Slashdot Mirror
Vietnam Going Open Source
An anonymous reader writes "Great article today on SiliconValley.com about Vietnam's solution to software piracy: eliminate Microsoft. Government tech officials are promoting a plan that would require all state-owned companies and government ministries to use open source by 2005. And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."
Hahaha...
Blar.
I love the smell of Linux in the morning. Smells... like victory.
.Net
Lieutenant Torvalds in Apocalypse
...can be found on the AsiaOSC Vietnam page.
There's a interesting presentation linked to from there also.
The Army reading list
This would completely eliminate government agency piracy in Vietnam, so why do I get the feeling the BSA's equivalent in Asia isn't going to be very happy about this?
We had to destroy IIS in order to save us^H^Hit.
You are not the customer.
Ok so we're going all open source, who's next? OSX? OS/2? Maybe a Linux distro because it's too "proprietary?". Frankly freedom of choice, even if it is the MS route really needs to be preserved. Thoughts?
...in bed
It would only make sense!
Before you start asking Vietnam for Linux licesnces, remember they are Communists.
First Post
And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."
Well, that could lose the country some contracts for companies that might want to build facilities there to assemble computers..... As much an advocate I am for open source, this sounds like a bad implementation of law.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
While I think it's good that Vietnam wants to move to open source, I think that forcing computer vendors to ship only open source products is not the way to go.
Open source is supposed to be about freedom and choice. Seems counter productive to me, to force people to use open source. If open source advocates try to encourage this kind of behavior, how are they better than Microsoft?
Vietnam striking first against american intrests...yeah this is gonna end well.
Cuong, Microsoft's Vietnam representative, acknowledges that open source poses a threat to commercial software companies. ``They give away innovation,'' he said.
.. it's like dominos.
Giving away innovation smacks of Communism. We need to invade Vietnam before this "giving away" idea spreads throughout Southeast Asia.
Soon Cambodia may start giving away innovation, and then Japan and Australia will be isolated and they'll fall as well.
My god
Where are Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger when you need them?
Communism has failed.
they are also communist and they see the social linkage of OSS to Socialism.
So since pirating happens all the time with proprietary software, proprietary operating systems = bad.
Behold the power of Tyranny !
Or maybe it does now. The two terms are used interchangeably.
Nation's solution to software piracy: "Eliminate Microsoft"
Surely this will only shift the piracy to open-source applications. Why, by 2005, I'll bet there will be hundreds -- nay, thousands! -- of copies of Redhat and Mandrake circulating around Vietnam for free! And thousands of applications too! The horror!
Sounds like a monopoly.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Fellow slashdoters, I urge you to join the anti-slashdot jihad. Slashdot's editors must pay for all their bullshit. Visit anti-slash.org and help the geek community purify slashdot of the infidels.
Join us in sacred jihad against slashdot's editors. Join anti-s
Why is a regulation like this even necessary? Why not do the traditional thing like evaluate competing solutions on their relative merits (initial software cost being only one of the factors). I could understand requiring all data to be stored by default in an open format, but a single-vendor ban is silly.
I guess the Vietnamese government has it's priorities in order when they "see the light" in adopting open source rather than freeing its own people first.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"A pirated copy of Windows and Office goes for no more than $10"
That's still a weeks pay for the average worker by their figures, Microsoft's greed seems inordinate expecting people to pay $140. Well, they seem to have totally priced themselves out of this market.
it's not like they are making any sort of money with the rampant piracy that goes on in vietnam. I'm not exactly sure which side wins here.
did you forget to take your meds?
Again, Vietnam != America
"And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."
I thought open source products were supposed to create market choices, not eliminate them.
Not necessarily.
You might still have people distributing Open Source Software illegally -- i.e. binary only distributions.
Wouldn't that count as piracy too?
president Tran Duc Luong announced the renaming of all citizen named Nguyen to NGNUYEN. .. ...
6E8C 8721 B3D9 5269 5A9B 1122 00C3 C03D 99A7 1CFC
If the Vietnameese government can't enfore the licensing terms of propritary software, why would they enfore the GPL or any other Open Source license?
The real problem in Vietnam (and most other countries run by communist, oligarchical governments) is that IP laws are treated as optional...something that you vaugely enforce in order to appease trade policy negotiators from 1st world countries. Switching to "Open Source" won't fix that problem.
Fscking commies.
I guess microsoft was right all along.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Yet another commie or socialist country adopting OSS. Hooray!
Does it matter?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Another nice advantage to moving toward Open Source (like Linux, BSD, etc.) is that it works so much better on older equipment, which I'm willing to bet is prevalent in less affluent countries.
At least that used to be the case. I'm still using a 6-year old computer as my home server running Linux. However I do feel like the push to make pretty, advanced GUIs with Gnome and KDE are creating bloat-addiction that requires more powerful machines. Sometimes I think it wouldn't be so bad to go back to the older window managers.
Murray Todd Williams
Only if the source isn't available on request -- it doesn't need to be on the CD.
This is the inevitable result for most Microsoft forays outside the developed world. Add to that Microsoft's problem of having saturating the markets in the developed world and, as a public company, needing to continue an unsustainable double-digit growth rate. Add to this their market extensions into non-computing markets are lack-luster and largely failed. You have to be worried if you own a lot of MSFT stock or if you are overly invest simply due to being an employee.
Love my Panther (he says writing this on WinXP!)
JGSki
Bwhahahahahaha.
I'm surprised they haven't polluted this thread yet.
Right.... All this will do is provoke Microsoft to by Vietnam.
Further proof that Communism == open source
The Vietnamese have installed Open Source software on 4 computers already, leaving only 2 to go.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Why don't announcements like these affect Microsoft's stock price? You'd think that after Germany, China, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam announced their intention to ditch Microsoft products in favor of Linux, the price of MSFT shares would drop.
It is only piracy if the software being copied is software that was written by a dues paying member of the BSA.
I for one, welcome our new Vietnamese Overlords.
Given the following:
a) this move will greatly reduce software piracy, and
b) we all know that Microsoft loses zillions of dollars per year software piracy
Does it follow that Microsoft will be supportive of Vietname moving to Open Source solutions?
Funny situation, because it puts Microsoft between a rock and a hard place - continue losing money in the conventional way (piracy), or lose money in a new way when the few paying customers stop buying MS products altogether. Sweet!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA# Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic.
# Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
# Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
# Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
# Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
At times like this, I realize that we nerds, are not the only ones that hate Microsoft. Many foriegn governments hate them as well. Lets not forget that Microsoft is taking a lot of heat in Europe as well. While I do not think that this is the way to go about implementing open source, I think that Microsoft is getting its just deserts. This will not last long however. It is only a matter of time befor Microsoft buys these governments, just like it bought the US government.
They don't seem to care about stealing from Microsoft. I doubt they will honor the GPL either.
Blar.
i hope you have to live in a communist country someday. I dount think you'd be making jokes like that . come on, if this were a joke about fags, niggas an jews it probably wouldnt be funny on /. would it. Whats funny about the killing fileds?
I'm all for linux but describing open source as if its still 1997 is getting old quick. Huge corporate interests are involved and companies such as IBM, HP and many others have plugged boatloads of developers into coding open source software. You have to wonder where this "silliconvalley.com" lived over the last 5 years....
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
In October 1998, the United States announced a new Executive Order directing U.S. Government agencies to maintain appropriate and effective procedures to ensure legitimate use of software. In addition, USTR was directed to undertake an initiative to work with other governments, particularly those in need of modernizing their software management systems or about which concerns have been expressed, regarding inappropriate government use of illegal software.
The United States has achieved considerable progress under this initiative. Countries that have issued decrees mandating the use of only authorized software by government ministries include Bolivia, China, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Israel, Jordan, Paraguay, Thailand, the U.K., Spain, Peru, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Lebanon, Taiwan and the Philippines. Ambassador Zoellick was pleased that these governments have recognized the importance of setting an example in this area and expects that these decrees will be fully implemented. The United States looks forward to the adoption of similar decrees, with effective and transparent procedures that ensure legitimate use of software, by additional governments in the coming year.
