Slashdot Mirror
Sun Announces Linux Deal With Chinese Government
Infonaut writes "Scott McNealy announced today at Comdex that Sun Microsystems has made a deal with China for a million desktop Linux deployments under the new $50/seat licensing plan for Sun's desktop software, which includes its Star Office 7.0 productivity program. Whether this will translate into renewed profits for Sun remains to be seen, but according to McNealy, it represents 'the No. 1 Linux desktop play on the planet'."
quite a potential market
According to InternetNews.com (http://www.internetnews.com/fina-news/article.php /3110131)
it's going to be Java based...
"Sun said the China Standard Software Co(CSSC) will use Sun's Java Desktop System as the foundation for standard desktop development and deployment in the People's Republic of China".
Where does Linux fit into that? (Not being a smart-ass, just genuinely curious).
I am a leaf on the wind
Sun says Linux isn't the future, yet they have no qualm of selling a million of them to China :)
Microsoft is pricing itself right out of the developing world. Newsflash: 90% of the world can't afford to fork over $500 for office.
That sound you hear is bricks hitting the ground in Redmond.
From the article:
100% of 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE. That's some hella marketshare right there. Ballmer must be scratching his big hairless monkey-head.
...that narrow-minded politicians or lobbyists don't use a large deployment in a communist country as propaganda against open source.
Of course, taking a cue from the '50s (and from Dr. Strangelove):
"Mr. President! We cannot allow an open-source gap!"
With apologies to Stanley Kubrick...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Does anyone know what packaging system they use? RPM, dpkg, or their own system?
This sale represents about 2% of their quarterly earnings. But the current estimates are that their earnings are gonna be down 7% this quarter. So I doubt it does much for renewed profits.
The China Standard Software Co., a consortium of government-funded companies, selected Sun as its preferred technology partner to deploy Linux-based desktops. The deal is part of China's deliberate policy to diversify away from Microsoft.
Hopefully there's more to it than just diversification. Don't get me wrong, heterogeneous computing is a wonderful thing, but I'd also hate to see governments, corporations, or anyone else making decisions based on computing philosophy instead of technical need and justification. (Some might argue that the first is the second, of course.)
The article doesn't mention other reasons why the Chinese government felt Linux was ready to deploy Linux on desktops, why the available software such as StarOffice was adequate, or why Sun was chosen as the "preferred technology partner." I'm very interested to know exactly what it is about the overall computing infrastructure of the Chinese government that made it choose all of the above. What technical differences exist between their situation and, say, that of the U.S.?
The coolest voice ever.
It's refreshing to see a government be "open minded", if that term can be applied to an organization. China seems to have its act together on so many issues that Europe and the US struggle with. China's embracing of open source is just one example, and now their partnership with Sun strengthens that commitment. I hope Europe and the US will open the minds and their eyes and start to take a good hard look at their economic, social, and government models. They have a lot to learn from China.
so they switched from their American Windows based overlords to the new American Java based overlords. good move
did you forget to take your meds?
Fifty Million Dollars
Congrats Sun.
Pretty Pictures!
Winning is better than losing like that dying OS that will remain unnamed.
After they had access to Micro$oft source code!
1. Make one million Linux desktops with a secret backdoor.
2. Have US military pay you for software to invade backdoor.
3. Have China secretly pay you to patch the backdoor.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Uh, I'll install copies of Mandrake for 'em for $25 a seat. I will...really.
their research. If they did, I don't think they would be buying something from such a hypocritical company. We'll sell you Linux, but we don't think you should be buying it. That mentallity all in itself spells uncertianty for continued support. IBM who vowed to support Linux 100%(See here) seems like a better company to go through, though I think they are already helping the Chinese government with Linux. That's the last I heard anyway.
The deal is for one license. McNealy was initially puzzled at how a single license could possibly be enough for the Chinese population, but when your stock is trading at $3/share, $50 is $50.
In the meantime, the quiet hum of CD duplicators echoes across the middle kingdom...
China has pledged to deploy 200 million copies of open standards-based desktop software.
More info here: Sun in China
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that KDE has lost its main commercial support.
Let us take a look at some of the reasons why this is so:
GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it.
KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license.
TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements.
Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity. Accessiblity is vital feature for a modern desktop. A desktop cannot be sold to the U.S. government unless it supports the features necessary for disabled users to make full use of it. The lack of said feature effectively cuts it off from the biggest software purchaser of all. GNOME has spent the last 18 months and more doing the ground-work and developing/polishing the accessiblity of the GNOME desktop (thanks to the fine work of Sun engineers). KDE has spent the time making *fake* translucent menus to help make impressive screenshots. Over the next few months you can expect increasing numbers of near-orgasmic announcements of weak accessiblity support from the KDE project, as the full extent of their folly and just how far they are behind GNOME finally becomes obvious to them. The end result will be, as with all KDE features, half-assed and broken -- designed only to function as a marketing feature tick-box filler.
Novell is already engaged in training its engineers in development using GTK/GNOME -- not Qt/KDE.
Nat Friedman (co-founder of Ximian), recently made a post to slashdot [slashdot.org] explaining the take-over and future directions. Much has been made of Novell's claims that it will continue to "support" KDE, but this is merely as legacy software. As Nat's post makes clear, the future of Novell is GNOME and the push for a single dominant desktop.
Many desperate and ignorant (ie. most of them) KDE advocates are clinging to the idea that Novell will run KDE with Ximian/GNOME's superior software like Evolution. Little do they realise that running Evolution is running GNOME without the panel apps. Evolution is deeply integrated into GNOME... running a KDE desktop with Evolution is the height of stupidity and only adds to the extraordinary bloat and sloth assocated with KDE. Why would a company maintain, develop and test two different code bases? They wouldn't... hence the reason why KDE is dead at SUSE.
Finally, and most damning of all, TrollTech is partly owned by the lawyers at SCO! Yes, the very same viper-pit that is currently trying to smash and grab Linux and other GPL software is the company behind the curtain at TrollTech and the KDE Project!
At Sun's site
u nf lash.20031117.3.html
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2003-11/s
The article says "Java Desktop" and "interoperable with Linux, Solaris, and Windows".
So, whoa -- China is going ALL-JAVA ?
Or perhaps the Chinese are paying Sun to learn how to run an IT business, so that later they have the know-how to do this themselves.
its ashame its GNOME based, I've always had trouble with GNOME, but GNOME 2.0, that was just torture, GNOME 2.4 is pretty acceptable though.
Seriously... I think it's good news for Sun, hopefully instead of spending millions chasing MS in court, they could put that money into R&D and kick some ass/arse/arslet/culo ..
MoFscker
"I'm a big kid now. I wear huggies pull ups".
"I'm just as good as the big kids"
"Quit picking on me or I'll tell mom!"
"Waaaaa! Waaaaah! *sniffle* Waaaaah!
I hope to see something of this scale happen in the United States, though I think it's more likely for a small cash-strapped state or major metro to adopt Linux state/city-wide than more well-heeled communities.
Bescause you know I would have posted with my Slashdot ID and not as anonymous coward if my intent was to flame.
I guess Sun is taking their definition of innovation beyond the realms of technology. This is a good thing, certainly for Sun. I believe the focus is strongly shifting towards the markets in India and China with their increasing buying powers. The outsourced jobs, after all are creating business opportunities in those areas. Might be too early to call it good a move, but a little pointer to that. Here is another article with comments from Australia's Reserve Bank Governor on the Indian and Chinese economies
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
I can see it now...:
Pssst, hey, you wanna buy a cracked version of Linux for only $2.88
Somebody unflamebait the parent post.
It's clearly not flamebait!
A good start.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
He'll be dead in a minute...
This is huge huge news, a million new Linux users on the Desktop? This is a huge move and if things keep up at this pace its the end for Microsoft. RIP Microsoft.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Sun's logo has much better Feng Shui than the Microsoft one!
-psy
I read the headline the first time as "SCO Announces Linux Deal With Chinese Government" and immediately wondered "What the hell?" Glad I reread it.
Someone tell Sun there is an easier way to make $50M than having to work this hard. Simply tell Microsoft you'd be willing to sue a major Linux distributor and the checks will start coming your way. Act irrational and scream something incoherent about source code and intellectual property and you might get $100M.
I guess this qualifies as a 1,2,3 Profit!
Aaaaaaand since SUN and SCO are best buds, they get to pocket the $699 SCO license.
As Chairman Mao might say,
"Let a million dekstops boot."
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Sun's profits == Chinese money.
Great news for investors, Scott.
This is good news for Sun and all, I'm sure. But I think it's more of a marketing win for them then a financial win. $50/license x 1,000,000 licenses is 50 million dollars. That's nothing to sneeze at but to put it in perspective, a little while ago Sun was hemorrhaging One *Billion* Dollars (finger in side of mouth) per *quarter*. So I don't think this deal by it's self is going to make a big impact on Sun's finances. But it's a good start, and certainly lends credibility to part of their business model.
