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China to Develop Windows Clone
jimmu writes "According to both The Register and The People's Daily
China is set to develop a windows workalike equivalent to Win 98, with full compatibility with Office 200 and Word. Apparently, 18 companies and universities have been working on the 2 initiatives, with a 1.0 version supposedly already released to certain government offices."
Uhhhh, what's wrong with WINE?
Will they have a red screen of death, or blue?
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They said FUD was bad, so I started spreading DUF.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
this is the most ambitious copyright infringement scheme ever to come out of eastern asia, and that's saying something!
(and by the way, if there were ever a perfect time to use the bill-gates-as-borg icon, it's now.)
go get it
New Scientist is also running a story about this.
If it supports DirectX 8.1a well I might get a copy.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
The real question is: Who do you trust more, the chinese government or microsoft?
with full compatibility with Office 200 and Word
Gotta watch closely those Chinese knockoffs with their names just *SLIGHTLY* off.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I don't know about the rest of the people commenting here, but I think that, if this is true, it's absolutely fantastic. Being a computer technician myself (who is devoted to Win2k when it comes to M$ operating systems), I can't say enough for the power of Windows 98 on low-end client workstations. As the Register article says, give it some halfway-decent memory management and you've got yourself a damn good OS.
I'm interested to see the specifics on this. Will it be free? Will it be horrifyingly illegal? Did they set this seemingly unmeetable goal because a hacker stole Microsoft source code during one of the much-publicized raids on the Super-Secret Code Vaults buried hundreds of miles below the surface of Redmond?
The main reason this interested me so much was what, I believe Bill Gates said about Windows in some interview that I'm too lazy to go look up... Windows isn't about the OS itself, it's about the API... give him the API spec, a handful of programmers and a year and he could recreate it in all it's glory, basically. Looks like someone is actually trying.
"Equivalent functionality" --
A minimalist view would be to merely assemble, say, a general-purpose operating system distribution based on anything free, and then make sure there's a suite of office software (e.g. StarOffice) on it with suitable import and export filters for compatibility with what's coming out from Redmond.
If they're concerned about the dominance of MS Office, then the above makes far more sense than the far more ambitious task of re-implementing Win9X to the point of software (application-level, not just data import/export) compatibility w/ the very product that's bothering them.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Considering the rather cavalier Chinese attitude towards intellecual property, it wouldn't surprise me to find that this 'workalike' actually contains plenty of Microsoft code in one form or another. Alternatively they could be using Linux + Wine with extensions and having no plans of complying with the GPL. Or both.
/. thinks my own karma is 'excellent', I should win the lottery tomorrow...
But even if no I.P. violations are happing at all this is still kind of a 'good for the goose, good for the gander' situation eh? The thought of China 'embracing and extending' Windows?
The really funny thing about this is that Micrsoft has been making nicey-nice with the Peoples Republic lately because all those billions of people ready to buy computers look like such a wonderful market. And besides they were hoping to get China to crack down on all the mainland pirating operations and figured you attract more flies with honey, etc. Either way it tickles me that China has been getting ready to stab Bill Gates in the back all along.
Maybe there really is something to that karmic balance stuff after all. Now, considering that
Jack William Bell
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Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
This thread's parent raises an interesting question of who you trust more.
My immediate first impression was that the Chinese government is undertaking the creation of a new operating system in order to exert more direct control over the spread of information. They already have quite a track record in that department...
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Let me repeat: China is not cloning Win98. All y'all villagers can put those torches and pitchforks away. 'Taint nuthin to see here.
Here's what The People's Daily article had to say (in slightly mangled English):
Now, what is RedFlag, you ask? It appears to be a Chinese distro of Linux. Yup. And CS&S? That's the China National Computer Software and Technology Service Corporation. Rght here. And *who* did they enter into a big agreement with at the end of last year? That'd be Sun, to license StarSuite, as mentioned in this release.
So to sum up:
China: Running StarSuite under Linux.
Register: Jumping the gun.... again.
Slashdot readers: Hates Microsoft.
Whew. Looks like everything's back to normal around here. =)
Chindows!
It suggests that it is Linux and open source and wine...
Only 'flamers' flame!
Listen, China is trying it's hardest to come into the modern age. Let's not insult them by saying they're still in the 200's rather than the 2000's when you say they're going to support Office 200, capice?
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Um, US Courts have no jurisdiction over China. It's a foreign country.