Countries which convert to free software become compliant. The alternatives are converting to free software, paying millions (sometimes billions) to Microsoft, or facing trade sanctions by the US. That makes free software look really good.
The whole Special 301 process may thus backfire against commercial software vendors. Microsoft is going to have a fit over this.
I think one point that is often overlooked in the crusade of eliminating Microsoft from the software landspace (very unlikely, but still worth the thought) is the impact it will have on the US software industry (global perhaps??).
Just blink for a second Microsoft filing chapter 11 tomorrow. How many people will lose their jobs? System integrators? Partners? Businesses that rely on them for support? Home users of ma and pa homes? They have build a co-dependent ecosystems that kept the sofware business afloat in these past couple of years of economic hardship.
Just worth a thought to think a world of tomorrow without Mr Gates.
From the Article:
I wonder if Microsoft brings makes more than 40-50 million a year profit in Vietnam? If not, this new policy could save them money! :)
Losing business?
Maybe in America but certainly not in China! They just adjusting to the needs of markets that are more important (and closer) than the US.
I know it's hard to understand that the world doesn't turn around America, if you life in America.
What happens when there is no open source alternative? I'm thinking about vertical market software used by state run companies like oil/gas companies and the state run Vietnam Airlines? In these cases, they need specialized, very vertical market software where there isn't a viable open source alternative. What do they do?
I don't know how I feel about this... Yeah, sure it's an interesting thought... I dunno..
As much as I love Linux, and all of the BSDs... there's a legitimate reason why people use Windows.... UNIX can be an intimidating thing for a new user.... When will people learn that Joe User has no intention of reading a manual, or documentation.. They want to pick up and go... Linux just isn't to that point yet... maybe in a few years...
As far as government agencies being switched to Linux - I applaud the notion.... I just don't see this proposition fixing the Windows piracy problem... Users will continue to pirate that damn OS until it's either cheap enough for them to afford, or there is a viable alternative (in their minds)...
----- Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious. - Paul Valery
You don't have to cut out MS to get rid of Windows; you just have to give competitors a fair chance, and let "natural selection" run its course.
But of course, since OSS is generally better, something like this just accelerates the inevitable.
In other words, Windows and Office costs a third of your annual income. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis the per capital annual income of the US in 2002 was $30,832.
Therefore, Windows and Office would cost you a staggering $10,277. It is not surprising that piracy is rampant!
Also assuming Thailand has the same per capital annual income as Vietnam, then even when Microsoft reduced the price down to $40 it still would cost slightly a nasty $3,083 in the US.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
"Me love you long time."
(Mod me -1 Troll!)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
How can eliminating choice be a good thing? Everyone always complains about MS being a monopoly and how limiting it is to only have a single choice when you buy a computer. Does that complaint somehow become invalid when the choice is an open source product? This doesn't stop piracy by the way, the chinese can still install a pirated version of windows on their machine after purchasing it.
Linux is the premier OSS product as far as most of the world is concerned.
It's like Coke being just another carbonated gut-rot drink, one of many, but many people generically refer to all pop as "Coke".
And for the GNU/Linux fans, sorry. Just be proud that GNU is the secret sauce of Linux. But don't expect Joe Sixpack to refer to _the operating system_ as GNU/Linux.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I know it's hard to understand that the world doesn't turn around America, if you life in America.
No, but the IT industry just might. <grin>
MSFT does not lose any money due to software piracy.
True, they may not make as much money as they wanted, but they have not lost any.
Use correct language when putting your thoughts to 'blog!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Open Source will change the balance of power in the information age between the industrial first world nations towards the poorer third-world.
As more industrial and post-industrial nations put patent and copyright restrictions on software (or, as the case in the USA with SCO vs. Linux, try to make open-source illegal altogether), development will shift to areas of the world where the amount gained by bringing in the open-source software industry is greater than the amount lost to entrenched software companies.
In the long-run fifty year period, efforts by the first-world to restrict dissemination of information by means of the Internet will backfire as the new on-line libraries of data shift to distant locations that are less affected by the legal means used by monopoly media corporations to shut them down. As the libraries shift, so will the technical expertise migrate to the third-world. And, as the technical expertise of the information age moves away from the software cops of the media monopolies, so with the creative community that is now locked to the media corporations.
In the long run, the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and other enforcement arms of the first-world media monopolies will destroy the very media conglomerates that they are trying to protect.
if you live in a communist country ?
Can you truly be happy about the Freedom to examine the source on your computer, when if you use that computer to question Marx you get sent to a prison camp ?
But let's destroy all of them to get at Microsoft. Small price to pay, right?
They need to the the piracy rate down so they can meet previously-agreed WTO and WIPO limits. They are having lots of trouble stopping piracy because of (I guess) cultural reasons, the population simply don't recognize "piracy" as being wrong. Mandating OSS is percieved as the only realistic way of achieving the desired reduction in piracy.
Kinda ironic really, that the WIPO are basically forcing OSS onto them :-)
The U.S. could take a cue from this and eliminate social security payments by terminating the elderly.
Next, we could reduce air pollution by 99% by destroying all the cars and walking everywhere!
Progress!!
This is one of the coolest stories I've read to date. While I don't like that open source and free software are being forced on the citizenry, I adore the fact that it's provided a real way to empower folks who might not otherwise be able to afford to run PCs once the piracy crackdown begins.
Oh yes, and all the Vietnamese sweatshop workers that make $2 a day will most likly object to this. God knows, we Westerners deserve cheap electronics on the backs of people that work in factories with little or no health and safty rules. Wonder what the cancer rate of these workers that build your fancy game boxes are?
This Open Source thing is a good thing. More countries need to do this.
My Karma is bad. May I take you out for a drink? It's on me...
It will/should reduce piracy, enforce the notion opensource applications and operating systems are viable MS replacements on servers and on desktops.
One thing concerns me though.
I'm just worried that the situation will move from one form of infringement to the next.
I mean, what if GPL isn't respected? Will the Vietnamese government act? If they couldn't control the piracy in the first place, doesn't that raise any doubt with their ability to uphold the GPL?
Or, will Vietnam abandon GPL'd software for "truly free" (bsd-style licensed) software later on?
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
If you overvalue possessions,
people will begin to steal.
from the Tao, Chapter 3
Since according to the article, Windows costs $140 on average there, and the average annual income of people in Vietnam is $420, I think it should be clear why they're not paying for it.
MS could have prevented this in the first place had it adjusted prices accordingly for different countries. If it were $25 or even $50, the piracy rate could be controlled better. But the Vietnam govt knows it has NO chance of reducing piracy when its people just cannot pay the price.
So the pragmatic solution is to mandate an alternative (one that has very low cost in this case). Sorry to the Liberitarians, but some government mandates/regulations are good for people.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Sure, it's only Vietnam. But it's the beginning. As I said elsewhere, if you know people are going to copy software, you might as well make sure that they aren't going to be doing so illegally.
It's a laugh to see the Microsoft fanboys bleating about "freedom of choice" being compromised. The words "dose of one's own medicine" spring to mind. After years of not being able to buy a laptop without Windows pre-installed, now the tide is going to turn. The components used in the construction of this computer have been carefully selected to work well with Linux; but nobody is stopping anyone from wiping the pre-installed Linux and installing another operating system of their own choosing. Provided they are duly authorised to do so, of course.
Microsoft should be freaking grateful that Vietnam didn't simply make software non-copyrightable, which would equally have the effect of stopping the illegal copying of software.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
~~~
It is an alternate history of the world from about 1200 to way into the third millenium. The premise is that the medevial plague wipes out ALL of europe and the (amerindian) new world and east asia duke it out. Sorta.
All this stuff happening hints to me of Asia Ascendent: The china space launch, Vietnam switching over to a software economy totally independant of the west, (can't think of more examples).
Anyhoo, sometimes it seems like the west is falling behind, and the book may come true.
-- ac at work
I DON'T GET THE JOKE...
.sigs are for post^Hers.
But Microsoft products are everywhere in Vietnam, and very few shell out the money for licensed copies. Almost 97 percent of the programs used in Vietnam have been illegally copied, costing Microsoft an estimated $40 million to $50 million a year.
