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How Microsoft Beat Linux In China
kripkenstein notes an analysis up on TechRepublic detailing how Microsoft beat Linux in China, and the consequences of that victory: "With the soon-to-be largest economy standardized on Windows desktops, desktop Linux does seem to have an uphill battle ahead of it." "Linux has turned out to be little more than a key bargaining chip in a high stakes game of commerce between the Chinese government and the world's largest software maker... The fact that... Linux failed to gain a major foothold in China is yet another blow to desktop Linux. After nearly eight years of being on the verge of a breakthrough, Linux seems more destined than ever to be a force in the server room but little more than a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop."
But Linux has always had an uphill battle, the hill just got a little higher.
After nearly eight years of being on the verge of a breakthrough, Linux seems more destined than ever to be a force in the server room but little more than a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop.
.doc format. Sad but true.
That is exactly the problem with Linux. It's always almost ready dor the desktop. And it will always stay that way as long as there isn't a standard interface and and a good office suite that does MS'
-- Cheers!
(Of course there are many assumptions and guesses here - I don't think this is a serious economic prediction. But it does show the general idea.)
Two conclusions:
not "we" as in linux or open source, "we" as in internet users. Looks like China will soon be the largest economy and the largest source of zombie spam pcs.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
What does it matter to people if Linux isn't accepted as a "desktop norm"? I know there's the MS-hate/defeat-the-top-dog attitude, but other than that... what? Is somebody going to make big money if Linux takes off? Sure, you could argue pretty convincingly that botnets/zombie pcs would drop off significantly, but I would think that it would be a whole lot easier to educate people a bit on MS/Windows security than to get them to switch to Linux. Why does this keep coming up as a big deal?
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
From TFA: Microsoft has made it easy for Chinese users to purchase legal copies by offering a $3 Windows/Office bundle to Chinese students.
I wouldn't be surprised if they still make a profit even at that low price.
-- Cheers!
I fail to see what battle has played out in China. For all i know Microsoft has always had the biggest marketshare in China too. Linux can still gain on Windows, especially when Microsoft soon enough starts taxing for licenses. Its one thing to run things for free, another when a country of Chinas size have to pay through their noose. Also if i wore China i would be very afraid of running an OS from the US, soon to be a bitter tradewar enemy. This isnt over just yet.
HTTP/1.1 400
Whatever happened to (the GPL-violating) RedFlag Linux? Did it ever really exist, or was it just urban legend?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Damn pinko GNU-lovers! It's all your fault!
The Chinese government wishes to control the use of the Internet and of computers. The Linux community is hardly likely to help China take control of computers away from the users. But with Trusted Computing, Microsoft may be able to offer exactly that capability.
For a government concerned about control, Microsoft's obvious motivations (control and profit) may be both more familiar, more predictable - and because Microsoft is centralized, mor tractable. This in comparison to the diverse coalition of interests making up the free and open source community.
Read the article again more carefully. The maximum price outside multinationals will be $3; nothing near $100. Most people will be permitted to "pirate". The lesson from this is that the only way to negotiate with MS is to have a serious and already deployed Linux strategy. RedFlag remains crucial to China's bargaining. If you country doesn't have it's own RHEL based Linux distribution, it's time to start asking for explanations.
``"With the ... largest economy standardized on Windows desktops, desktop Linux does seem to have an uphill battle ahead of it."''
Has it ever been any different?
Eventually, people will choose what they choose for their own reasons. Network effects can be one of these reasons, and Microsoft still has that one covered for now. However, Linux has its own benefits compared to Windows. Some of these will always be there.
Who would have thought, in the mid 1990s, that Linux would get this big? Perhaps it will get there in China, as well.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
What Microsoft is doing is called 'dumping'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_pol
Microsoft used to tolerate the piracy of DOS until it became the standard then it started to tighten the screws. That won't work in China because the outflow of money would be intolerable. Right now China needs the American market. Once its own market gets up to steam they won't. The US of A won't have any leverage and Microsoft's revenue from China will continue to be minimal.
Could it be that China which has its own great firewall and such that since people can modify and use open source how they like [break any spy/firewall software the user doesnt like for example] wouldn't closed source be favored by at least the chinese government because of the obscurity? or that despite Linux distros becomming increasingly easy to use/install, there is still a preference for Windows because it makes up ~90% of desktop PC OS in the western world/US. very little choice but then again that may be part of why Windows does so well, there is a default install that at least can be said to work for most people with most people not customizing anything afterwords [setup and forget except for updates which seem to be not applied very well]
``The fact that... Linux failed to gain a major foothold in China is yet another blow to desktop Linux. After nearly eight years of being on the verge of a breakthrough, Linux seems more destined than ever to be a force in the server room but little more than a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop.''
Oh, come on. Just as those who have been proclaiming, the past few years, that whatever year it happened to be would be the year of Linux on the desktop were to early to proclaim victory, this is a bit too early to proclaim defeat.
I seem to recall something about one of the world's largest PC vendors starting to ship systems with Linux pre-installed. Does that sound like "a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop"? To me, it sounds more like one step on the road to being a recognized and respected operating system.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You can almost hear the author whisper to himself; "I hope this article turns out to be right.
So, in a country governed by a surpressive regime which wishes to controll and monitor it citizen's as much as possible, a proprieatry closed system controlled by a centralised body is standard software rather than a free open system with an ideological emphasis on the freedoms of the users. Doesn't sound to surprising does it ? Now the real WTF is that the democratic world is using it as well...
Unless the Chinese government outlaws linux and alternative OS, its only a matter of time for world wide open source software to improve beyond what microsoft can produce. Note, I said "Open Source Software" which is a wider base than the "Linux Kernel".
But for this to be promoted as Victory of MS vs. Linux. Certainly it is a hype, as GNU/linux continues to replace Microsoft products in governments around the world. Before GNU/Linux what was the option?
Sooooo, in the bigger picture, MS has been down graded from a sure thing, only option, to a need to announce and amplify the announcement of victory over the competition in specific cases.
You will not find MS announcing competitors victory over them and maybe not even teh same level of media coverage.
The fact that it took the open source software development model to create competition for microsoft, where all other MS competitors business models failed, says a lot as to what to expect of the future of open source software.
