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'."
Microsoft is pricing itself right out of the developing world. Newsflash: 90% of the world can't afford to fork over $500 for office.
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.
Mandrake is quasi-commerical and they've always favoured KDE over GNOME as well.
" 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."
I have no idea where you came up with this. There is no pointless eye-candy, and I don't have any of it enabled if it does in fact exist...and I find KDE to be extremely functional in all respects. GNOME on the other hand never seems to work for me, and as far as usability goes, whey the hell do they have that second menubar on the top of the screen and another on the bottom? Getting GNOME set up the way one would like out of the box is a nightmare.
So what would be an equivalent setup? I mean, if they wanted to use Mandrake (free edition) instead, for example. What does the Sun Desktop have which Mandrake doesn't (besides star office).
"they would have to license a JRE to include in their distro"
Not true. They can use Blackdown JRE.
I just knew that some idiot would start trolling about KDE vs Gnome.
The reason Gnome has commercial support is purely and simply due to there being a company producing a commercial version of Gnome back when Sun and HP etc were looking at Linux Desktops.
Yada Yada Trolltech, QPL/GPL, C++, yada yada.
Don't worry about what anyone says. The reason Gnome was chosen was because of Helixcode, pure and simple. Sun and the rest are businesses and as we all ought to know, business deals with business. If Trolltech were producing a commercial KDE, you would have seen something very different happening.
As for Ximian being the future of SuSE and KDE being "legacy" - be afraid, be very afraid. Novells only interest in Ximian was MONO, which happens to fit their new Linux story very well.
Go over to go-mono.org and read Miguels report on the recent Microsoft Professional Developer Conference. Look for references to XAML and other plans Microsoft have for Longhorn. Check Miguels assessment of what this means for non-Microsoft desktop Operating Systems. Then check his "solution" to this.
Once you've done that, come back here and tell me with a straight face that Ximian gnome as the standard Linux desktop is a Good Thing.
Software is nothing in the enterprise without support.
I was about to delve in more detail, but that says it perfectly.
don't get me wrong: i think mandrake make a fine product... but when you've got $50 million of yr boss' money to invest you don't put it on papa's moustache to win in the third. you buy a t-bill.
2 1337 4 u!
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!
Also, had they used KDE they could have gone with kopete and konqueror which are far better apps than gaim and nautilus respectively IMHO.
That is a "straw man" argument. For every less dollar spent by business on the products of a proprietary software company, a dollar will be saved by that business. That business will pay taxes on that additional dollar of profit.
Meanwhile, as the portion of the IT budget spent for "commodities" like OSes and Office Suites drops, companies will take that savings and reinvest it in custom software that promises real productivity gains for that business. developers will find fewer jobs at software companies, but more jobs at companies that use software.
Over the long run, the economy and the standard of living overall rise as the economy becomes more efficient. What is more efficient than free software?
The world is changing. IBM has their boat all ready. Sun is just starting to build theirs. Microsoft is still standing on the shore cursing the rising tide.