It's not costing Microsoft jack, because that $40-50 million never existed. If you could have never had the money in the first place, then it's not costing you anything.
The global war between the richest entity in the world and an invisible, omnipresent network of loosely affiliated die-hard extremists who live off untraceable sources of funding, wage a near-religious war, and threaten to topple a hegemony that has ruled for twenty years.
Yes, it's the Talinux and Osama Gnu Laden, striking fear into the hearts of Microsoft dealers and agents everywhere.
Seriously, how many such battles can Microsoft wage at once? OK to send the shock troopers to Munchen, to Costa Rica, but it's starting to become a conflaguration.
Laugh, but I predict the last stronghold of Windows will be the US, while in a few years only the rest of the world will have gratefully converted to Linux and FOSS and forgotten the dark ages of 'software license fees'.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Charlie dont do windows?
I can see it now : Commie Linux 1.8, a free OS for the non-free world.
I used to be a MS fan but then I was brainwashed. Now I see the Light. Mac OS X pwns u.
They have to bring down a 97% priracy rate and windows is more than 1/4 of the per capita annual income. Obviously, these vendors haven't been loading "legit" copies of windows and the easiest and fastest way to get them to stop is to require them to preinstall Open Source software.
I believe in freedom as much as the next guy, but if it was my responsibility to bring down piracy so that my country could join the WTO, I can't say I wouldn't be as drastic. Choice is great, but without access to the international financial community, development of infrastructure can take a 100 times more time.
Maybe this is necessary if the Vietnamese want to see things change for the better within their lifetimes.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
how is this any better than a government forcing only microsoft products for their systems and all systems assembled in their country? i thought oss was about freedom of choice, not forcing something only when its good for your point of view.
Exactly, this is indentical to the RIAA/MPAA's cries of "piracy is costing us $$$$xxxxx a year!!!!!!" which is based on the assumption that those people that pirated were ever going to pay in the first place which they weren't. No money lost, just perceived losses.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
>> The real problem in Vietnam (and most other countries run by communist, oligarchical governments) is that IP laws are treated as optional...
This isn't a communist thing. It's a developing country thing.
Back in the late 1700s/early 1800s, the United States had very little protection for foreign intellectual property. In fact, we actively encouraged inventors to rip off English IP in order to jump-start manufacturing in the U.S. From the American point of view, this made perfect sense at the time; we were a net importer, not exporter, of ideas. It wasn't until the U.S. became a net exporter of intellectual property that we decided to push so hard for the rest of the world to play along. From a historical perspective, our strong backing of WIPO and fanatical enforcement of international IP law is only hypocrisy.
remember: opensource != free software.
This may push microsoft to open its source, but it'll still cost several grand for its products.
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
So if I am understanding you correctly, then a market-driven Microsoft monopoly is a bad, horrible, unethical thing but a government-mandated Unix monopoly is a good thing?
Yay Slashdot logic.
jack's bicycle is music to my ears
Man wake up. I'm Irish, why should I care, but America has a massive trade deficit with china at the moment i.e. "Its fine for Americans to buy our stuff but theres no way we're buying there's..." Your economy can't sustain this discrimination - its trade in its lowest ugliest form, AND Now it's happening in Vietnam too.! It has nothing to do with open source - it has everything to do with Greedy, DIRTY dictatorships i.e: China and Vietnam et. al. playing unfairly with the rules of trade, While democatic, poor countries suffer. They make me physically sick. I think it's time for a global trade embargo against countries like China and Vietnam before this situation gets completely out of control. Don't get me wrong. - I am no friend of M$ and there needless waffle applications but this is too much.
Microsoft doesn't actually lose all this money. They just never get it. These people in vietnam aren't going to pay for real versions of microsoft. Why would they? Their government doesn't enforce the laws so it's pointless.
And the only reason vietnam and these other countries are doing this is to get themselves into the wto and other trading programs. Don't confuse this switch to open source as a country trying to embrace this magically free software idea. This is simply to seem like they're acting legitimately in front of the rest of the world.
The reason that this doesn't make much of a difference to microsoft is that how much money were they really getting from vietnam to begin with? They took in billions in revenue last year and maybe 50 million or so "lost" in piracy to vietnam is a drop in the bucket.
These third world countries aren't switching to open source because they want to, it's because it's the only way they can save money and maintain their status. Once vietnam gets into the wto, they'll probably end up making a lot of money through trade, so that's how they'll benefit most.
A good thing (the introduction of open source software) is happening.
I hope that the decision making process that led to the decision was deliberate, fair and considered all of the options carefully.
Because I am uncomfortable with executive fiats whether they are issued by the government of Vietnam for open source or whether they are issued by a local government's IT management for single-sourcing wholescale parts of their business to Microsoft.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
... the Net.
Or so I was told.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If the per capita income is that low but piracy is apparently insanely out of control, wouldn't that imply there are a LOT of computer users there? How do they afford machines to run Windows on if they make so little?
What kind of hardware is available/common in that part of Asia?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
"Urban ledgend" warning!
It was more of a paraphrase than a real quote. The journalist wouldn't identify who had said it.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I sometimes wonder if a decree was issued by the United Nations "Requiring" all citizens, companies and governments of every country to run open source software - would that be considered a "win" by the OSS community or not?
If your technology gains market share via dictate then I feel it is a slap in your product's face. There are simply too many ways that "dictate" can arise by subversive means such as bribes, kickbacks, the "dictator's" portfolio, etc. The secret lies in user choice, however stupid or uninformed the user may be. Acceptance at that point requires (novel thought here) educating and informing the consumer - and of course, having a product that withstands educated consumer scrutiny (i.e. doesn't suck).
The kind of crap in this article should be viewed as a pyhrric victory at best - in fact - I don't think it should be viewed as a victory at all.
It's shameful - Open Source is better than this...
Thank you. Thank you. The recovery partition is high on my list of worst ideas ever. You can't do any real recovery with it. Who gets the blame for those, anyway? Microsoft or (the former) Compaq?
~==>RocketSHE
Viet Cong operatives have begun digging underground tunnels toward the Redmond, Washington campus.
Once having eliminated Microsoft, the guerillas will continue digging toward Utah, where they will "annihilate" SCO.
From the office of: Dr.Peter Aka(C.B.N) :(cbn_updatektt@post.com)
:
Private EMAIL
Personal Number:234 80 33007631.
ATTN:BENEFICIARY CONTRACTOR
NOTE: THE INFORMATION IN THIS MESSAGE AND IN ANY ATTACHMENTS, CONTAINS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION AND IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR THE ATTENTION AND USE OF THE NAMED ADDRESSEE (S). IT MUST NOT BE DISCLOSED TO ANY PERSON(S) WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION. IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, OR A PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR DELIVERING IT TO THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO AND MUST NOT, DISCLOSE, COPY,DISTRIBUTE, OR RETAIN THIS MESSAGE OR ANY PART OF IT.
RE: UNPAID CONTRACT SUM
After waiting to hear from you or your Nigeria partners for a long time now, I decided to make this direct approach to you in other not to let it be as if I have anything in mind against you. I do not know if you have asked yourself why each time the release of these fund is approved, all of a sudden, the payment will be stopped or one problem or the other will come up. If you have not asked this question or you do not know, this is an opportunity for me to tell you.
Some time ago, your Nigerian friend I mean the people that introduced you to the project approached me through my dear Wife who works with the federal Ministry of Finance and requested me to assist them conclude a money transfer deal they had with you, they requested me to assist them by removing the original contractors name, companys name and bank particulars from Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) vetting computer and replacing them with your name and your bank details in order to make you appear as the rightful beneficiary of this funds. I agreed on condition that they will pay me $100,000 as soon as your name appears as the beneficiary.I did as agreed and demanded to be paid but your friends started telling me stories. They even told me that you promise to send money to me. Do you know that up till now, I have not received a single cent from them and have not set my eyes on any of them.
