Slashdot Mirror
Red Flag Linux Distributor Joins OSDL
segphault writes "Ars Technica reports that Red Flag Linux has joined the OSDL." From the article: "Founded in 2000 through the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Red Flag's Linux software line includes desktop, server, and embedded Linux distributions. Red Flag's products are extremely popular in China, where their desktop Linux distribution is favored by many developers. Red Flag frequently collaborates with other Linux distributors in the region, like Korea's Haansoft and Japan's Miracle Linux."
Someone misspelt 'flag'!
Why UNIX?
.... by joining OSDL, are they going to "commit" some of their resources for research/development *online* only? What difference does it then make if the company is in China, or any other country then? The article focussed much on growth of Linux in China, rather than 'Red Flag', OSDL, and whatever they are planning to do.
hmm... so wait, now China's into Open Source? I mean, their own Linux. Oh, wait, its just a very funny coincidence. Red Flag... how perfect could it be named for China?
Here's the link to the official red-flag linux web.
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
Is this what we in the Linux community really need? A Chinaman developer? Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
If by "popular" you mean the government attempts to force people to use their state-sponsored Linux distro to reduce dependence on American software, only to find that people respond by formatting their hard disks and installing pirate copies of Windows.
It's kinda fitting really. I probably wouldn't want to use Linux anymore if the government were trying to force it on me. Especially if it were the Chinese government.
HELL YES! I can be impartial and sell weapons to both of them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This is a third level of freedom that is rarely discussed. There is:
1. freedom is cost (beer),
2. freedom in knowlege (receipe), and
3. *freedom in choice*.
Usually Linux is all three. In this case, it may be only the first two where Windows would be only the third, but the third is the most important.
What do you talk about, "we"?
Im not any part of that so called "we" and i have no problem with their current ruling. Can you even imagine what would happen to the region if China was to dissolve? If you think the middle east is a mess now thats NOTHING compared to the demise of China. Id rather sit back and let democracy come in slowly than watch the US wreck havoc in yet another area throwing the whole region into full blown civil war. Both saddam and bin laden was put in place by the US, ring any bells?
HTTP/1.1 400
If by "popular" you mean the government attempts to force people to use their state-sponsored Linux distro to reduce dependence on American software, only to find that people respond by formatting their hard disks and installing pirate copies of Windows.
Nope, they don't mean popular by that - noone forces anyone to use it. Frankly i'm astounded that you think the Chinese peole would not want to use a local distro with better support for Chinese Characters & popular applications.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the Chinese Government - no need to go round making up new ones.
It's kinda fitting really. I probably wouldn't want to use Linux anymore if the government were trying to force it on me. Especially if it were the Chinese government.
Well thanks for sharuing your thoughts with us. Care to let us know why you believe people are being forced to use Red Flag?
I'm sure its not because of some sort of irrational anti-chinese bias you have, so please provide links.
My pics.
This is just further proof that the Open Source community is full of a bunch of communists. : p
This guy's the limit!
As far as china is concerned, it can be considered to be a milestone. But how does it affect the rest of the (non-chinese) linux users ? Is it really that significant ? I doubt it will make any difference at all. As far as china's embrace of Linux over propritery OS is concerned - Bill gates once told in an interview that microsoft was running across a brick wall in getting chinese government support for their OS - it is a very good thing. I feel most governments should take a leaf from the chinese and pass resolutions favouring open source solutions over propritery ones.
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
It's called "irony". The situation is ripe for an ironic post, and GP seems to have hit all the bases. All the ones that are belong to us, that is.
After all, in Communist China, the lab joins you.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
> Red Flag's products are extremely popular in China,
I call crap on this. I have business interests in China that involve IT, and none of the shops I do business with uses Red Flag. They'll use Red Hat or Debian, but they refuse to use the state-sponsored Red Flag.
Linux has a miniscule usage in China anyway. This whole line of Linux being popular overseas is just one big stinking pile of crapola.
..when the first rumors of "Red Flag Linux" appeared and people took them as a joke on RedHat + Linux users being communist hippies. Then when their site first appeared it looked like crap with broken links and images and so on and in chinese only. But slowly it evolved and people realized it was for real. Blame the Taiwanese translators of MS Windows for embedding anti chinese easter eggs in the chinese version of MS Windows. Oh.. and I really dig their "propaganda" images.. :) .. Now let some professional karma whores provide links to all the above.. use "the wayback machine".. END RANT
No, it's like Cowards for Slashdot.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
What proof do you have that they, as in the government, are forcing people to use Linux? If they were there would at least be reports of their 'great firewall' blocking user-agent=internet explorer. That would be easiest way to 'punish' those who use windows.
Or gee, maybe the large legitimate stores over there prefer Linux because it is better localized for the Chinese and fits their needs better, and the legitimate stores find the price of Red Flag Linux more attractive than the price for windows.
I probably wouldn't want to use Linux anymore if the government were trying to force it on me.
If the complete source was still available and I could compile it myself, I still would.
Something else to think about: A government that makes its websites Internet Explorer only is no better than a government that tries to force you into using any particular OS.
As somebody above said:
Open Source stuff can help the oppressive Chinese government. But it can also help individual Chinese who don't want to be oppressed.