That's true. Microsoft is still making money in that price.
People here in China usually buy a disc(with windows or whatever on it) for less than 5 Yuan(7.5 Yuan equals 1 US dollar).
A 3-dollar piece is considered quite expensive for students. For some who came from rural areas, 3 dollars means food supply for 3 (or more)days .
Not to mention that sharing and downloading are quite common methods to obtain software among students.
China, in fact, is very fragile.
I congratulate you on making an intelligent argument here. However, you are off by two orders of magnitude, and that changes the picture completely.
First, there are about 1 Billion PC's worldwide (IIRC, it's supposed to hit 1 Billion this year). PC's are out of reach of the common person there; in fact, most of them are just working to survive. A far more realistic (and still optimistic) estimate might be around 100 Million PC's. That's a factor of 10 difference right there.
Secondly, if you had read TFA, you'd realize that China is only paying Microsoft about $3 for it's software. Even if that were to grow to $10, you're still off by another factor of 10.
So, instead of getting $100 Billion from China (which is a total pipedream), Microsoft would be lucky to get $1 Billion. That's far more realistic, and is basically chump change as far as the deficit goes.
This would be far more in line with business as usual. And it hardly makes the argument to keep them above the law. While I don't expect another anti-trust case while Bush is in office, Microsoft is still quite vulnerable to this issue being raised by its domestic competitors after the next Presidential election.
It matters because nothing Microsoft does benefits anyone but them in the long run. You've got to have noticed this by now.
As the half-dozen or so posters above me demonstrate, that assertion is ridiculous.
If computing had been left to the *nix crowd, we'd still be telnetting into mainframes running JCL.
If computing had been left to Apple, the machine you really want would still cost $5,000.00, and its mouse would still have one button.
MSFT has indeed plumbed new depths of suckiness in many aspects of both business and technology, but by not giving credit where it's due, you undermine your whole argument.
The only thing that will happen is that next time around, when China is so commited that there's no way back, M$ will simply hike up the price to recover whatever losses they make this time around.
``These moves, coupled with building strong relationships within the Chinese government and opening a major research center in Beijing, completely changed Microsofts fortunes in China.'' (emphasis mine)
So it was good old favoritism. Buy a can of politicians, get one nation free!
This is why those with power should be watched and their use of said power closely scrutinized. Of course, there's no such thing going on in China.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
99% of Windows users don't know how to use Windows, at all. Really. They just know the couple of APPLICATIONS they use, and how to launch them.
Example: I had just this week to teach a windows user how to remove entries from boot loader menu. He had to reinstall windows and the reinstall process partially borked, like it usually does.
It was like 'start a command prompt' (+long explanation), change file attributes on boot.ini in C: root (+long explanation), launch text editor (+explanation), toggle back file permissions - oops I mean attributes... and boot and pray.
How this was any easier than modifying GRUB config escapes me.
'Readiness' and 'Intuitiviness' do not equal familiarity.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Linux "...on the verge of a desktop breakthrough?..." Surprise, surprise! Same thing different day! While I do believe in and use Linux, I don't think that it can alone topple the Microsoft giant (not anytime soon). I don't know how many times I see reports about how "...Linux is this close to breaking into the mainstream desktop environment!..." and yet never quite doing it. This whole thing is as elusive as Hydrogen fusion (not even the "cold" kind). To me, Microsoft is just too big and powerful. Like we haven't heard all of this before and will for at least the next 5-years!!
linux sucks an ass anyway.
I question the reliability of this article because obviously Dell would not be seeking to expand its production of Linux-based (Ubuntu) PCs if they did not believe there is a solid market. Linux and the BSDs have been (and are) ready for the desktop. Unfortunately, Microsoft's desktop market share is so vast that it will be more of a "chipping away" than a large scale migration from Windows to Linux on the desktop. Meanwhile I applaud efforts like Dell's and I hope for continued penetration of open source into the market place. Instead of ruing that Linux and the BSDs are not running on the desktop, let's celebrate their pervasiveness at the server end. Despite the F.U.D. pump MS is running against open source, we continue to see more open source adoption for servers. Shortly, UNIX will take advantage of the wonderful work of Samba 4 and replace Windows as the Active Directory Domain Controller, File, and Print server.
ya, and a lot of other people made and still make gobs of money with haliburton and KBR and in the past with enron, so what is your point again, that if you "make money" it makes it acceptable? Really, that is all that matters, just the cash, nothing else? What a fine set of values you are passing on to your kids then! anything fucking goes as long as you get yours, huh?
Microsoft is a criminal asshole-ish company, proven in court, numerous reasons, all of them have been outlined all over, and *always* has been a predatory pack of lying strongarming jerks.
Hope you enjoy your share of the criminal loot, because that is all it is, part of their ill gotten spoils. Go vacation in your's and billy gate's perfect dream nation china, because they agree in so many areas! Maybe you can go watch them execute some political prisoners and cheer with the crowds there as the bullet hits them in the back of the head, then get a "deal" on spare parts to sell! Hey, business is business, anything goes! Profits rule! You're making a *good* living, so fuck everything else, right? Right! Money rules! Anything for Money! It doesn't matter how many times MS has gotten busted for this or that because PROFITS RULE! Nothing else is as important, it's the bottom line of bottom lines, no single other thing in the known universe is as important as MONEY! Caveat Emptor and Read the EULA! Get your expensive SNAKEOIL here, you can MAKE MONEY with it!
Go ahead and keep "making your money". Keep supporting crooks liars strong-arm men bribers and extortionists. You and the other "greed is good" crowd. Ya'all have fun worshiping at the feet of your superior wallstreet money gods and chinese and neocon political masters! Hey, keep licking their boots hard enough, they might give you a raise! yaa! More Money!
Linux can be great but for normal people (I'm one of them even if I'm a developer), Linux is a pain to use.
Installing new programs is a pain, and I'm not talking about device/hardware/drivers incompatibilities...
I want my computer to 'Just Work'. In addition I want to be able to use the best programs available, I want the original, not a copy: I want Photoshop, not Gimp (for example). Today I can get it for Windows and Mac OS X but not Linux. The same reasoning is true for so many programs that at the end of the day you don't care that Linux is free.