Based on their attitude, I decided to stop the funds release movement because I cannot be denied of my right in my own office considering the risk as it might affect my job. Secondly, I know the source of the funds and you did not execute any contract in
Nigeria, although I am the only person privileged to know this information and it is a fact. Why I am making this clear to you is that I can see that you are still making efforts spending money in order to conclude this project. Now I am ready to forget the past, I do not need the $100,000 any longer from you but a share of 25% of the total sum. I need your assurance that those your colleagues will be totally keep out of this transaction, I know that none of them is aware of this transaction after trying their best to conclude it without my consent.
Finally, I need your promise that no official of the
Central bank of Nigeria will be aware of my involvement in this regard. Now re-assure me that you will be willing to offer me the 25% of the fund, that you will assist my wife and personal assistant to establish a foreign account in your country where my share will be lodged.
If you are ready to conclude this business with me, you can contact me immediately on (EMAIL:(cbn_updatektt@post.com).
so that we can have chat over this issue once and for all so that we can move forward. But if the reverse is the case, do not bother yourself to reach me.
Regards, DR. Peter Aka
DIRECTOR (K.T.T UNIT) C.B.N.
Don't compare the average of what people make in both contries than figure out the proportion. Take the incomes of all the people who own computers in both countries and do that. Then you'll realize the numbers are quite different. Why? Because most of the people in places like vietnam make almost nothing. But there are a few rich people who make a lot of money. Those are the people who own computers and who are potential customers for microsoft. In this country where possibly more than half (not sure exactly, but we'll assume for now) own computers and pay for at least windows can afford it because our standard of living is much higher.
You can use statistics to prove anything. But most of the time people just prove themselves wrong.
If I keep hering stories about this I will start to support SCO
If you're liberal with tunnel vision in this country that's a great idea. Pass it on
Here is a more likely reason for the plan: Viet Nam is a Communist country people! There NOT a SINGLE western Fast Food franchises to be found in that country. Taco Bell was the last to give it a shot; After finally getting past all the red tape, they went out of business due to general lack of interest. Nobody wanted to spend their dong there. Even Coca-Cola has had many problems pushing their products to the people since the 1996 lift of the US trade embargo...
To say that this is a way to eliminate software piracy is trash... It would take more than that to stop every street vendor from selling copies of any software package or DVD you want. It costs them less than pennies to burn and they sell them to locals for a buck or to backpackers for a five. It has little to do with Piracy and more to do with eliminating the dependency on capitalistic entities.
(Not to sound like a conspiracy fanatic though...)
Goverment is eliminating the choice to do wrong... leading to the complete assimilation of mankind except for a select few who navigate the remains of our world, only to be lead by Keaneu Reeves... OSS Reloaded!!
Blame it on ElGeeko De Generico [generic geek]
My brothers; join us in sacred jihad against slashdot. The time has finally come.
Join us in sacred jihad against slashdot's editors. Join anti-s
Not.
...but they're most certainly aware that, if someone wasn't going to pay for software in the first place, they're better off if that person is running pirated Microsoft software than Linux. Because the more market penetration Linux has, the less reason there is for other people to buy Windows. So while Microsoft's estimated losses will plummet under this new plan, its real losses will rise. Funny how that works.
With extremely little extra cost, you'd get a fully working computer without Microsoft tax. If you then choose to go Microsoft, you can wipe the previous installation.
The default will be open, not closed, as it is now.
Communist to order this. Does no one see that?
Under the guise of just saving money they are shifting to Open Source. Someday, down the road, we will find we just cannot compete with them. They will be creating new software, doing useful things with old software and generally making their lives better.
While we will be downloading and installing the latest Microsoft security patches, reading spam-mail from thousands of co-opted Windows machines and trying to get the latest virus/trojan uninstalled.
Damn them!
There is one small difference in the way English and (spanish/portuges) conquered new lands.
England decided they were tu cute and just killed most natives and put the rest in "reservations". Then they got some good Black slaves for them.
On the other side of the history Spain and Portugal. Slaved the native population and with time mixed blod with them.
If you can't see the difference; letme enlight you:
WE peple with NATIVE AMERICAN (i mean continent) are a live and kiking.
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
WooHoo! I just made $80K just now by choosing not to buy a Lexus!
As other countries begin to ramp up technology, they will invariably decide they don't want to pay a foriegn country and foriegn business a ton of money. People on /. already gripe about work going off shore. Other countries choosing to keep the money locally is a natural behavior, so get over it. It has very little to do with hate for microsoft and everything to do with. I want to keep my money in my community and not give it to some other country.
In this case, however, that would more accurately read "But by default you are forcing people to look at a new system, which also happens to be free."
The grandparent post is 100% dead on. How can you call anything that is forced upon someone "free"? I thought the OSS community was above that sort of nonsense. Oh wait, this is Slashdot.
And no, "because Microsoft does it too" is not an excuse. If anything, that should be every reason why NOT to force open source upon anyone!
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
"Microsoft Windows and Office cost at least $140 in Vietnam -- way out of reach for most people, where the per capita annual income is roughly $420."
In a country where the general population simply can't afford Microsoft licenses open source is a sound solution. Especially considering the anti-piracy agreements made between the US and Vietnam. They have to do something or face consequences.
I found this interesting:
" But Microsoft products are everywhere in Vietnam, and very few shell out the money for licensed copies. Almost 97 percent of the programs used in Vietnam have been illegally copied, costing Microsoft an estimated $40 million to $50 million a year."
Given that the per capita annual income is roughly $420 there is no way that the piracy is costing Microsoft anywhere near $50 million a year. This is the same kind of logic that the music industry uses to try to justify and push through draconian laws.
A company only takes a loss when they actually lose a sale not every time someone pirates their product.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Is there a website with a map showing which countries in the world that are going open source?
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them.
It doesn't actually say only open source products. It may be possible to ship, for example, a Windows box with the Gimp installed (a la the GNUWin II project?). The only way to know for sure would be to examine the actual Vietnamese plan, though.
I was amused by the form letter I got the other day from them with a website to report infringment. A) We just spent a ton of money keeping up on licenses and b) Our datacenter is mostly Linux.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I've seen a few comments to this effect. No, there is no guarantee that the government of Vietnam will enforce the GPL. But, we don't even know if the US Government will enforce it either... However, the fact that this step is being taken to reduce software piracy is a positive indicator. Why would they reduce one exposure just to replace it with another. On the other hand, the GPL is a pretty subversive document to be circulating among your intelligentsia for a totalitarian regime... Just have to wait and see...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Gooood Morning Deb-I-an!
My rights don't need management.
My wife is from Vietnam, and regales me from time to time with the unfair practices of the government there. So SCO should fit right in.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You can code, or you can surf!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
A brutal communist tyranny that forces business to use the product that the government has determined is the best! And everyone on Slashdot thinks it's great!
You people would cheer if al-Qaida announced it was going open source.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
So I guess this is a weird form of foreign aid?
I pay top dollar for Microsoft products, to support their continued development for all users, legitimate and otherwise?
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Yes but we're not talking about imperialism are we.
Hypothetical case study:
How would you feel if you set up a very small company and it has only one market - Mordor.
Mordor has decided it wants to embrace unfairness by not allowing you to export to Mordor.
You are pissed off because you have been f***ed over.
It has nothing to do with open source. It's about law and order - which apparently doesn't count for much in places like Vietnam,
and
I'm not surprised.
Makey Makey 5 dolla!!!!
Me grub you long time!
Get paid to code OSS
Social Government (Communist Manifesto) uses Socialist Software (GNU Manifesto)!!!!
Yes, but in Vietnam the company's name is SCOmmunists.
Introducing the newest linux distro: Charlie. Certified Software for Pinkos.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I think the whole idea is to shut up the US trade officials bitching about *quote* theft of intellectual property *unquote*. I.e. failure to genuflect to RIAA, MPAA and of course the "Lord Of All Things", Bill G. A probably over simplistic notion that if there's no copyrighted stuff to steal, nobody CAN steal it. Of course with a mob of chaos's finest like /. someone would probably create something and copyright it just so the rest of us could steal it, but that's a different matter.