Seriously, you definitely semm that way, you spin every little bread crumb against KDE and even make up lies.
" It should be no surprise to anyone who keeps tabs on Sun's desktop Linux activities that they focus heavily on GNOME, along with practically every other corporate desktop Linux supporter. There's Red Hat, Ximian, Sun, and the recently acquired SuSE, which will have Ximian handle its desktop development, according to Novell.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that KDE has lost its main commercial support."
yeah, that's true, but KDE is used on over 50% of the Linux desktops. Furthermore, every distribution except redhat's and Sun's sues KDE as default or does not have a default (Gentoo).
"GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it."
Now her eyou are speaking right out of your misinformed ass.
SUSE has clearly said it will continue to strongly support KDE, which comes as no suprise since the whole comapny is focused on KDE, all their tools were Qt based, they hired a few KDE developers, and even wrote books on Qt.
Here is a simple letter by SUSE's CEO, Richard: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=106855804 831790&w=2
KDE is far more advanced architecturally, as it is the only truely componetized desktop and it is a pleasure to develop for, in a large part thanks to the Qt Development Toolkit. Please do checkout some of KDE's excellent technology such as Kparts, Kconfig XT, Kommander, and KJSEmbed to name just a few.
KDE is also a much more powerful desktop and in the past months the KDE team has worked hard to improve its usability by cleaning up toolbars, simplyfying context menus, improving tooltips and organizing options better. KDE has had an interface guideline years before SUN even started writting one for GNOME. These guidelines are generally followed and often some automation processes ar eused to ensure compliance.
Unlike GNOME KDE is both usable and useful.
"KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license."
This may be your opinion, but you have to remember that Qt is a lot mroe than just a toolkit, it is a complete se tof tools for GUI development. It's cost is competitive for the features it provices, its cross platform nature and its time (aka money) saving ease of use.
It only seems fair that if you are going to use the tools Trolltech has constantly improved for years and you are going to use those to make a profit Trolltech should make some money too. if you are going to make something free, than sure the tools will be free for you too. The price of a Qt license is just about 2 weeks of a programmer's salary.
"TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements."
Trolltech is a private company, they have complete control and can't be taken over in a hostile way. Furthermore, I don't see anything laughable about the FreeQt Foundation, it seems like a very strong legal document.
" Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity. Accessiblity is vital feature for a modern desktop. A desktop cannot be sold to the U.S. government unless it supports the features necessary for disabled users
And in even better news, BSD forward projects one million licenses in China for the year 2015...
A lot of people take this attitude to Sun. Sun has no problem with Linux desktops, but they do believe that Solaris is a superior server environment. It's Linux servers they're not fond on selling people - but as good capital citizens, they will rack one up for you if you ask for one. Kind of like a chef who'll agree to cook the crap out of a beautiful steak for the customer - who after all is always right.
Is their pro-Solaris attitude really a surprise? If they felt differently, they'd probably move Solaris over to a maintainance only dev cycle. Don't see that happening. And besides, I agree with them.
I made $80 selling Knoppix CDs "on the street" in Vancouver, BC, Canada last saturday ($5 each). And I told them it was free and they could download it themselves if they wanted, and that to install Linux they'd need to download a complete distribution. People seemed to like the Idea.
Are you braindamaged? Seriously, you definitely seem that way, you spin every little bread crumb against KDE and even make up lies.
"It should be no surprise to anyone who keeps tabs on Sun's desktop Linux activities that they focus heavily on GNOME, along with practically every other corporate desktop Linux supporter. There's Red Hat, Ximian, Sun, and the recently acquired SuSE, which will have Ximian handle its desktop development, according to Novell.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that KDE has lost its main commercial support."
yeah, that's true, but KDE is used on over 50% of the Linux desktops. Furthermore, every distribution except redhat's and Sun's sues KDE as default or does not have a default (Gentoo).
"GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it."
Now her eyou are speaking right out of your misinformed ass.
SUSE has clearly said it will continue to strongly support KDE, which comes as no suprise since the whole comapny is focused on KDE, all their tools were Qt based, they hired a few KDE developers, and even wrote books on Qt.
Here is a simple letter by SUSE's CEO, Richard: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=106855804 831790&w=2
KDE is far more advanced architecturally, as it is the only truely componetized desktop and it is a pleasure to develop for, in a large part thanks to the Qt Development Toolkit. Please do checkout some of KDE's excellent technology such as Kparts, Kconfig XT, Kommander, and KJSEmbed to name just a few.
