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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'."
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.
The java enterprise desktop is based on SuSe linux. It basically is SuSe with some value add-ons and support.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
...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.
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.
I'm still trying to figure out why China needs a "nationwide standard desktop software system".
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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!
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...
I am really surprised by this move.
I thought China had their own "officially sanctioned/goverment approved" distro, based off RedHat Linux, but called Red Flag Linux?
http://www.redflag-linux.com/eindex.html
If China spent money developing this distro, why would they change now?
Nonetheless, 1 million Linux desktops is an impressive number, and should cause Billy boy to loose some sleep. And Sun isn't as fscked as SCO is it?
Not to go over board with propaganda (I work for Sun).
The Simple reason is: its cheaper to buy this from us than the cost to develop an equivelant setup.
The more in depth reason is: because star office is better than openoffice (MOST of the code is the same, not all) they would have to license a JRE to include in their distro, and they wouldnt have the support structure that Sun has.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
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.
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.
Software is nothing in the enterprise without support.
I was about to delve in more detail, but that says it perfectly.
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.
It doesn't. It uses Mozilla for the browser. There is no java component of the Java Desktop except for the JVM. Evolution is the email client. Gaim for IM. StarOffice is the office suite. Totem for A/V. And Gnome 2.4 w/ Nautilus for the Desktop.
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.
WTF! What other ways of support do you suggest.
I suggest that you call your support contact at your software vendor. Lots of software is sold this way. That person is an *expert* in the package you purchased. He or she knows the details of your setup, of your hardware, and of your network. They have remote access most likely. They are knowledgeable, well trained, and have sufficent time and energy to dedicate to you. This is very often how software is sold. I know you probably think "Free free free" is the best there is, was, and ever will be, but its not always! For commodity stuff yeah, chances are lots of people have the same problems as you. But in complex environments it is likely there won't be an analog to your environment. A support person will have to synthesize an answer from diverse information sources.
Oh, geez I'm on hold, fuck this shit, I'll type in a few words in Google and find my answer
See, here is what you miss. That $30 software package you buy at Staples has crap for support. 99% of people who call need to find the anykey. Now, if you buy a serious piece of hardware or software, from a serious vendor, your support contract is a little different. My wife works for a software company with 150 clients. They have direct line access to their support person. They have test setups to replicate client networks. They have remote access, and they are available within 10 minutes. You don't wait on hold, they call you.
Or, I'll write to a mailing list, which is basically the same thing, since most Google hits will be from mailing list archives.
Which is all great, if you have a few days or a week to wait. Again, comoddity stuff - "how I authenticate users against the same user list for two different Linux servers???" - fine. When the question is "I am experiencing unusally high latency between two of my servers and reduced bandwidth throughput. I've checked the obvious, but am thinking that my MTU settings are incorrectly configured. What do you think?" a mailing list probably isn't going to help.
Jesus what do you think Windows users have been doing for years, even in the "enterprise" environment.
Windows is hardly enterprise. And real enterprises that do use Windows have Premiere support contracts, which work as a I described with a real live person assigned to you and a real live support group who knows how your network operates.
It is much more efficient to find someone else who had the same problem and documented the solution.
Someday you will realize there is more to IT than dealing with a few lame x86 Windows boxes and a few toy Linux boxes. Someday you will realize that for commodity software and commodity hardware and simple problems Linux is a great way to go. Do-it yourself gung-ho kick-ass OSS attitude will get you far. But it won't get you a server room that goes 3 years without downtime - scheduled or otherwise. What places like Sun, IBM, and to a lesser degree MS can provide is a person, with a name, whose home phone number, cellphone number, and direct work line are written down in your rolodex. They can provide you assurance that the latest bleeding edge patch to come along isn't going to cut your performance by 50% or break backward compatability.
I hope you can take a second and really think about what these places offer. I am not on the clock now. But rest assured. I could take an axe to my server room, and reps. from the various vendors would be here onsite in the middle of the night within 45 minutes. Our disaster recovery company would automatically fail over the broken equipment to their backups located offsite. And my users would be grousing that they lost 5 minutes of productivity.
Stick to Google whne you can, and then get back to me when you discover what the rest of the IT world does.
Spam filtering? Why would China want to kill its number 1 export?