Your response, is noted, and appreciated. Your intentions, good. I've never beed to Vietnam, but I do of course know, it has opened up to (particulsr) foreign markets, but my point is really very simple. If a Vietnamese company was forbidden to sell it's goods to the U.S, there would be an outcry "..America still has a grudge against poor Vietnam.." Of course this would be wrong, you can't just change the rules for every country. Thats called lawlessness!. Also, you failed to mention the tragic lack of freedoms people in Vietnam have, for example, Vietnamese are now forced to reside permanently in the particular region they are born, eg. if you have the misfortune of being born in Utah, you cannot leave! Lets not go there, my argument is a bout equitable trade. I cant believe you made the obvious mistake of picking brand names like Harley. Is it OK to buy harleys but not to buy M$? I hope you save your energy to be impartial and non biased instead of typing a reply to this post. Thanks for your opinion.
I stopped reading the article after choking on this quote:
"Almost 97 percent of the programs used in Vietnam have been illegally copied, costing Microsoft an estimated $40 million to $50 million a year."
I doubt many, if any, of these people would pay such a large portion of their annual income for this software. Microsoft would never get this money, they should at least appreciate the exposure. After all, Microsoft is 90% marketing and 10% functionality...
Ahh, random statistics make me feel so impotent... er, um make that important!
I do think pushing for the Uruguay round and the birth of WTO and TRIPS was just one of the grand mistakes the US corporations in their greed got their government to make. Nothing but greed over some lost revenue (revenue that was lost anyways with or without any WTOs and/or trade ``agreements") was the cause for forcing third world countries into bad deals. No wonder they are jumping the FLOSS wagon.
- Voice of Ambience -
- Voice of Ambience -
Many US and state government agencies, schools etc require ONLY Windows for their networks? How is that any different?
/. that would intonate Open Source proliferation by any means necessary, sort of an "end justifies the means" platform.
It isn't different and it should be changed - a worthy goal indeed. My only point is that changing the rules and forcing these same institutions to install OSS is no better than the current situation - the choice never appeared - only a change in regime.
My question (more a rhetorical musing I suppose) was where the OSS community took a stance in that regard. There are some postings here on
We must realize that *WE* find the OSS model superior to closed source alternatives but in the long run consumer acceptance must ultimately decide market share.
Anything else is simply replacing one oppressive solution with another and in the end we (and the consumer) are no better off than when we started.
What an excellently concise way to put it... I wonder if this will make anyone understand how piracy benefits certain companies (it increases reliance on and familiarization with the product, and still allows for legal action against the people that do it).
For what it's worth, if I had mod points today, they'd be yours.
Actually, that was the Dutch. Sailors/explorers from th Netherlands (back in thir sea-faring days) settled in South Africa. They didn't kill them on purpose. They brought pigs in there ships for farming the new land and the pigs steppedon and crushed the eggs....awkward pigs.. Yes, another proud day for Europe. How depressing : (
I'm embarrased that my government, arguably the world's greatest proponent of free trade and the WTO...
I'm sorry, but you've bought into the propoganda of the US and the WTO. "Free trade" has never been anything but a weasel word along the lines of "bipartisanship." What the person who says it really means is that they want things to go their way, and they want a nice word to demonize their opponents who don't knuckle under to their demands. The WTO basically exists to ensure the continued dominance of the Western world over the rest of the planet. Just look on their increasing emphasis on intellectual property laws which only benefit rich countries like America, Japan, and the European nations at the expense of Africa and South America. Particularly, look at the WTO's opinions on medical patents and patents on genetically engineered organisms. The only honest areas for debate in the WTO are when the G8 countries disagree over something, like Europe's refusal to accept GM food, Japan's rice tariffs, and America's steel tariffs.
The WTO is nothing but an undemocratic avenue for the industrialized world's major business interests to foist treaties on us that must be turned into laws like the DMCA or the EUCD.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Didn't Japan say it was going to use Tron in all its school computers some time ago? And didn't Microsoft bring down the Hand of God (and the heavy hand of American supremacy) and make sure that didn't happen?
I don't see this actually happening. Strings will be pulled, trade penalties will be threatened, and Microsoft will stay at that 95% mark.
Foster's sold in the U.S. is "imported" from Canada...
Trinity is impaled in a crash landing on the way to the Machine City.
The Matrix continues existing.
The last scene is a sunset being watched by Sati, the Oracle, and the Architect. Sati says, "I made it for him."
Sorry to spoil it.
No kidding! I think that NEO IS TAKEN OVER BY AGENT SMITH, AND ALL THE SMITH CLONES BLOW UP. NEO IS UNPLUGGED BY THE MACHINES AND DIES.
Trinity is impaled in a crash-landing on the way to the Machine City.
The Matrix continues existing.
Sorry to spoil it.
Yes, a good beer, but you have not tasted guiness until you have tasted it in Ireland. I was in Chicago a few years back and the guiness was :/ : ( .. disappointing
In Ireland it really is better, don't know why.
If you ever do come to this country (leaving your political hat home of course)
I recomment a pub called the Porterhouse in Dublin for foreigners, or just go to virtually any pub in Galway ;)
If a Vietnamese company was forbidden to sell it's goods to the U.S, there would be an outcry "..America still has a grudge against poor Vietnam.."
Unless, of course, it is Catfish.
All well and good, except no such a contract is going to be offered to Vietnan in the forseeable future. Vietnan is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Guess what, no high technology company is going to build a factory in a country without infra-structure, a somewhat educated population and good finnancial and banking facilities.
The only thing they lose is the pleasure of paying royalties to Microsoft and their ilk.
Once again, Linux can only succeed when the adoption of it is forced at gunpoint by a tyranical Communist dictatorship. And once again the /. crowd applauds the despot and sings their praises.
Hey you zealots: if the only way you can get widespread adoption of your product is by threatening the life of your unfortunate victims, then your product sucks. It speaks volumes when one Communist dictatorship after another forces their people to use your software. And each time, it provides further proof that the funding and support for your pathetic little OS is marked with sickle and hammers. Gee, maybe you can corner the market on Muslim extremist next. Don't want to leave out any violently pathological losers, do you?
Never eaten it
Here in Brazil I can buy any Windows version for less than $3, tops. And this is Brazil, Vietnan's territory can easily fit in the state I live (which is not one of the large states - in the large ones you could easily fit all of Western Europe) and our economy ten or twenty orders of magnitude larger than theirs. I would imagine in Nan the price for M$ products would be just a little above the blank CD price, something near $1.
Please not a trade embargo.. But they are saying exactly that. If you read the article, the quotation refers to "eliminating microsoft" - those are the words the particular vietnamese official used. What would you call it. I would say thats a pretty BIG "Fuck the US"
Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it.
billg
Oh no they loose bigtime, the publicity is worth 10 times that figure. It they jump on OSS MS looses closer to a billion just because of the "hey look they did it publicity."
Got Code?
I am a Viet Kieu (foreign VN- American VN) and I worked as consultant for many IT sweatshops in Saigon. They will not contribute anything back... Just steal code and use as their own. I know this for a fact. They will take off copyright and resell code as their own. I worked for over a dozen companies in Distrct 1 in Ho Chi Minh city and in Hanoi.
VN will stifle innovations. They will take open source, close it up as their own and will not contribute anything back. They don't care about the GPL.
The government is known to renege on contracts over and over again.. Look at how many investors pulled out of Saigon after building contracts were reneged halfway through with bribery and corruption.
We've had contracts torn up by officials who didn't get bribes. They close deals with foreigners w/ prostitutes. At the airport, FPT (the son of one of the big communist bosses) will pick up a Tawianese or Korean investor and shower them with prostitutes. How can you compete with that? If you try, you'll go to jail for spreading "social ills" but they get along just fine.
They also steal your ideas.. The guy who closed a deal with Motorola is now in Jail. After establishing a healthy market, one of the big Communist bosses wanted his son to have a industry so he jailed the Viet Kieu and now his son run the entire telecom business years after they other guy built it up. They'll let you take the risk and then reap the rewards with some bullshit crime... I tried to open a bight club in Saigon and had to deal with the crap once you start making money; paying extortion and other taxes.