KDE is also a much more powerful desktop and in the past months the KDE team has worked hard to improve its usability by cleaning up toolbars, simplyfying context menus, improving tooltips and organizing options better. KDE has had an interface guideline years before SUN even started writting one for GNOME. These guidelines are generally followed and often some automation processes ar eused to ensure compliance.
Unlike GNOME KDE is both usable and useful.
"KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license."
This may be your opinion, but you have to remember that Qt is a lot mroe than just a toolkit, it is a complete se tof tools for GUI development. It's cost is competitive for the features it provices, its cross platform nature and its time (aka money) saving ease of use.
It only seems fair that if you are going to use the tools Trolltech has constantly improved for years and you are going to use those to make a profit Trolltech should make some money too. if you are going to make something free, than sure the tools will be free for you too. The price of a Qt license is just about 2 weeks of a programmer's salary.
"TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements."
Trolltech is a private company, they have complete control and can't be taken over in a hostile way. Furthermore, I don't see anything laughable about the FreeQt Foundation, it seems like a very strong legal document.
" Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity. Accessiblity is vital feature for a modern desktop. A desktop cannot be sold to the U.S. government unless it supports the features necessar
And people wonder why Canada isn't a super power....
With Sun's sinking fortunes, I for one have been a bit worried whether they could continue to fund OOo development. They absolutely need to sell quite a few StarOffice 7 licenses, and it looks like that is happenning!
They have a good plan in place for OOo 2.0, probably released in the first half of 2005. Good luck to them!
Let a million Windoids gloom!
1. First they ignore you.
2. Then they laugh at you.
3. Then they say it's a toy OS.
4. Then they say it's great.
5. Then they change their minds again.
6. Then they write it off as crap somemore.
7. Then they realise their market share is going down harder and faster than New Zealand in a World Cup semi final.
8. Then they team up with an unethical has been company in an attempt damage you.
9. Then they bite the bullet and rip off somebody elses distro.
10. Then they proclaim they are the shining light of the OS and all should follow them.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Am I the only one to remember the recent trade negotiations that went on recently in Mexico? The Chinese Govn't has been throwing so many deals our way its obvious China is trying very hard not to upset the forces in Washington who can't 'Campaign' away the freakishly huge trade imbalance.
Heck, even FSMLabs picked up some business with Redflag. On the same day!
In any case, its a Good Thing 1 million desktops will be running linux under the hood, but lets not forget the world is far from black and white.
--
It was mostly americans that were buying (there were two conferences nearby)
Oh yah, 'cuz we all know the Chinese government has had a historically strong anti-hypocrisy stance.
Moron.
Why is this modded down to 0? It's quite true.
You're kidding right? You think a million Linux installs spells the end for M$'s multi billion dollar markets? Yes, that's plural. M$ is fucking huge and they will compete until the bitter bitter end.
Honestly, I think Linux will gain more and more desktop market share (and in other markets as well), but M$ will not be crushed any time soon. Besides, if M$ was really cornered, they could always kamakazi and GPL windows. Think about it. Scarry.
because star office is better than openoffice
I disgaree with this, having spent some time evaluating both products on three platforms.
Star Office 7 does include features that OpenOffice does not, but Star Office is an absolute pig in terms of comparative performance. I am recommending to my client that Open Office is a better selection because the functionality advantages of Star Office do not outweigh the poor performance in my opinion.
(MOST of the code is the same, not all)
I'm not sure that that's something to be shouting about as it's not necessarily a factor in Sun's favour.
Remember that Star Office 7 is a fork of Open Office 1.0 (i.e. NOT derived from Star Office 6.0) because Sun realised that the OpenOffice code base was superior to Sun's internal Star Office codebase. I suggest to you that if Sun's internal development was superior they would have continued to develop from their own tree.
I have to say, this could be one of the biggest boons for Linux on the desktop yet.
;) But the user is usually better off kicking the habit! The only problem I could see is a bunch of redneck Americans going around saying that Linux is a Communist operation system.
;)
And $50 a seat, including Office-type software? Fugedaboudit. No way in hell MS could EVER match a deal like that.
Once the world's most populous nation starts using Linux as their day to day "this is just the way a computer works" OS will show the rest of the world that yes, Linux on the desktop is a perfectly viable solution, and just because there may be some migration pains in places where MS software has a stranglehold doesn't mean that the migration shouldn't occur.