On the other hand, on the server side, being free is much more important. I don't even think about using another OS for that.
That's a nice example of "chinese math"...
i think the $3 fee is not true for average users in china. it is probably just an offer MS made only for government-use licenses. otherwise, how can MS get $700 million dollars from china? i think 1 billion is too conservative given that they can already get $700 million dollars a year from china.
What is chinese math?a th.php
http://www.tjacobi.com/50226711/what_is_chinese_m
A couple of simple facts blows this story completely out of the water:
... it's just that they've started paying.
- The Chinese government doesn't dictate to 2 billion Chinese what OS and software they use. The government itself is the size of a large corporation, so this is basically the same as a large corporation 'switching' to Windows & Office. But as noted, many of them were already using Windows & Office and not paying for it. So it's not even a 'switch'
- The population of China is not particularly relevant, as most Chinese work for less than $1 per day, and can't exactly afford a computer. If they could, I can't imagine them running out to buy Windows and Office. They'll either pirate Windows and Office, or use Linux.
- Corruption in China's state capitalist government is well documented, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were some kick-backs to key government ministers over this decision. Obviously the open-source community can't compete with this, and shouldn't take it too hard that Microsoft 'won' this deal ( which again, is basically an agreement to start paying for what they already use ).
- Red Flag linux is not being systematically wiped off the face of the planet.
The author of this story needs a 'Sanity Check' of his own. The battle for the desktop is going on with home users, not governments, and particularly not the Chinese government.
I don't know but, if I were a Microsoft product user, I'd be mighty peeved that some guy on the other side of the world is paying $3 while I'm paying $150 for the same exact piece of software.
Where's the fairness in that? Why the preferrential treatment? Are we rewarding criminals now?
Pffft!
Does anyone really think China will allow their citizens to use a free OS? Does Bill Gates really think Communist China will make a good paying customer?
Meanwhile back in reality, instead of conquering the world and prospering, M$ is in deep trouble.
With less than 1% of China's population on line, it's a little early to be taking "victory laps". Communists have glad handled western celebrities forever, so there's really nothing new or special about China's treatment of Gates. Fears of US spying have not gone anywhere, nor have issues of cost and reliability.
Bill Gates can hobnob with tyrants all day, what he needs to worry about is acceptance in his own back yard. Vista and Office 2007 have made no difference to M$ or anyone else's bottom line.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Linux security works at the OS level. If you're root on one system and you access a filesystem on another system over NFS you can modify files owned by root without having authenticated. That's a HUGE security flaw and it's been that way forever."
I beg to differ - If your running as root and accessing files as root on another system routinely, YOU ARE THE SECURITY FLAW.
With the Chinese military devoting huge amounts of time to rebooting WinDoze clients, there will be no time to train and wage war.
All this talk of GNU/Linux competing over a slice of the user share is pointless.
The only thing that matters is that I can use an OS without restriction.
The only thing that matters is that ANYONE can use an OS without restriction.
This is the only thing that free software does better than any other proprietary system out there.
Even if GNU/Linux is dropped like a hot potato that's ok because free software
will still get made by poeple who do it for the love of it.
Using a computer is a human right not a privlege.
Microsoft's income from China will be about the same order as that of the entire trade deficit.
For software? You think China is going to spend one hundred billion dollars each year on software, something they could copy with impunity. Let me ground you right here, before you get further carried away. M$ is falling apart and the monopoly is over.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
- You can ONLY kill your own processes (unless you are an Administrator)
- Windows may disallow your attempt, even when you are an Administrator
- a program may be in a state that will make it non-responssive to kill from task manager
- You can not trust the "not responding" label on a program
"Best feature" ? Me think not.SE Linux and several commercial UNIX'es do have ACL's, what's your problem ? You need a sexy GUI for it ?
SAMBA woks well (incl. security) in a Windows domain, i belive it uses Kerberos...
NFS require proper setup for working security... but so does a Windows domain...
Cutting'n'Pasting ? I do it daily across several applications (including applications running under wine)...
Just as those who have been proclaiming, the past few years, that whatever year it happened to be would be the year of Linux on the desktop were to early to proclaim victory, this is a bit too early to proclaim defeat.
Especially because communists have given Bill Gates a big parade. Only a small percentage of Chinese citizens are lucky enough to own a computer. When a majority of them are computer owners and suffer Windoze and pay for it, I'll think Mr. Gates has won something.
Back in reality, he's got big problems. I've never proclaimed a year of linux before 2007. Vista changed my mind.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah MS is in such deep trouble they made record profits this year.
Gimme a break.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
This pattern of big companies getting chummy with oppressive governments is quite common. In the end, it doesn't matter that much. The fact that the Chinese managed to exert such pressure on Microsoft using Linux is already a win for Linux and a big loss for Microsoft. And in the long run, China will be free from Microsoft as Microsoft itself disappears.
...that they have fallen into our trap!! Soon they will feel the icy grip of the crappy and expensive upgrade and maintenance agreements that flow from Redmond!
Only when it is too late will they realize the power of the dark force. Muhahahahaha...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
They sell us crappy pet food we sell them crappy software!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Excuse me while I clean the coffie of my monitor and keyboard.
Nice piece of FUD dude.
Like the Chinese government is going to standardize on an OS that Microsoft allowed the US NSA to break into
deliberately.
Right, I believe that.
Sure.
I'm also personally acquainted with the Tooth Fairy, who looks a lot like Angelina Jolie.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I seriously doubt the Chinese are going to $100/person. In fact, most likely, using Linux as a bargaining chip, they probably negotiated that down to a few bucks per copy, at most. And the Chinese user population is much smaller than one billion anyway.
Also, it's wrong to assume that this money is going to make it to the US; it's likely paid to the Chinese subsidiary, and China is going to make sure that that gets spent in China as much as possible.
WINE does not "wrap" the Widnows API it is a complete implementation of it.
The Win32 API is not completely documented. Microsoft never has released all of the information which ensures that, push come to shove, they will be able to write code that will out perform most lucrative applications if they decide to squeeze the innovator out.