The have no idea about freedom of speech and intellectual property. Go to a VN net cafe and try to download a GIF of the former South Vietnam flag (yellow amd thre stripes) and you will be thrown in prison. Publish any works by any pro-democratic Vietnamese intellectual and expect to be shipped off to an island with heroin addicts.
In any other market, unchecked piracy would be called "market dumping"
First, after 30 years of communism, Vietnam is quite an equalitarian country. And a very, very poor one. You can't begin to imagine how poor. Let us say the average American dog probably eat, sleeps and lives better than the average Vietnamese middle class person.
Now, in such a poor country, paying Microsoft for however many Windows licenses the country needs is too much regardless of the number of licenses we are talking about. It does not matter you are filthy rich and make US$ 5000,00 a year, buying foreign software contribute to the national debt and to make the country even poorer.
Umm, don't look now, but that was indeed one of my points: they are not quite outright banning the sale of VNese catfish, but banning the use of the word "atfish in connection with the product has hurt their sales a lot. I hope I'm not wrong in assuming you read the article, but perhaps you noticed that nowhere in there does the government of Viet Nam say they are forbidding MS to sell its products. Indeed, under the trade agreement, they may not do so. They are, however, promoting open source software, both for its own benefits and because it's the only realistic way to curb piracy. MS will get the reduced piracy they want, just not in quite the way they want it.
Speaking of lawlessness, the United States does indeed try to have different rules for different countries, such that it gets an advantage over them in trade, and WTO agreements be damned. The rules they make, without regard to the WTO, may not be different for every country, but the application of them certainly tends to be so.
Tragic lack of freedom? Generally speaking, the only lack of freedom people have in VN is freedom to oppose the government, or more precisely, to oppose the form and philosophy of the system of government. People have freedom of religion, reasonable freedom of speech on non-political matters, they can start businesses and become wealthy if they are succcessful, they have freedom of travel, and despite what you seem to have been told, they are not required to always live in the region where they were born. That doesn't mean they can move anywhere -for example, getting a residence permit to move to already overcrowded Ho Chi Minh City would be very difficult, I should think - but it doesn't mean they can't go somewhere. It should also be noted that there is good reason to restrict migration to HCMC and Ha Noi, apart from overcrowding. Viet Nam is still mostly an agricultural country, and they quite simply need people to stay on the farm or that part of the economy will be devastated. I know you didn't want to there on this point, but since you raised it - seemingly because your original argument holds no water at all - I felt it necessary to go there anyway, because your claim contained such misinformation and disinformation. I know many people in Viet Nam with whom I can speak frankly. None of them are ideologically communists, and only one is a member of the party, and that membership is for mostly economic reasons and because his father is a party member, so he is kind of expected to also be one. It helps him to get better jobs in much the same way that being a Mason helps people do better in business in some places.
How can you accuse me of impartiality when it is you who is railing - while ignorant of the facts of the matter - against the governments of China and Viet Nam, when they generally follow international trade laws better than the United States does. Hmmm, maybe you didn't RTFA after all?
i hope you have to live in a communist country someday. I dount think you'd be making jokes like that afterwards. That "idea" did spread and people were slaughtered. Come on, if this were a joke about niggas an jews it probably wouldnt be funny on /. would it? Whats funny about the killing fields? There's nothing funny about the holocaust and there's nothing funny about millions of people being worked to death by communists. BTW i bet alot of /. people would fall in the category of being able to read or wering glasses, they were one of the prime targets of the killing fields.
And yes i posted the AC comment that also looks like this, forgtot to log in
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Why was this modded flamebait?
In fact, the GPL has a lot in common with the socialist economical model. Everybody is free to use what they need, and to contribute what they can.
Exactly the fundamental principles of Socialism.
History proved them to fail for a country's economy, but so far they're doing great for a software development model (or what should I call it?)
"Hell hath no fury like a hippo with a machine gun."
When I saw "Idiot" and "Howard" in the same sentence, I immediately thought of Michael Howard
Sorry...
I think you underestimate the hyprocracy of the US. We advocate free trade, but we often change the rules to suit our political needs. So there is indeed "Lawlessness", but it is not by the Vietnamese. Consider the aluminium cartel we set up to protect Alcoa from Russian dumping. Consider the subsidies we offer farmers - allowing them to undercut the desperately poor of the third world that wish to sell agricultural goods in a global market. There are may examples of this that have been documented by the 2001 Nobel laureate in economics who once worked for the World Bank. See
Globalization and Its Discontents by by Joseph E. Stiglitz.
Think global, act loco
Just because you switch to open source, it doesn't mean you switch to free software. There is plenty of open source that needs to be licensed for commercial or government use.
It also depends if the govt is willing to absolve open source authors of all liability. I doubt VN govt is ready to do that. If i were to be held liable for my free software breaking in VN, I would very well put a licensing clause that it may not be used in VN.
Nothing good can come from government mandates, especially in a country which still has a communist mentality at the higher levels.
I suppose VietNam will be, literally and figuratively, Microsoft's "VietNam." ;) God, the irony.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Can't wait till 2005
Surely this will only shift the piracy to open-source applications. Why, by 2005, I'll bet there will be hundreds -- nay, thousands! -- of copies of Redhat and Mandrake circulating around Vietnam for free! And thousands of applications too! The horror!
I understand this is a joke, but piracy in the Open-source world will manifest itself in GPL violations. If users outside the US are OK with duplicating copyrighted material, they're most likely not going to comply with the GPL as we currently see it. The Vietnamese gov't could say "we don't intend on sharing our improvements and you can't do much about it."
Now, I don't know but I doubt people here would want Open Source to be used widely at the cost of destroying the model...
In the article they mention that they want to join WTO. To do so they must be piracy free (or something like that).
If a manufacturer ships a product with Windows, it ships a pirated good (or 99% chance that it is pirated). If that happens Vietnam can not join WTO.
It says nothing about choice, it says a big deal about their piracy problem.
Well, it's been a long time coming, but we may finally have it... Communism done right.
This action shows definite intelligence on the part of the newer regime over there. Politically, they're democratic now. Economically, still communist. IMHO, this is the way it was supposed to be done.
And the folks in charge over there seem to be allowing their ideals to show. There was no "Stalin figure" (i.e. a person who took advantage of the early government for personal gain... this is the main weakness of communism, as it is easy to exploit at certain points, and doing so can leave an utterly ruined country... See Russia.) to throw them off their course, and I think that some of their recent acts, including this one, show a genuine step toward Marx's second evolution.
I just hope that they don't start getting ideas from N. Korea. They're the first communist regime to get this far up the ladder, and I would hate to see them befall the same fate of the first bunch and revert to totalitarianism now!
Maybe open source is communistic after all.
And Vietnam is just the first domino.
I am the owner of an internet shop in Vietnam. And being able to go open source for the internet shop would be great! In Vietnam, the younger people spend nearly all the time in the internet shops chatting with their friends... This may present a problem with MSN and Yahoo. I know for example people really enjoy voice chatting (and webcam?) with Yahoo, which by far the most popular for chatting in Vietnam. I have yet to find anything for Linux that will allow voice chat and webcams from Yahoo to work. Is there anything available? I know this is one internet shop that will be quick to switch to Linux when the people get some knowledge of how to use linux, but switching before people know how to use it would be a bad business move. People go to chat, not to play around or learn things. If it's different they don't like it, and will walk a few blocks to the next internet shop.. I plan to set up a couple running linux give people an idea what it is, and how to use it. We've got a lot of people coming in to study Excel, as they often will use that at the school. As they are studying Excel, they can't just use openoffice or another alternative program.
What I see as important for this to work for the average user, is easy to use voice chat, and webcam. Especially for Yahoo Messenger. And the schools begin to teach with Linux, which is sounds like that will happen. I'm in full support!
Now michael can move there and be perfectly happy.
The open sores Community today welcomed the nation of Cuba into its ever growing virus-like collective. Joining the ranks of equally repressive and corrupt governments such as China and Vietnam, experts are calling this radical move a perfect match.
The Community had the following strict set of requirements for Cuba to qualify for complete assimilation:
1. A strong desire to negatively impact U.S. commerce and overall economy.
2. A zealous, passionate belief that mere individuals should not receive the benefits of their own hard work. This luxury is reserved for the Community as a whole.