Every addiction has a painful withdrawl process
oh, wait, they already do that.
This is good for everyone. It's good for Sun, who will hopefully continue to stay afloat now that they seem to be scoring some new big customers. They also will be more strongly motivated to stick with the Linux game in earnest this time around instead of being schizophrenic about it. It's good for Linux, with yet another big name player now firmly in the open source camp. And it's good for all of us, who depend on OpenOffice in order for our Linux desktops to remain viable and interoperable in an office suite dominated world.
The only party for whom this is a bad thing is Microsoft. And that's exactly how it should be. While it is certainly way too early to declare the Great Satan of Redmond defeated, we can call this one more important step on that journey. I applaud Sun for this and hope they score more Linux wins.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
"It should be no surprise to anyone who keeps tabs on Sun's desktop Linux activities that they focus heavily on GNOME, along with practically every other corporate desktop Linux supporter. There's Red Hat, Ximian, Sun, and the recently acquired SuSE, which will have Ximian handle its desktop development, according to Novell.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that KDE has lost its main commercial support."
yeah, that's true, but KDE is used on over 50% of the Linux desktops. Furthermore, every distribution except redhat's and Sun's sues KDE as default or does not have a default (Gentoo).
"GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it."
Now her eyou are speaking right out of your misinformed ass.
SUSE has clearly said it will continue to strongly support KDE, which comes as no suprise since the whole comapny is focused on KDE, all their tools were Qt based, they hired a few KDE developers, and even wrote books on Qt.
Here is a simple letter by SUSE's CEO, Richard: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=106855804 831790&w=2
KDE is far more advanced architecturally, as it is the only truely componetized desktop and it is a pleasure to develop for, in a large part thanks to the Qt Development Toolkit. Please do checkout some of KDE's excellent technology such as Kparts, Kconfig XT, Kommander, and KJSEmbed to name just a few.
KDE is also a much more powerful desktop and in the past months the KDE team has worked hard to improve its usability by cleaning up toolbars, simplyfying context menus, improving tooltips and organizing options better. KDE has had an interface guideline years before SUN even started writting one for GNOME. These guidelines are generally followed and often some automation processes ar eused to ensure compliance.
Unlike GNOME KDE is both usable and useful.
"KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license."
This may be your opinion, but you have to remember that Qt is a lot mroe than just a toolkit, it is a complete se tof tools for GUI development. It's cost is competitive for the features it provices, its cross platform nature and its time (aka money) saving ease of use.
It only seems fair that if you are going to use the tools Trolltech has constantly improved for years and you are going to use those to make a profit Trolltech should make some money too. if you are going to make something free, than sure the tools will be free for you too. The price of a Qt license is just about 2 weeks of a programmer's salary.
"TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements."
Trolltech is a private company, they have complete control and can't be taken over in a hostile way. Furthermore, I don't see anything laughable about the FreeQt Foundation, it seems like a very strong legal document.
" Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity. Accessiblity is vital feature for a modern desktop. A desktop cannot be sold to the U.S. government unless it supports the features necessary for disabled users to make full use of it. The lack of said feature effectively cuts it off from the biggest software purchaser of all. GNO
...That everyone should be asking,
;)
Vim or emacs?
They're commies so I am guessing emacs
Sun has made a huge investment of time, money and energy in Free Software for the desktop. Especially for GNOME and Open Office.
I'm very glad that this is paying off for them. Hopefully IBM, HP and DELL will want to start competitng with SUN in putting Linux on Desktops.
It is interestering to think that anybody can now put Fedora 1 on their machines and bundle a whole load of high quality software for 0 licensing cost.
I wonder if these will appear in 1st world countries?
Martin
I would really like to see a graph on Linux Usage vs Windows usage on the Desktop for the past , 2 years.
So many governments are embracing Linux. Will Corporate (North) America wake up and finally see its potential?
[alk]
This is good news. I am glad that Microsoft lost a lot of potential profit here. This is making me very happy.
Oh, by the way, I'm happy that Linux will get more exposure, too. Maybe with the addition of a million installations in China, there will be more resources invested in improving Linux. Hopefully the research and development that is going into this will find its way into other free operating systems, like the BSDs, and into other free software. The world will be a much better place when Microsoft doesn't dictate everything to the tech sector.
I am extremely glad at this news.