The real problem is all technical. It is trivial to write code that has the same functionality but does not violate Microsoft patents. I know that Microsoft would like people to believe that any software that does the same thing as one of their offerings MUST be violating some of their intellectual property. That's untrue and just FUD.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I didn't mean to suggest that WINE implements the Win32 API completely. I mean that it is not a wrapper but a implementation of the code. Completely being used to mean that it doesn't use any Windows code.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Gross oversimplification. The real difficulty is what happens after one of the applications is closed. This post explains how the Windows clipboard works: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/ 2003-September/msg00257.html
That's a bit of an odd thing to say. Applications on all OSes are developed somewhat independently of each other; that's what makes them individual applications. They aren't developed entirely independently of each other, otherwise they plain wouldn't work. They make use of each other's APIs, they talk to each other, they collaborate and depend on each other. A lot of apps on Linux tend to cooperate very well considering that they are developed pretty much all by third parties. 3rd party applications in Windows tend to be pretty bad for cooperation with each other and the OS in general... they tend to try and all compete for the user's attention in a highly uncoordinated way.
Copy and pasting from Excel into Word works fine. As does copy and pasting from OOo Calc into OOo Writer. This covers 95% of use cases. I wonder, though, how well things like Lotus 1-2-3 or Gnumeric/Win32 works when copying into Microsoft Word... I don't know, I've never tried... but I do know that a lot of the cooperation between Microsoft Office and third party applications isn't because of their solid foundation on standards, but rather because support has been hacked into the application. There may well be standards, but Microsoft in particular seem to be pretty good at diverging from even their own standards. Admittedly, clipboard is a bit of a soft spot
There is lots of session/system communication in Linux, all for different purposes and with different ideas. Many are agreed upon and collaborated with. DBUS is one.
You've fudged an awful lot of information here....
It is true that NFSv3 works this way, but it is also true that NFSv3 should only be used on trusted networks. This is nothing to do with filesystem security being at the OS level. It's true that this is the case, but that's nothing to do with the fact that being root allows you to behave as root on other computers... this is purely the way that NFS is implemented. Filesystem security should be at the OS level... that's merely how applications interact with the filesystem. Applications mediate the network access to filesystems, so if they're running as root and allow external users to access as root, it's their fault. NFSv4 fixes a lot of these flaws.
Samba/SMB/CIFS (or indeed AFS, DFS, or many of the other network filesystems) do not have this problem whatsoever. They work exactly the same as Windows File Sharing and in the case of Samba, is completely cross compatible with Windows.
I don't think it will ever be, and I think this is the idea of NFS. I don't think NFS was ever meant to be "just
Except this year, they changed how they book those sales. In the past, they would spread 1/3 of the profits out over 3yrs. This year, they changed that to booking 100% of the profit at the time of the sale. Time will tell how this pans out, but it does not look like the moves of a strong company that is comfortable in its profit potential.
In many countries it is a common business practice of giving "gifts" to the "right" people if you want to get something done. If you need a license in four months and not four years you bribe officials. Of course you don't do so in an obvious way but they reap your generosity anyway.
It's usually done through third parties that are hired and given a large operational budget.
Linux may be better for China but Microsoft money is better for some key officials.
And that folks is the way it works.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
This won't be the last time that Microsoft defeats FOSS by dropping its prices.
A long time ago I was playing with Linux and open source, and genuinely enjoyed it, and thought about where to direct my career. My conclusion was that no matter how good open source became, Microsoft had enough cash in the bank to always beat it by dropping their prices - not just a little bit, but astronomically. They will also open up their source code, adopt open document standards, or whatever else it takes takes to win the big customers. It's played out just as I predicted here now, and it's going to play out again, and again, and again.
So, I've stuck with Microsoft, and got into .Net, and now I'm looking at F#, Ruby and the DLR. As a programmer, I'm happy. Microsoft does lots of things well. I give credit to the great stuff that has come from open source, but I know that Windows is going to rule for a long time, and also be a exciting platform to work with.
As for the single mum, providing a computer for her kids, and having to pay hundreds of dollars for Windows and Office, because that's what they use at school, she doesn't get any benefit from China's $3 Microsoft deal. She's hurting, and I keep hoping that she'll get a break from somewhere. Maybe FOSS can do it, by always threatening Micosoft, even it never takes over.
Maybe that's the real value of FOSS. By always providing a free alternative, they keep the pressure on Microsoft, and more and more people will get better deals. Our governments should be enabling this competition, by insisting on open standards, resisting software patents, and using and financing FOSS (in some degree). We programmers can help too, by open sourcing some of our software, and keeping ourselves in the FOSS loop. A few $$ from directed from our own income to FOSS is also a good idea.
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
That sounds like you're talking about mainframes and minis. Not PC's. We're talking about things like the Commodore 64 and the Amiga and the Apple.
What "hardware" would that be? The software I remember purchasing would specifically identify on the box the system it was written for.
That's possible. But it is irrelevant because no one except you knows who people like you are.
See above.
See above.
It seems that you're trying to compare mainframe costs to PC costs. That makes no sense. Then you talk about how Microsoft helped "improve" your life. Possibly. But who are you to say that a world without Microsoft would not have been BETTER for more people?
Simply look at the progress and innovation we have in hardware where there is open competition. We have multi-core processors, cheap gigabytes of RAM and hard drives that now measure in the terabyte range.
With Linux we are FINALLY seeing competition at the OS level (and above) again.
Just look at the 'Web. Built on Open standards that Microsoft ignored until it was too late to control them. It doesn't matter whether you're reading this on a Windows machine or whether
The what we lost when Microsoft won the desktop. The chance for Open standards to encourage open competition which would benefit all of us the way it has on the Internet.
i thought what MS is doing in China should be called "dumping". other software companies in China should be able to sue MS according to WTO rules. $3 for a license would kill any domestic or international competitors.
... and US businesses are outsourcing tons of work to China, so it makes no sense for the Chinese to be on incompatible operating systems. At least that's how it is for our outsourcing work we ship over there. We have them on Windows systems that are configured exactly the same so they can run proprietary .NET applications and all of the third party apps we require them to run. I can tell you from personal experience that if any of these companies was pushing to be on Linux we'd their asses and find someone else.