3. An innate, polished ability for stealing/duplicating/cloning the work of others, giving it a new title, and proclaiming it property of the Community.
4. An existing legion of native fanboy FUDsters to preach and teach the evils of market economys and fair trade.
Has Vietnam thought about purchasing a site license for an unlimited number of computers? Then you also have immediate compliance, because anyone who has a pirated Microsoft product that would be normally licensed under a normal license would then be covered under the country-wide site license.
I'm sure special terms could be arranged, especially for Vietnam to promote Microsoft products?
Mark.
Have Linux bamboo & palm trees?
The world can be devided in two; free and non-free. Vietnam is clearly in the non-free camp and trade with Vietnam should be limited. Every penny given to Vietnam helps keep their people down. Every penny "saved" by you at the grocery store is a penny your free, catfish farming neighbor will not have. Make your choice and vote.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Despite the comments in some of the replies, the "catfish debacle" really is an embarrassment to the US. The whole story is also worse than the parent indicates.
s h. htm
First, the Catfish Farmer's of America and other trade groups bought themselves a piece legislation that barred Vietnamese catfish to from being labeled "catfish". There is no scientific basis for this distinction, it was base protectionism.
They also engaged in a public smear campaign stating that Vietnamese catfish was tainted with Agent Orange and other absurd claims that had no basis in reality.
None of this worked. Consumers, in this case mostly large industrial buyers, bought the cheap, high quality catfish from Vietnam anyway.
This is where the story gets really despicable. The industry, at this point quite desperate, brought anti-dumping complaints to the US Commerce Department. The hypocrisy of backing legislation proclaiming the Vietnamese catfish was an entirely different species, while simultaneously claiming they were "catfish" for the purposes of the anti-dumping case not withstanding, the case went forward.
There was no evidence that Vietnamese catfish were being sold more cheaply in the US than in Vietnam (they aren't). There is no evidence that the Vietnamese Government is propping up the industry. Despite this, tariffs of 37-64% were slapped on Vietnamese catfish under the theory that Vietnam was a "non-market economy".
As someone who has been to Vietnam and met a few Mekong catfish farmers, I can tell you this distinction is a joke. The catfish farmers are small businessmen who simply have lower costs and lower profit expectations than it is possible to have in the US.
This story rises above shameful and becomes embarrassing when you consider that for years the US has been pushing Vietnam to adopt free market economics and accept US imports. It seems that we are happy to espouse free market arguments as a matter of principle so long as its in our own best interest.
The open source story is very interesting because it may be another case of being beaten at our own game. The initiative is so young it is difficult to accurately assess whether it will ever happen, but if it does work (and spreads to China, Japan, etc.) the pre-eminent position of the US within the software industry will be seriously eroded. That would be seriously bad news for US industry, government and economy, and you can bet similar anti-competitive forces would marshal to squelch such a threat despite the fact that the open source strategy would be a natural and legal response to the pressure the US has been applying to eliminate piracy.
Be careful what you wish for, I guess. Our just follow our previous pattern, if the wish backfires, cheat.
NYT piece on the Vietnamese catfish:
www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ffd/2003/0722catfi
First, I am not American, so I can stand behind both my comment and your answer. I would gladly defend the idea that my country's government should be forbidden from using proprietary software (and even that only free/open software should be allowed anywhere in the country if only this move wouldn't get our ass kicked very hard at WTO) based solely on the assessment you just expressed (albeit inverted): each time a Brazilian buys a Microsoft product in Brazil, he/she is transfering some wealth from the far poorer Brazil to the far richer USA. Eventually most developing/poor countries will notice this is pretty sound policy, both technically and economically.
146 countries weren't coerced into joining the WTO, they petition and enact changes to modernize their economy and legal system so that they join. If they don't think they'll benefit, they wouldn't have joined; that's at the heart of free trade. And guess what, the WTO rules against the US and EU all the freaking time because of those members break WTO free trade rules and often against one or the other. As for the 'rich' countries members emphasis on IP, guess what rich countries generally produce? Rich countries don't even act in concert, the US and the EU try to game the system to their advantage all the time. Heck, the parent post is all for free trade (goods) until it hurts him (free trade in jobs). It's like that for everyone but 146 countries signed on to the WTO so they can take part in the rule making and negotiations. And the WTO has nothing to do with the DMCA or the EUCD, blame domestic legislators for that shite. It amazes me that their are so many people that buy into that anti-globalism FUD so as to mark-up this ignorant post insightful.
Side note: the parent post left out the dirtiest tactic the US cat fish farmers and our legislator engaged in. They accused the Vietnamese catfish of being dirty and full of carcinogenic chemicals like Agent Orange. I guess the US should know since they dumped it on them. (Full disclosure, IAMAL for a firm that works for import companies.)
Its a business mentality thing. If someone gave you a sqaure block in the middle of manhattan, and you ran a mini-golf course on it, you might be able to make $200k a year. If you leased the land out, you could make a cool million, so its costing you $800k a year to run the mini-golf course.
Casca
By this sort of logic, if you save 60 pence by walking behind the bus, you could save four quid by walking behind a taxi. Well, I walk everywhere and I haven't seen a penny of that money.
The choice is not "Pirate Microsoft or buy Microsoft". The choice is "Pirate Microsoft, buy Microsoft or do without Microsoft altogether." Most people, if they did not have the option to pirate, would do without - whether that means open source or non-computerised practises.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Actually Microsoft can still sell their products in Vietnam. However, the government and the government run businesses aren't interested in buying Microsoft products. On the flip side the U.S. government probably isn't interested in Vietnamese software either.
The interesting bit is the decree that computers assembled in Vietnam will come pre-installed with Free Software. This sounds like a slam against Microsoft, but really this is merely an effort to lower their piracy ratio. Vietnamese PCs assembled for the Vietnamese market almost certainly used to come with a pirated version of Windows. Now Vietnam can go to the WTO and point out that none of the PCs assembled in their country come with absolutely no pirated software.
If you really wanted Windows on one of these things, I am sure that Microsoft could arrange for a licensed copy.
Sgt. Barnes: Stay outta this, Elias. This ain't your show.
Sgt. Elias: You ain't a system administrator, you PIECE OF SHIT!
The Vietnamese government has a problem with software piracy indeed, but they're trying to do something about it by encouraging open-source software, which is a perfectly legal (and human) way of producing and releasing software...
... we didn't really mind you pirating our software ... " Because they'd otherwise have to praise a policy of adopting open-source software :)
I just think it's so poetic - what a wonderful solution to software piracy that is completely the opposite of what Microsoft wants.
The big question is: will Microsoft do an astonishing backflip and say, "Nonono
Making changes to GPL'd software is perfectly legal and reasonable to do.
Distributing the modified result without its source is neither.
If anyone were foolish enough to do so, they would be giving everyone they distributed it to and themselves the problem of duplicating the development of any enhancements to the codebase up to the point they forked it, wherever it affected their additions.
The rational choice is to distribute your changes, it costs you nothing and means that other people's work on the basic system benefits you.
Self-enforcing, by evolutionary pressures.
I'm curious if this may cause in increase in virii and worms for open source platforms. With more users, Linux worms and virii might become more prevalent. And isn't southeast Asia a major source of virii?
...demonstrating once again the utter futility of trying to make analogies between intellectual property and real property.
What does it cost you if someone makes a copy of your square block in Manhattan? Anything? What if they copy it way out in the jungle of Vietnam, where land is cheap? Does it cost you the same amount? Is asking about the cost of copying even a meaningful question?
0 1 - just my two bits
Go Vietnam ! Send Micro$oft and U$A to hell !
Linux is the only way out to third world countries.
You couldn't have lived in a communist country, could you? You wouldn't have lived to tell the tale!
If you k new your facts, you'd realise that nobody made up jokes about communism like the Poles. But of course, Cambodia was identical to all of those other communist states!
No that's call a series of bi-lateral free trade agreements.