Sun isnt spending much money on development so 50 bucks is about right. I mean really Sun is not spending billions like Microsoft.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
...but also in hardware. Every linux user knows that you need a quite powerfull machine to run M$ bloatware. With linux you can extend the life of computers and delay upgrades.
The KMT was able to Change the language to simplify Grammar, and Mao was able to actually simplify the characters as well. Can you imagine if the US government tried to change English spelling? They can't even get us to use the Metric System.
It wouldn't surprise me if the Chinese government really did want a nation-wide standard, and not windows.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What I would like to know is this. If China decides to completely adopt a Linux-type OS and dump Windows, will it mean that spammers will have a more difficult time hijacking their systems for spamming. (Probably a dumb question, but I thought I'd ask it anyways.)
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
They've pissed off everybody else, why not piss off their (minority) investors, too?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Aside from the direct financial benefit of the sale, the presence in China is a major window of opportuninty for Sun. 1,000,000 users is adequate financial justification to establish a strong support and sales presence which will aid signficantly in further sales. I wonder how much the issue of locale support factored into this decision. While China seems to be pursuing non-Microsoft sourcing for their own reasons, it is possible that the Sun environment and StarOffice provide better support for Chinese locale considerations above MS and/or other vendors.
Why do they need Sun at all?
I'm sure they have enough technical expertise in China to do the deployment themselves. I don't understand why they need a company like Sun to do it for them.
And another issue - if security was a concern of using windows (which many here think to be the case) why do they not use a BSD? Why Linux at all?
Something tells me there is more going on here than they let on.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
God Bless them every one!!!
They want one...million...desktops.
One thing GNOME seems to have going for it in the context of government deployment is the accessibility of the desktop. It has been a high priority for a long time to make it easy (or even possible) for people with various disabilities to use it.
I read recently that a major KDE developer (sorry, don't remember who, might have been Waldo Bastian) said that accessibility was one thing KDE should focus, because it is a strict requirement for many organizations (including US federal ones as far as I know).
Hi,
It's been interesting to read your post.
But you're using the same weapons, and hence, the same weaknesses as your fellow writer.
As a very newbie (4 years) Linux user, I've been using first KDE, and then Gnome, for the policy was more transparent, and because I like to stick to the GPL, and GNU philosphy.
I'm not against KDE. But I'm agaisnt useless disputes (Gnome is better than KDE/KDE is better than Gnome), because at the end, Linux and the various free softwares have been made to offer choice. You may just want to use KDE, and I may just want to use Gnome, but what really surprises me is that we are arriving at a point where people argue on who made the first step, on who made the first implementation of this feature etc. This is supposed to be backed up by a community sense, and a will to share. It just looks like stupid competition. KDE AND Gnome are here to make people happy. And that's it. Those stupid endless disputes can have only one exit : make development even slower.
It reminds me of the horrible story of Xfree CVS access, not granted to Howard, for no reason. We shouldn't behave like that when we are supporting such a state of mind as the one that makes GNU/Linux live.
It really sounds like babbling.
I could have written the mail to the Gnome advocate, because the article/post is even more inane than yours. You are fighting with rules that do not define the GNU/Linux community.
Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
i wonder if they have to help out like Cisco did with the Great Firewall of China?
you know, put in government backdoors everywhere so THEY can watch what you are doing all the time.
I can see it now - Sun will have *special* chinese machines.
Competition is what drives us all, whether we deny it or not. In addition, you can not expect that it will go away simply because the goals of the two projects are similar, there will always be comparrisons, there will always be trolls and there will always be competiton.
WIthout competition, innovation would occur far less frequently and opportunities would decrease.
"But you're using the same weapons, and hence, the same weaknesses as your fellow writer."
Can you explain in what ways I am doing so? I have only tried to state the truth in an objective manner.
Also, yes acessibility will be a big focus for KDE 4.0 and GNOME is clearly ahead in that aspect, but that's ok, KDE will probably endup using the acessibility libraries that they contributed to. In terms of usability, KDE 3.2 is shaping up good and I think it will be just as usable as GNOME 2.4 if not more so.
And my users would be grousing that they lost 5 minutes of productivity.
5 minutes?! Your company sucks! And without a laser corridor (y'know, the one in the resident evil movie?) to deal with axe wielding maniacs in the server room, your company obviously shows a lack of dedication to their users' productivity.
And on a serious note, your post was great.
Nobody in China buys software.
And its now official...Linux is for commies.
w00t!
Sun couldn't have sold China a million Linux desktops: the report has to be a hoax. Linux isn't ready for the desktop. I know this for a fact, because Red Hat said so.