Either you are really funny in some twisted way or you are forgetting many factual evidence. Open Source/FOSS doesn't mean political statement or Stallman's crusade. It means, what it says it means, Free and Open Source and nothing else.
Lets turn the table around and look at this from so called "Chinamen's" point of view. 2 Billions of them using Open Source software and even fraction of them start developing and contributing to Open Source projects which does not follow any of political views of the Republic of China and her governing body, what does it matter? Will you be more forgiving if an American developer is a closet-case child molester, racist, communist? Will you forbid that individual to stop using FOSS software or even develop Open Source project?
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
The Middle East is messy because the British did a very poor job of managing ethnic populations when cutting up the region into States.
And the U.S. didn't put Bin Laden "in place" anywhere. Money from both the CIA and Saudia Arabia was funneled to the Pakistani's secret service, who then distributed it to Afghan fighters in order to fight the Soviets.
The main reason Bin Laden is/has been pissed off at the U.S. is because he has a grudge with Saudia Arabia and the U.S. was very cozy with the Saudis.
"The demise of China" ??
I don't know how you got modded insightful.
I assume it was because you're bashing the U.S.
P.S. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan are heading for a Democracy. The likely outcome for both countries is some form of modified Islamic Law to guide them.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Any distro putting ISO without source package is just that in my book, RED FLAG. Their FTP/HTTP server doesn't allow anyone to download individual source package. Since ISO files are probably just install disk with binary, I was looking for source package ISO, but no such luck.
I believe distribution without source is actually breaking the GPL agreement. If anyone can prove me wrong on it, let me know.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
from the key-word dept.
once a time the goverment of beijing ,chinese capital had an order that their bureau must prefer "free software".
but a year later m$ in china use "public relation" with some government officers(just like the "public relation" with councilor in democratic USA),the order had been cancelled.
True, even software developers use pirated copies of Microsoft Windows in China...it's so easy to get, and with no real enforcement, it's simply common place.
Actually, no. Red Flag is a trinity member of Asianux http://www.asianux.com/about_us.php which develops (co-develops) the software these companies use.
Can you even imagine what would happen to the region if China was to dissolve? If you think the middle east is a mess now thats NOTHING compared to the demise of China.
What? Would "Free Tibet" bumper stickers become obsolete? Oh, the humanity!
Nobody in China wants to nuke Isreal. Nobody in China want to commit acts of terrorism in the U.S. or Europe. A beak-up of China would be no worse than the end of the Soviet Empire.
Heh, the US would fail at invading China. The fact we can't get an insignificant country such as Iraq under control is enough to embolden them to ratchet up their imperialist policies.
Makes sense: Commies and Linux, think about it. Hand and glove.
but copyright law does apply in China
It may apply on paper, but who enforces it?
That's the typo
Does joining the OSDL mean that Red Flag will stop violating the GPL?
Care to let us know why you believe people are being forced to use Red Flag?
I just had to interrupt my regularly scheduled reading to let you know how dumb you are. Learn what a hypothetical situation is and try again.
That's one of those "woosh" moments, isnt' it?
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese communist overlords.
HELLO. Ubuntu doesn't put any sources on their disks. None. Zilch. Nyet. It's not worth the space; this isn't Gentoo. If you want the source to something, you have to apt-get source it, which could very well be how it works in Red Flag. *smack*
Just a quick post, but you do know that you can be both religiously guided *and* democratic, right?
'Democracy with laws based on islamic law' isn't an oxymoron, you know, however badly it does to civil/human rights (which, while important to human rights is no imediment to democracy, see ancient greece for details)
Has anyone ever seen an upstream kernel patch from the Red Flag people?
They have absolutely no concept of patch management (tending to keep all their changes as one huge patch against the mainline), and are frequently tasked with projects such as kernel improvements to make individual software load faster (where the kernel is of course the best place for application-specific optimisations).
While there are without a doubt many skilled people working with them, their technical leadership is a bit of a joke. It is by sheer political force that Red Flag manages to survive. The free software philosophy is very popular in China, and they are willing to throw a lot of time, money, and effort behind it, but they've been largely approaching it with a short-term mindset - odd for a country known for it's 50+ year plans.
Hopefully they will not consider OSDL membership an achievement in itself (quite likely), and will get involved with the other members and learn a few things from them. China has a lot of people, and therefore a lot of smart people, many of who would love the opportunity to work on Linux and other free software, given the opportunity.
Say you can't do it, say you can't do it, say you can't do it, then you slip it on in!
I have freaks! I did something right...
However, someone raised an appropriate question. "Is it open source?" (Actually, they were asserting that the source code for current versions was NOT available.) I don't know how to check this, but it's an important question. I would normally presume that the OSDL had checked this out, but when it's a government, and not just any government, but one of the most powerful ones on the planet...well, I start feeling a bit cautious.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Then I will use it! Imagine - a Linux for 1980's punkers!
LinuxScribe
As another poster said, given the REGIONAL economic dependence on the US, it is extremely unlikely that China would mount any sort of extended terrorist campaign against the US or it's allies if the US pushed the issue and used force to protect Taiwan, Hong Kong, or even Tibet. I agree with the AC that the breakup of China would be no worse than the breakup of the Soviet Union. If the Chinese are going to Balkanize, they're going to Balkanize. China certainly does not have a long history of this (they have a long history of putting up with tyranny in the name of stability).