Yes, that's the obvious answer, and yes, the "the US is just big and mean and stupid and thinks it rules the world" opinions expressed in other responses are terribly fashionable. But no, it's not correct, and no, nobody's stupid enough to think that we're going to send the federal marshals to Shanghai.
You can sue foreign governments in United States courts. A cursory search reveals, for example, this case from a few months ago: Stethem v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 201 F.Supp. 2d 78 (D.D.C., 2002).
Put very simply, a party (say, Microsoft, or in the above case a U.S. citizen killed as a result of actions of the defendant nation) can get a judgment, or a court order, against a foreign country.
If it's a monetary judgment, it can be collected from whatever assets the country has in the United States - bank accounts, foreign currency reserves, real estate, whatever. If it's a court order, then, say, Microsoft could get an injunction forbidding the Chinese government (or whatever state-owned enterprise) from distributing "Windows PRC" within the United States.
This happens all the time. It's really not that exciting. Suing China, of course, would be a little pointless - China's not likely to try to undertake any action within the jurisdiction of the US courts - namely, within the United States.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Windows PC clone.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
And besides they were hoping to get China to crack down on all the mainland pirating operations and figured you attract more flies with honey, etc. Either way it tickles me that China has been getting ready to stab Bill Gates in the back all along.
I'd like to expand on that. A popular Chinese business mentality is "get the best deal out of the guy before he can get the best one out of you". It is this mentality that has driven the fast-paced financial world of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Those who can't keep up with the tricks and cunning bartering techniques of Chinese businesspeople and merchants get financially burned in the Chinese markets. "Foreigners" investing in the China that do not know business etiquette also get burned. For example, when Microsoft brought legal action against 3 of the most respected and prosperous computer companies in China (one of them being Legend), public outrage ensued. The public was also angered at Microsoft's pricing policy of setting a standard price for their software worldwide rather than setting the cost according to the local average income of the country which it was selling its products in. Microsoft, in addition to its ruthless pricing policies, happened to be based in Redmond. Seeing Microsoft's "reign of terror" in their computer and software industry, and knowing Microsoft's outsider origins, the Chinese were more than eager to despise Microsoft. They view the corporate juggernaut as a foreign oppressor attempting to humiliate and exploit their population for its "high potential of profits", mirroring the situation of the Opium Wars. For reasons which are rooted in its 5,000 year-old past, many Chinese hate being humiliated by non-Chinese more than being humiliated by their own. The Chinese belief of "keeping one's face" (preventing humiliation of one's pride or paying retribution to the humiliator) combined with MS's business tactics further worsened it's reputation in China. As a result, most Chinese wouldn't care for potential legal problems that may be involved in the creation of their MS-Software-compatible OS, even as their country tries to enter the WTO.
If Cyborg Bill doesn't move fast enough, he'll get burned by a kind of Boxer Rebellion of the digital age--China's push against a foreign company's domination of it's software market utilizing (legal) cost-free alternatives. (A la RedFlagLinuix and development of an MS-Software-compatible OS).
I hear their spell-checker auto-corrects "Republic of China" to "Province of Taiwan".
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Think about this:
Microsoft plans Palladium, essentially hardware-locking our boxes and software-locking the code that runs on it. Capitalist company exerting tight control over consumers.
Chinese government has invested in Linux and open source - even if they won't embrace the GPL. If they keep to standard hardware, then we'll be assured of a cheap source of Linux boxen. Communist government producing "free" (as in freedom) boxen, leaving control in the hands of consumers.
Even if their distro is rife with spyware (who thinks it isn't?) you can simply bleem the box and start fresh.
It would be ironic, no?
God knows there aren't innocents on death row in the US, nor people being detained without indictment or rights to an attorney or for something they simply might do, or for belonging to the wrong group in the US, or unequal justice meted out to the disenfranchised and absolution for the powerful, or people put into prison for 24 years for being in the same car as someone who was carrying drugs while the head of state got a pass for drunk driving and god know what else ... oh, wait a minute, never mind.
Come on, how are they going to control spread of the source developed by 18 universities? It's far more likely that they just don't want billions of dollars to flow out of the country and into the hands of Microsoft. Or make warez an offical policy. I bet students will mostly do the work for free and anyway they'll start on top of Linux and don't have to pay developers even a fraction of US salaries. It's a good idea for any country, even US. I doubt that the number of jobs Microsoft creates justifies all the cash they pocket away.