Good thing it is a hoax: otherwise Red Hat might be kicking themselves pretty hard for missing the opportunity to sell $1M units of their desktop product.
Although on Java-side of the world the Sun is getting Eclipsed..
Which planet? Last time I checked Earth, IBM was playing the most important role on the Linux market, Red Hat was the most one associated with Linux name in many non-tech minds, and Gentoo was (IMHO!) the best Linux distro. The only Sun I've noticed was the closest star to that planet, but that has nothing to do with Linux, neiher with the company from the article.
Oh, he might mean Open Office instead of Linux? Yes, I agree then - Sun Microsystems is No 1 Open Office play on this planet.
By the way, if he means Gnome instead of Linux desktop, then it cannot be No 1 either, it must share the place with KDE somehow.
Less is more !
why does everyone assume that this is a Linux deal? this product also runs on Solaris on a desktop level. McNealy was very clear not to mention Linux when announcing the deal at COMDEX.
McNealy is a true hypocrite and an ass. fuck him!
You need people like me so you can point your fuckin fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So what that make you? Good?
This is one of the best troll I have seen in recent time. How can you say that they have no problem with linux per se when McNealy has explicitly said that linux "is for hobbyists and not for enterprise" ? Your comparison with the chef also doenst make sense . Whom will you consult if you want to get something, a chef who is interested and committed fully to it or someone "who'll agree to cook the crap out of a beautiful steak for the customer " ? I dont think you will go for the former. Then regarding solaris. Live with it. There is very very very less that solaris can do which linux cant do and in MOST cases linux does things in a cheaper and better way. I agree that it WAS a truley superior product. But not anymore. And this level of thinking is what exactly killing SUN.
The South China, where I work is a relatively rich area, the govs here spends much of their budget on IT Infrastructure for years. Officers, from the lowest layer to highest layer are very enthusiastic about IT, especially at Linux -- Because of fearing and hating Microsoft, almost of them advocate Linux.
IBM acts an active role among this for a long time: cooperating extensively with government agencies, supporting ISVs, advertising its idea all places, hosting series of exhibition and training of its products..., and of course, never forgetting selling its hardware, its websphere, its DB2..., but all of them are at high price.
China is poor indeed, people here need good things with low prices, but IBM only wants to provide high priced products. Then Dell comes in and succeeds with its low price policy, Sun comes in now and will succeed with its low price policy too.
-- forgive me my poor Engl...
Organized, available when you need it, accountable support.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... but access to somebody that knows what he is doing, can go and check the code, provide a patch and work with you, provided undistracted attention to your problem until it is solved.
A volunteer OSS developer in general will not do that for you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I, in the other hand, have experienced support situations in which you have an Engineer helping for several days, 24/day, if necessary re-assigning the problem to a person in a different time zone so you are always in touch with somebody that is fresh and not as knackered as yourself.
USENET? Yeah, first place to look, it solves many problems, but the tricky ones *have* to be solved by the software provider or a competent support provider.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Onward to Victory.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I can no longer sit back and allow, communist subversion, communist infiltration, and the international communist conspiracy. Stallman is the next Lenin. The church of GNU has grown bigger than the Catholic church. This is awesome!
Sun Java Desktop System is a comprehensive, secure, highly affordable enterprise desktop solution that is simple to use and works with existing infrastructure. The software consists of a fully integrated client environment based on open source and standards including a GNOME desktop environment, StarOffice productivity suite, Mozilla browser, Evolution mail and calendar, Java 2 Standard Edition, and a Linux operating system.
Minimum Supported Configuration Pentium II, compatible PC 266MHz
This one really hurts Microsoft's FUD campaign that presents Linux/Open-Source as an anti-choice, anti-American, anti-Capitalist tool. They'll have a hard time arguing those points against Linux when China is buying Linux and Open-Source from an American corporation.
Way cool.
And on a related note-holy shit! McNealy might be right! His crazy business strategies might actually be working!
Erm, when Sun chose GNOME, it was at a time (gnome 1.2->gnome 1.4) that:
- gtk had *very primitive* internationalization - didn't support much unicode at all, and certainly had no framework for using it internally.
- gnome had little to no accessibility support, in fact, Sun played a great deal in contributing that.
- gnome had quite bad usability. Yes, Sun helped in this regard as well. KDE has actually had a much longer standing committment to usability and consistancy on it's desktop in this area. Yes, there has been large feature creep that have hindered parts of the desktop experience, but in general, you'll see a large amount of work being done in that area as of late. KDE 3.2 already has a large amount of usability changes, and 3.3 will have even more.