They couldn't put Spyware in Linux - it's open source so people could just recompile, but with Microsoft's cooperation they could put it Windows. The WGA add-on the Microsoft sent in their 'Security Update' already tells Microsoft when you turn your computer on and off, your computers ID (combination of IP, BIOS, HDD volume #, windows product ids): enough to identify you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advan tage
Given the Chinese Government's penchant for maintaining social order, this could be real handy. Think MS wouldn't do this for fear of a customer backlash? Maybe not in the US (but even there they get away with a lot). In China, would they do anything for that multi-million (billion?) dollar market? Of course they would!
As Yahoo CEO cum Chinese Government Informant Jerry Wang would say "We're just following the laws of the country in which we are operating" Zeig Heil!
Whoa, Nelly! This article - and the discussion here - is rife with untested assumptions. Let's establish a bit of context here before going too far.
Microsoft beat Linux? That most certainly is how Microsoft sees the situation. But their entire ethos is of conquest, control and coercion. None of these apply to Linux. While it's true that some have used Linux as a tool to gain leverage with Microsoft, Linux as an operating system has no goal, except to be good at what it does. Unlike Microsoft, Linux is not controlled by any single actor, or even by a like-minded group of actors.
Linux doesn't fight Microsoft (though MS does fight Linux and FOSS in general). It just keeps improving for its own sake and for the sake of its users. If that has detrimental effects on Microsoft's control of the operating systems market - and it does - well, that is nothing more than a collateral benefit.
So, from Microsoft's perspective, maybe they did 'beat' Linux, but even that defeat isn't complete or permanent. When China donates PCs to its development partners, what OS does it ship? Linux. Is Red Flag dead and buried? No. Is China dependant on Microsoft for its IT infrastructure? Hardly.
What price victory? A more honest evaluation of the circumstances of China's decision to accept Microsoft at all shows that Microsoft's 'victory' may be more pyrrhic than anything. With trademark deftness, China has largely de-fanged one of the most effective and brutal corporate negotiating teams in the world. This is the corporation that managed to buy off the US government and avoid any real punishment following its conviction for abuse of monopoly powers. It's the company that has consistently and rather successfully thumbed its nose at the European Union, the largest economic entity in the world today. It has controlled standards processes, locked in countless corporations and ruthlessly dominated the supply chain world-wide.
Yet Chinese negotiators got everything they asked for. Price reductions? They pay about 10% of what other governments do per seat. Control? They not only have access to the source code, they have to right to alter it to suit their purposes.
Think about what that means to the Chinese. In economic, political and strategic terms, they've negotiated unprecedented access to an invaluable resource, and they've done it in a way that costs them next to nothing. Truth be told, Microsoft got almost nothing out of this deal. China still uses Linux whenever and wherever it wants.
A deal that would make Stallman laugh. If we think about the Four Freedoms that underlie the GPL, the same four freedoms for which Richard Stallman and the FSF have fought so desperately to support and preserve, the same freedoms that are so perfectly antithetical to everything that Microsoft stands for... these are exactly the freedoms that China has preserved in its deal with Microsoft.
Let's be honest here: Microsoft may have won the battle, but only by utterly compromising itself and its future in China. They have placed themselves in a virtually abject position vis à vis China. Happily, the Chinese know enough about loss of face to ensure that they never rub this in Gates' face.
Bottom line: This is not a Linux/Microsoft story. Linux is a bit player in this story, a Rosencrantz to Microsoft's Hamlet. The real story is how China managed to pull a classic con on one of the toughest negotiating teams in the corporate world, and how they did it so well that Microsoft keeps coming back for more.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Microsoft attempted a strategy of lowering prices for Windows/Office while pushing for anti-piracy action from the Chinese government. These efforts failed, repeatedly, and the end result according to this article is that Microsoft will sell Windows AND Office, combined for a price of $3.
If that if a victory I can't imagine what a defeat would look like. If they are going to get $3 per copy of Windows+Office Microsoft would be lucky to break even on the raw materials, packaging, and shipping. The thing is Microsoft can't afford to just break even, they have tens of thousands of employees, including many lawyers and accountants and sales people involved in pushing their products, plus the support staff for all of those employees. And for those that would say "well Microsoft is sitting on a huge war chest" this is correct, they aren't going to go out of business any time soon, but they also can't bleed money indefinitely and watch potential revenue streams dry up without their stock tanking.
It looks like their game plan in China is to sell their software at break even or a loss just to get people used to the idea of paying for it and hopefully maintain market share. I guess they could make a profit in 5-10 years assuming:
people in china get used to the idea of paying for their software AND they have the money to pay more in the future AND they are willing to do so AND a suitable alternative (desktop Linux) hasn't risen in popularity. Which to me sounds more like a pipe-dream than a game plan.
I wish Microsoft many more of these sorts of "victories" in the future. Though their shareholders may feel differently.
I thought large numbers of machines in China used the proprietary Loongson/Godson series of processors (proprietary modified MIPS) for various reasons, the first of which I would see as to prevent operating systems not authorized by the Chinese govt from running (for example it might aid in their Great Firewall of China). Supposedly they are comparable to P4's but with a lower production cost, and is one less thing China has to import or license from foreign countries.
I'm not sure just how many PC's in China run these things, but if the number of x86 or normal MIPS and PPC machines running in China, but if those numbers are insignificant compared to the Loongson series, just how does MS plan to sell Windows to people that can't even run it?
The contest here is between the organization known as Microsoft and the organization known as the Chinese government. I do not necessarily disagree here about the winner, but it's important to be clear about who lost if Microsoft won.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Yeah MS is in such deep trouble they made record profits this year.
In an inflationary economy, every year is a record. Vista and Office 2007 should have made a difference but did not. Imagine a flat line, your brain and your balls are dying but non free CPR takes six years. The game is over - without money, they can't attract the programmers and vendor "support" they need to make product, and without product they will run out of money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
But they all came back to Windows, because there are Windows input methods and word processors for Simplified and Traditional Chinese that kick the pants off of anything available for Linux. The wife doesn't even care so much for Mac OSX compared to the one for Windows. And the fonts for Simplified Chinese in Fedora are mediocre at best, and awful at worst. Looking at a Google.cn search in Firefox on Ubuntu 7.04 is hideous even to my untrained eyes -- you see many characters missing, and the characters that are there look like a mish-mash of multiple fonts.
