more is a Microsoft reseller. One can spank a disrespectful suitor (Microsoft) by pointedly excluding them from the vendor list--but offer Microsoft an opportunity to regain favor by including a reseller (or perhaps more than one) on the list.
Microsoft got stiffed; the president's son won the biggest chunk of the business. Anybody in China could have told you that would happen. The real story is whether there are any Microsoft-OS suppliers on this vendor list, or if the Beijing government has embraced Linux exclusively.
Well in countries like China the software is too fucking expensive for them to buy legitly. Heck in the United States this software is too expensive for most of us. Look at all those Quake 3 and Unreal mods. You think they can afford photoshop to work on a hobby? They pirate it. The whole world pirates software not just China.
In China and Russia they pirate out in the open on physical media like CD-R's, in the United States we sneak around on our cable modems and dsls and download the stuff, then we burn it onto CD-R's.
Four dead in Ohio, killed by a few trigger happy National Guardsmen does not compare to the government of a nation crushing a revolt and killing between 200 and 4000 people, and throwing thousands more in prison. There are estimates that more than 240 people are still in Chinese prisons because of thier actions at Tiananmen Square.
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You can not compare the organized slaughter at Tiananmen Square to the actions of a few frightened National Guardsmen at Kent State.
1. The Federal Government didn't order the attack at Kent State. The Chinese Government ordered the attacks.
2. Students at Kent State were not put in prison for thier actions, while protesters at Tiananmen Square were thrown in prison.
3. The National Guard at Kent State didn't send in Armored units to put down the protests, like the Chinese did at Tiananmen Square. Read the text of Deng Xiaoping's speech to the Martial Law Units from June 9th, 1989.
http://tsquare.tv/chronology/Deng.html
Those things, coupled with the Chinese oppression of the Fal Lun Gong, Chirstians, Tibet and the 20-40 million that died because of the Great Leap Foreward, give the rest of the world the right to shake our fingers at the Chinese.
http://www.intangible.org/Features/t_square/sit
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/tiananmen.h
http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/past
http://tsquare.tv/chronology/Deng.html
I've got moderator access right now, and I wish I could moderate this up to +6, because it appears to me that most people have missed what really happened. A lot of people are saying, "Serves Microsoft right," or that Microsoft got their just desserts or something. That's not what's going on.
This is not about Microsoft.
The PRC doesn't give a rat's ass about what Microsoft said about them.
What's going on here is exactly what the article has said. China is a shoddy business opportunity -- very much unlike the USA. Here, we have 300 million eager consumers, and the government is usually more than willing to let whoever wants to sell whatever they want to try to do so.
China's different. Corporations drool over the nearly 2 billion "consumers," but this is not (yet) a free market economy. And few companies that try to move into China to take advantage of the market ever make money, because the Chinese government is determined to make more money.
This is then made doubly difficult by the fact that in China, the state is religion, and the system is really an imperial system, just like the one Mao supposedly overthrew and every dynasty before it. And in systems like this, success is based solely on who you know. It's not like here in the United States where people value you on your ability to work hard and benefit the company.
People piss on "corporatists" on this board all the time. But that corporate system, with a few exceptions, is what allows immigrants to come to this country with nothing but what they could fit in a pair of suitcases and become the CEOs of their own corporations. It's what allows the children of blue-collar workers the ability to become wealthy and respected white-collar workers. I've met immigrants from China, Vietnam, Egypt, Iran, and all over the place, and they love the fact that in this country, if they work hard, they CAN make a good living.
In China, and most of the rest of the world, you are not valued for the quality of your product or for how hard you work. You're valued for "who you are" -- the son of a famous general, the brother of a diplomat, the cousin of the President.
This is not about Microsoft. This is about China. Only Western arrogance would assume otherwise.
Or haven't you noticed that the more socialist a country is, the less freedom you have?
Socialism does not cause less freedom.
I live in the socialist country of Sweden and I don't know what you're talking about. We have since long been able to visit neighbouring countries without passport or visa. The principle of public access to official records is a constitutional right. The number of prisoners per inhabitant is significantly lower than in the US and we DON'T sentence innocent people to death.
I would like to know what kind of freedom there is more of in the US than in Sweden.