Your comment wrt 'hacks' on the desktop is on the verge of trolling. Gnome's panel supports fake transparency and Gnome's terminal also supports fake transparency. Why is this any more evil than anything KDE does?
Sun's commitment to accessibility in Gnome is quite commendable, but KDE isn't standing still in that area either. Qt 3.x (and hence KDE 3.x) already has a quite capable accessibility API, just not on the X11 platform (it hooks to existing solutions on Windows and MacOSX..) At the time that Qt 3.0 came out, there was no proven equivalent on X11, and Sun changed that. Qt 4.x (and hence KDE 4.x) will support accessibility on X11.
Here's the press release that announces the deal. Note that there's no mention that China is paying $50/seat for this software. That fact has not been reported anywhere but news.com, either. The FULL price of a migrating seat for the Java Desktop is $50, but let's assume the Chinese are brighter than slashdotters and could have negotiated a volume discount.
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - News) today announced a far reaching agreement with the China Standard Software Co., Ltd. (CSSC) to establish Sun's Java(TM) Desktop System(TM) as the foundation for standard desktop development and deployment in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The CSSC is a consortium of Chinese technology companies supported by the Chinese government to produce a nationwide standard desktop software system to help bridge the digital divide among the nation's 1.3 billion citizens. The CSSC has selected Sun as its preferred technology partner to help reach this goal.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 17
This collaboration is the first step in Sun's global campaign to partner with every nation and to help bring an open, affordable and secure desktop to users worldwide. Countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Israel and India are driving programs and incentives to improve their IT infrastructures and incorporate technology into government agencies, educational systems and to domestic regions where economic barriers have limited technological growth. In an effort to accelerate these initiatives and quickly bridge this "digital divide," Sun is embarking on a program to partner with these nations through the Java Desktop System.
The CSSC and Sun Microsystems technology licensing agreement will pave the way for the CSSC to deliver its own branded desktop products using the Java Desktop System as the foundation for its desktop standards, subject to export approval from the U.S. government. The PRC plans to ultimately install at least 200 million copies of an open-standards-based desktop solution throughout the country. Starting with approximately 500,000 to one million seats per year, the multi-year agreement is planned to start at the end of 2003.
"The mission of the CSSC is to offer the best quality, cost effective and local-branded desktop solution for millions of Chinese customers. Our partnership with Sun Microsystems is instrumental in advancing our technology strategy and helping CSSC to become a competitive force in the global market," said Han Naiping, general manager, CSSC. "With the Java Desktop System, Sun will provide the necessary technology to significantly strengthen our desktop initiatives. We expect to continue evolving our collaboration to cover a wider range of partner projects in the future. I firmly believe the partnership between CSSC and Sun will be a mutually beneficial success."
"Linux and open source software bring new opportunities not only to China, but also to other countries around the world," said Li Wuqiang, deputy director-general, Department of High and New Technology Development and Industrialization, Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) People's Republic of China. "A desktop solution based on open standards means more choice, an affordable price and a higher level of information security. China warmly welcomes international cooperation in this area, such as this agreement between CSSC and Sun."
"Open standards are at the very foundation of Sun Microsystems -- enabling connectivity, communication and community. The alliance with CSSC, in concert with the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the Ministry of Information and Industry (MII), creates a vast opportunity to use the Linux and Java Desktop System standards to bring information technology to hundreds of millions of citizens across China," said Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president of software, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Our partnering on the Java Desktop System with CSSC and the Chinese government holds the promise of bridging the digital div
...a Java desktop? Please....
That they couldn't figure out where the future is going in the "enterprise" computing market. Give 'em a Ouji board, a crystal ball, and a pack of tarot cards, and they'll still fuck it up.
I'm no zealot, but if they don't think linux is the future, it's more a sign that they're clueless than anything.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
How will Microsoft compete when they wont have a product until 2006? Even in 2006 their product so far seems to be nothing more but a bloated even more expensive version of XP. Microsoft has not learned and I do not see how Microsoft is going to compete 3 years from now after millions of Chinese are used to Linux. Microsoft is falling into the same trap that Apple fell into, too expensive of a product to compete. Microsoft also wants absolute control, Microsoft used the open and freedom of the PC to beat Apple and now freedom and open is being used to beat them. They can spend money all they want but how can they compete with free when free is of higher quality than what they offer?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.