So, if you care about this issue, this is what needs to happen.
This is one of those times where we need to recognize that the better product won. And the only thing for us to do is to make ours better.
Linux supports ACLs fine, setfacl is what you use to change ACLs and there are UIs for ACLs. Samba supports ACLs, and in a cross compatible with Windows way too.
Typical hair splitting non-sense. My point about ACLs was that a Linux desktop user cannot share documents on the network. That would require authentication and authorization such that the user's identity and groups are used by the remote server to make access control decisions. Although technically possible it is very difficult to setup and administer.
To a kernel, people can be represented by a small number. Windows kernel works the same way. File sharing and so on work outside the kernel and do it fine. There's no reason the kernel can't internally think of the users as a small number when doing filesystem permission checks. The filesharing application will translate this small number into a username or something else when dealing with remote logins or ACLs.
You are so misguided. Windows SIDs have domain part which is specific to the domain controller on which they were created. The relative part identifies the specific account within the domain. An ACL is a list of SIDs and corresponding access masks. The Windows kernel takes the user's SID and compares it to the SIDs in the ACL when making access control checks. Linux has no concept of a domain component so everything must be mapped to local UIDs. That is very clumsey but no one cares because *nix machines are application platforms so domain membership is not terribly important. Again, the whole point is that trying to share content between desktop users with ACLs is not practical.
This is where I think Linux has more of a chance. It's completely centrally manageable, lightweight, open and free. It can be customised completely to the needs of the corporation and can be configured to work extremely well on any given hardware with a selection of apps that cooperate properly together and are heavily tested.
This proves without a doubt that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Corporate types don't want "open", "free", or "customised". They want to plug it in, turn it on, and start cutting and pasting and sharing documents and killing stuff with ctrl-alt-del. They don't want to setup ldap such that it replicates kerberos keys in just such a way and make sure they're using such and such filesystem so that ACLs work, blah, blah, blah. If some middle manager saw that going on they would have a heart attack right there on the spot thinking about the liabilites involved. If you ever worked in an office environment you would know this (or you know it but you just don't want to believe it because it crushes your hope for a Linux desktop).
Setting up everything you need for Linux desktop clients in a large Intranet environment is very difficult and the reason is that all of the components are developed independently from one another and as such they each need configuration to work with the other.
Advocating Linux for the desktop only makes it harder for Linux to make it where it deserves to succeed which is in the data center. Your fanatic retoric is doing harm to the credablity of Linux in intranet environments. Please stop.
In my desktop, after trying to use Ubuntu 7.0.4 for my all day work I found that it just doesn't run any serious program I have tried including native games and apps. Maya was the only app that I was able to run but after few minutes the entire system crashed and a reset was the only way.
On this way: native apps doesn't run, native games doesn't run (old ones because there aren't new titles), emulators fail constantly, OpenOffice sucks, Blender sucks, usb phone devices for Skype doesn't work, 3d space navigators doesn't work, Ageia physics card doesn't have drivers, video drivers sucks, etc... etc... etc... Linux will NEVER become a desktop OS, never!
While the actual companies Red Hat, Ubuntu, SuSE doesn't understand what the desktop user wants and needs including the closed minds at Mandriva (some time ago I proposed to them to start the development of multimedia material, encyclopedias, contents generators, games, educational titles, etc. and I failed miserably to obtain a single answer) Linux will never be a serious option to adopt. Count on this failure list the stupid philosophy from the box-minds Debian guys (if it isn't GPL and free it isn't included. My GPL project [name reserved] was banned from Debian distro because it was not free, but it's GPL. Those retarded doesn't know that GPL != free?) No... no... no... this isn't the way. But just forget this, my entire graphics studio is now using Windows Vista due to all this, shame on you Linux!
Mac OS X, for me at least was not an option because I can't use my PC hardware (video cards, hard disks, externakl devices, RAM memory, etc) on any Apple system. If Apple release Mac OS X for PC, then we'll consider again the possibility to move on, before this they get a BIG NO from me.
So, what's the remaining option? Vista or any other Microsoft product that just works. After several tests to adopt a big platform we decided to stay with Dell Workstations and Vista. All the required software worked like a charm, all my hardware worked perfectly, have plenty of software solutions for my work and even if there is a very not so important device that registered some problems, we found that Vista was the only viable and rentable solution for us.
So... all this can give a panoramic point of view of what's happening with Linux and "others" trying to steal market from the dominating company. And to change this, it's required a lot of work and honestly I consider that there is not a single Linux company that have concerns about this reality, they just don't care. They care just for about the 0.5% of computers users (mainly geeks and hackers) but for the remaining 99.5% they showed to have no interest. All this is the signature of the death sentence of Linux. And Apple will go for the same way if they insist to not open their OS to other platforms. While I can work on Windows and produce, honestly I don't care about who falls. The best deserves our loyalty.
"I have gone through the Microsoft era, Unix era, Open Source era, Java era, and so on."
Apparently no one here has gone through the clackity-clack relays, and plugboard era.
You're absolutely right, both about the motivations and benefits of maintaining independece from Microsoft. However, I have a suspicion that to the government hierarchy in China (and equally for many corporations everywhere), free and open source software may also appear to be outside their control. It's an alien form of organization to them, one not amenable to the forms of influence to which they are accustomed. In that vein, the interests of China are not identical with the interests of the people making the decision. Microsoft may be able to offer them inducements, while the FOSS community will offer them nothing.
These days, the Chinese government is in the business of making deals with corporations; they may be betting that their power is sufficient to guarantee their interests. Given the recent phenomenon of corporations "going along to get along" in China, they may be right. Eric Raymond's remark (from the TechRepublic article) that "any 'identification' between the values of the open-source community and the repressive practices of Communism is nothing but a vicious and cynical fraud" points to a risk - China's influence on Linux might have been anything but positive, either symbolically or in practice. We may have dodged a bullet. China, on the other hand, may have lost an opportunity to address (at least in a small way) its tragic situation.