Which is current US government policy.(See Aust-US FTA negotiations currently in progress)
It's also known as 'Divide and Conquer'
You have just described the theory of network effects, which states that the more people that use a product, the more valuable that product becomes to those that use it.
Every new Linux user makes Linux more valuable to all the other Linux users, and Windows less valuable to all the Windows users. Eventually you reach a tipping point where the extra value of Linux is sufficient to offset the cost of switching from Windows, and then voila! - everybody switches almost at once.
Same applies for Open Office vs. MS Office.
Doesn't this only strengthen the link even more between open source and Communism (for idiots, I mean)?
I belong to the ______ generation.
They will violate the GPL.
This is a known fact because I worked as a project manager for many companies
in the south. Two on Mac Thi Buoi in District 1
They steal code and erase all traces of copyright. They do this all the time. I tried to bring a lawsuit to one company but it is run by
one of the Commie's Big Bosses' son.
They will take open source,make changes and not contribute anything back and sell it as their own.They don't care about theGPL because it is not enforceable.
They're just doing this as propaganda to get into the WTO. One of the prerequisite for WTO membership is IP and this is their short term solutions..
They've reneged on many contractual obligations with the free world I can cite many examples..
It is a sad day for OSS
SCO Sues the government of Vietnam for using their code...
Vietnam currency devalued, SCO's stock price rises. CEO dumps 50,000 shares.
Why eliminate a profitable company with a popular product? What's next? Eliminate non-geeks?
Don't get me wrong - Linux/FreeBSD is good for me, I use it almost exclusively.
I can see it now...
(Visualize Bill the Gates with pinkie to corner of mouth...)
"It will only cost you 100 TRILLION dollars!!!!!"
(Vietnam)
But we donly have 500 bucks in the treasury!!!
(Bill)
Oh...
Don't make too much brainstorming about that ; the vietnamese government always claims such plan-making things. It would be great of course ; but we should too be wary of what a communist state might do with GPL software.
Let's overcome our weakness.
0K, so what happens when you create a gpl piece of software and then don't release it under the gpl? That's illegal i say.
I'm not familiar with the ALCOA case. Was it truly dumping, or was it simply a case of Russian companies having lower costs and being able to undercut Alcoa? If Russian manufacturers were in fact dumping aluminum (or aluminium, for those of you across the water, where they spell it correctly :-) ), then government action to protect American companies would be wholly justified. Indeed, the government would be remiss in its duty if it failed to act. If it was just a matter of competition under a free trade agreement that we had not only signed, but pushed, that would be another matter.
Quickly changing horses, or at least racetracks, to farm subsidies now. I actually have no real problem with farm subsidies. Why? Well, I lived in Japan for a long time, and the Japanese government has a policy of rice self-sufficiency. This policy exists, to the best of my knowledge, for no other crop.
When I moved to Japan in 1994, it was the year following a very poor rice crop, and the government took the unusual step of importing Thai rice to make up for a shortfall. Some very good rice is grown in Thailand, but that stuff was horrid. My girlfriend and I had to mix it with Japanese rice to make it palatable. Do I think they imported the worst rice they could find, just to make sure that people didn't develop a taste for foreign rice? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, could be.
Normally, foreign rice just wasn't seen in Japan back then. It was a closed market. That's how extraordinary the importation of Thai rice was.
When I left Japan in 2002, things had changed somewhat. You could buy California-grown Japanese rice varieties at a price lower than natively grown rice, but it wasn't common and most supermarkets didn't have it. Rice from other countries was rarer still. If you went to a Thai restaurant, you might get Thai rice (or not; the more expensive ones might have it), but you'd never see it in a store.
Why is this so? Well, Japan still maintains a nearly closed rice market. The entire rice crop every year is bought by the government and re-sold to commercial dealers. Rice is heavily subsidized, and the subsidy works by the government paying a figure many times higher than world market rate (I've heard 20 times, but can't confirm whether or not that figure is accurate; however, at a Nijiya supermarket here in LA, I saw 25 lb. bags of California-grown short-grain rice selling for about what you'd pay for a 2 kg (4.4 pound) bag of good Japanese rice in Japan). This allows Japanese rice farmers to make a profit where they otherwise almost certainly wouldn't, and allows Japan to sustain rice self-sufficiency.
Which brings me to why I support farm subsidies. The United States imports, of course, a great deal of its food products, and is nowhere near agriculturally self-sufficient. However, if all of our sea lanes were cut off and/or other countries just wouldn't sell us food because of , we could get by without starving, even if belts would be tight for a while, and agricultural production could be quickly ramped up under a declared state of emergency which would allow for expansion of farmlands without regard to environmental laws.
To sustain that level of domestic food production and that ability to rapidly increase it in time of need (such as a major, protracted world war), farm subsidies are necessary. An enemy cannot use the threat of starvation against us as long as we grow our own food.
There is also another, more humane, reason for farm subsidies. If the United States scrapped all subsidies and nearly all farmers quit farming because they couldn't make a living at it, our food imports would soar until we were importing nearly all our food. We could and would pay to dollar for it, of course. What choice would there be? Seeing that crops could be exported to the United States far more profitably than they could be kept at home, many farmers in poor countries would be growing cash crops for the export market rather than food crops for their o
My company had a lot of a hell of freedom of choice at the beginning of this year when NT4 was phased out.
A perfectly working infrastructure became obsolote.
Thanks but no thanks.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They could eliminate social security payments creating a system in which people are forced to save for their old age.
And you could reduce air pollution by increasing public transpirt and taxing polluting means of private transport. Like they do in most of Europe.
That would be progress.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
First Linux is not Unix.
Second, they are not mandating a monopoly. MS is very welcome to open source their software and they would be on business. If that sounds silly think: who wold Vietnamese people be looking for support and advice regarding Windows software? MS or the guy down the street? And Vietnamese companies?
MS is missing the ship, they could become a services company providing consultancy for their open sourced operating system. They have such a hughe head start that they should be relishing the challenge and not cowering behind monopolistic tactics.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Vietnam is doing this because they want to move towards more capitalistic practices like free trade. This is done as a pre requisite to enter the WTO and other free trade organizations.
So unsurprisingly SCO was not right and you should add more peperoni to your brain cells.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To apply a measure that eases your entry into free trade organizations is going to be seen as communistic.
Only idiots would see that as you rightly point out.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You buy the machines, buy your copies of MS Windows and install your damn super safe and secure (running in Windows?) software.
Oil and gas companies run mostly on Unix, so the change to Linux is trivial (and many already provide the sofware for Linux).
I am not familiar with airlines but I don't see why they should use WIndows at all for the kind of software they need. Aircontrol software I have seen runs in primitive machines and I am not aware of any running on WIndows
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I can't see anywhere a prohibition for MS to open their OS and sell it.
SIlly me.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The software business is rapidly shifting to Asia, precisely because in Asia there is still a viable software commons. Currently that commons consists mostly of pirated software, but the result is that any application is available for nominal cost to the public in Asia, whereas in the US and Europe, software is extremely expensive. If the US had an advantage in software education this factor might be balanced, but the reality is that most of the PhD candidate positions in US Universities are not available to Americans at all, but occupied by students from India and China. To add insult to injury, the US patent system is eliminating the software commons in the US, making innovation extremely legalistic and difficult. The great era of software innovation in the US occurred during an era in which ideas were held in common and could be freely applied, and positions in higher education were available to American Citizens. The lack of respect for "intellectual property" in Asia is a great competitive advantage that is forcing the movement of the entire software industry out of the US.
Sigh. You're missing the point. In the business world there is the mentality that if you could have made some money from something, and you didn't, then it is a cost. If you could have sold that software to those people, but you didn't, it cost you $X.
You're using the same argument that warez people have been using since games came out. "I wouldn't have payed for it, so its not costing you anything if I copy it". Its really just a perspective thing.
Casca
I stand corrected on some of this.
You all seem to know what you are talking about.
I will always object to economics I don't like in principle, whether I truly understand the issues or not, afterall, I despise Economics as a subject/concept/means of communication...
Thats probably true. I want to say for the record that although many of my posts could be interpreted as a knock against the open source cause, that is not the intention. I will always stay true to the cause!! : )