Linux has always had an uphill battle ahead of it. And yet it continues to gain momentum on the desktop, despite such flamebait as this. db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
So, the reality is that Linux on the desktop is growing at 20% per annum in the commercial market which lags the personal/free market by a large margin. M$ had to cut its price to $3 just to stay competitive. That is all Linux needs, to be allowed to compete on price and performance. For years, M$ has had a free ride. That is soon stopping. Get used to it. It is doubtful that Linux will KO M$ because some will always want to pay too much or be swayed by sales campaigns , but M$ will fall into the pack with realistic prices and market shares. Remember the glory days of the Soviet Union, when every election resulted in the landslide for a single candidate of the party's choosing? Those days are gone forever in Russia and they will soon be gone for M$.
A problem is an opportunity http://mrpogson.com
they offered the chinese government a backdoor into windows sold in china.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Mess with us and watch your whole country stop.
A resigned Chinese may utter the obligatory: "I, for one, welcome our new MS overlords"
Read the article again... Microsoft are deliberately starting with a low initial price to gain mindshare. After that it's straightforwared to jack up the price incrementally of the course of several years until you're effectively paying whatever they want you to pay. And people will pay, as the NZ AA demonstrated when they switched back to MS Office. The only thing Linux has done is given people some sort of bargaining power when dealing with Microsoft. The reality is most people (i.e. people not reading slashdot) want to use a MS product because of familiarity and ease of use over a Linux based solution. If they can use Linux and OSS as a bargaining tool to lower the price, they will.
China is so complicated and so tragic. The control of the central government there is weakening. Much of the evil in China is a consequence of that loss of control. Recently, for example, up to 53,000 slave workers were discovered in the brick industry Shanxi province. That's 50,000 pepole in one industry in one province. The central government doesn't want this. Nor does it sanction the kidnapping and mutilation of children used as beggars, or the sale of women in the countryside or any of the many other terrible things that happen in a country encompassing over a fifth of the word's population.
What do you do if you have political power in a place like China? Do you try to further weaken the control of the central government? Or do you try to work within the system? There aren't a lot of alternatives in a system that does not permit other power bases and where capitalism appears to be in its most destructive, dynamic, and materialistic phase. This is a place where one of my first impulses on arriving in Beijing a decade ago was that the pollution was so bad that cleaning the air was more important than democracy. I can't bring myself to blanket the human beings running China with the label "evil". Some of them, I'm certain, are heroes.
The government has lost the moral authority of Communist ideology, so it's trying to leverage nationalism without letting it get out of control. China has a deep-seated sense of historical wrong, a memory of millenia when it was the only civilized place in the world, and an insecurity about the disrespect of the West that wronged it (and don't doubt that our ancestors did). China makes me very sad, but it also scares the hell out of me. If it collapses, watch out: the first half of the 20th century saw the horrors of a fragmented out-of-control China. Right now, I fear it looks at least a little bit like pre-war Germany.
In China, the infrastructure for selling Chinese-built Linux-based computers using Chinese-fabricated Godson CPU's is growing. For example Lemote.com is selling 200$CA Godson-based computer running Debian MIPS-derived Linux and showing off Beryl. Youtube even has a few videos about it. Gentoo can build this target also. From what I understand Godson 3 will be 100% compatible with mips64. Soon, there will be a laptop configuration available.
:)
The preceding demonstrates the successes with the Chinese Government directing effort towards self-sufficiency concerning CPU and Operating Systems technology. I suspect that eventually, economically speaking, China will achieve a respectable gain and the U.S. will feel this market loss in terms of American-made CPU/OS sales until the market balances out. In the article that was mentioned, I saw nothing stating the impact another CPU/OS competitor entry will have on Microsoft's sales, but I am sure Microsoft would like to see the U.S. use under-the-table influence to somehow have China "abandon efforts" concerning home-made CPU/OS technology.
To describe a possible outcome I will tell you about a little story in the 1950's. In Canada, we had this fantastic fighter-jet called the AVRO ARROW. As soon as the U.S. got wind of what Canada was capable of, they influenced the high-level decision makers to "abandon efforts" directed to the AVRO ARROW to ensure CANADA would purchase all fighter-jet technology from the U.S. This resulted in a brain-drain of engineers from AVRO going straight to NASA. Concerning the remaining home-grown fighter-jet technology in Canada today, Canada still has some but it's mostly for public relations purposes. The lesson learned is the U.S. succeeded in killing whatever aerospace technology advantage had over the U.S. through the use of political influence. Canada abandoned its commitment towards it's aerospace industry self-sufficiency and as a result all the potential revenue from fighter-jet/aerotransport sales has now been redirected towards U.S.-owned companies. At the time we didn't see it as such a bad thing because Canada was given incentives of some sort. The other result is that since the 1950's, the magic of making jets and satellites has been a closely guarded secret. Proof of this can be seen recently with the U.S. wishing to reclaim the only remaining monument commemorating Canada's participation in having ICBMS's for nuclear deterrence: North Bay Ontario's BOMARC missile. All the others have been successfully reclaimed. It's interesting how some people don't want us to learn from history by taking away our monuments.
The question I have for all of you is this: Do you think the Godson CPU family/Chinese Computer/Chinese Linux combo will become another AVRO ARROW to be scrapped through the influence of Microsoft and the U.S. Diplomats?
The article you posted claims indirectly that Microsoft already has beaten Chinese Linux in China.
My guess is that if Microsoft has beaten Linux in China, it is only for the moment. Give the Chinese CPU/Computer/Linux combo a bit more time and you will see Linux on top and not just in China.
Yeah, that works fine, what are you talking about? It even pastes as tables. What was your point?
Feeling mature today, aren't we now?
Am I the only /.'er that has concluded that we are seeing WAY too many of these types of stories on the front page? It feels as if all the slashdot-behind-the-scenes-people have straight up sold out to the MSFT astroturfers.
It's trash, it's bullshit, and it is not why I have visited /. daily for the last couple of years . . .
Would someone PLEASE private message me and tell me where everybody went? I would ditch /. in a heartbeat if only I knew where everyone went.
SARAVA!
by having an easily crackable authentication scheme that allowed all the Chinese free pirated copies of XP/VISTA ;)
yes, im sure M$ is very proud of this accomplishment...
-Yourmomisfasterthanabeowulfcluster
It's not Linux, but who cares? UNIX is UNIX is UNIX, whether it's called AIX or Interix or HPUX or Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris or OSX, anyone who can write portable UNIX or UNIX+X11 or UNIX+Tk or UNIX+Gtk software can 'write one, run anywhere'.
Even on Windows.
Don't get hung up on one brand. It's bad for your blood pressure.
Microsoft is a pretty large company with a fairly large number of investors, among which are large mutual funds. If you've done your homework and you know something fund managers don't, please share it with everyone.
Otherwise all you come across is a pathetic Microsoft basher with too much time on his hands.
And let me say, first, that MS obviously has a very strong position in the desktop market here. Windows is at least as ubiquitous here as it is in the States. But why would it ever be any other way? MS has millions of dollars to play with, cozy/exploitative relationships with most makers of PC's here, and a huge base of GAMES to draw Chinese users in. Chinese people love their video games, and 70% of internet users here are online for games (I got that from Harper's, I think...).
Not to mention the fact that business in China is a cultural obsession here, like movies in LA or food in France. This makes Bill Gates, Richest Man on Earth, everyone's Cowboy/Doctor/Rockstar/Boyfriend, and creates a lot of goodwill towards MS products.
Anyway, Linux was never going to emerge as a majority operating system in China for the same reason that it's had problems in the US- it's not coming pre-installed on most people's systems. MS cut a deal with the PRC and, in return for givin' up the code, got broad market access. They probably had to grease wheels, too, but again, they've got the money to do it.
Chinese nerds I talk to like Linux because it (potentially) can be hardened against government intrusion, but the average Ah Q takes intrusion for granted and would rather play WOW. All the issues that get American FOSS advocates' thongs in a twist are in operation over here- pervasive censorship, domestic spying, code piracy, plutocratic monopolists upsetting markets by fiat.
What's hopeful about Linux and the OSS movement over here is the potential for the technology to circumvent all the meddling. I mean, plain ol' HTML has been incredibly disruptive to the government's media control, and technologies like Tor potentially allow any Chinese citizen to read any Taiwanese newspaper. It's had a huge impact on issues like environmental awareness, minority and gay and lesbian rights, local corruption, and development issues.
So what I'm saying is, there's actually a huge demand for Linux in China, but the technical hurdles are probably too great, and the awareness too small, for it to be more than a niche technology right now. This is coupled with the very poor state of technical education in China. While it does have first-class technical universities, many, many more schools offering computer-science degrees are simply cookbook factories, teaching students how to operate specific pieces of MS software. If desktop Linux isn't catching on in the US, it's not catching on in China for the same reasons.
The breakthrough will be a secure Ubuntu-like OS with excellent/perfect Chinese character support in the style of ABC, that's "underground" enough to convince the average guy that it's not somehow corrupted by the government. (In Beijing, many people prefer wonky-looking newspapers over slick ones, because it's a sign that they aren't controlled/funded/corrupted by the government, rightly or wrongly.)
Who knows if this combination is even possible? If it is, it will need an excellent team of designers to tune the user experience, and some serious guerrilla marketing.
it's interesting to see their old policies coming back to bite them on this one.
microsoft leveraged their monopoly to make it impossible for customers for 6 years to get anything other than windows xp on a new computer. the result? customers think that a new computer means windows xp, and are deeply suspicious of change. now there's suddenly a new operating system none of their friends have. windows xp's main advantage was always its ubiquity. vista, due to being new, does not have this.
microsoft has told the customer for years that different=difficult. now they are reaping what they have sowed.
Read the article, it's true - no point in arguing. Ninety-percent I'd say run IE etc, so much so that hardly any webbies check on other browsers. Probably about the same percentage. They teach .net and java in schools. So OS on server shizzle is still there. Server wise, yeah hosting companies run 2003, but always offer a linux alternative through a CPanel/plesk interface.
:)
Chinese language and translation tools run on windows and IE better than they do on the mac and linux, so they use it for study along side their normal courses.
My office is all mac with the exception of ubuntu server. The reaction is sometimes negative. Popular IM clients like QQ only run on PC's, unless you get the port (not as accessible). Then you get other IM's like off taobao (big online sales), thats windows only.
Users don't know what Ubuntu is unless they're in their 30's and have worked in a senior role or admin role in languages outside of ASP. Oddly enough, the north is predominantly more windows-esque than the south. Perhaps the influence of the tech savvy of Hong Kong pushing north.
Anyway as much as I hate it, having the edge or difference knowing all about OS-OS and carrying a Macbook Pro makes you unique
As someone lived in China for some 24 years (I have never been outside of mainland) and running a company specifically providing Linux-related service, I know the difficulty of having Chinese people use Linux desktop. The local government district CIO of the city my company is in (Xiamen) appreciate what Linux can do and asked his employee to use Linux, even with strong supporter like him it's very difficult to push Linux to governmental users. I discussed this topic with him a lot of times. The main problem is Chinese government IT sector and all related IT stuff have heavily rooted in Windows during years of using pirate copies of Windows and application runs on Windows. To show the difficulty I simply list things that will happen if government use Linux: 1) (I guess) more than half of the governmental website are no longer accessible by government employee. Including Chinese Ministry of Information website that used for public website registration and website of tax office; 2) the groupware used in 95% of Chinese governmental offices (mostly produced by local software vendors and called "office automation" software) are not usable. The leading governmental "office automation" software vendor in China is only several blocks away from my office and I know them well, their product still prompt "please upgrade your IE" if you access from Linux; 3) all web application and desktop application they used to use stop working immediately, including accounting software and the tax office web application which require each tax payer to pay tax online only if they have Excel installed (ActiveX technology is used on the web which calls MS Office components). The software for every governmental business, including workflow and online reports, are based on Office Automation software that use ActiveX control which in turn calls MS word for processing text on the web. 4) the main communication ways are no longer usable. In local government the mostly used communication methods are telephone, SMS short message and QQ message. The later two require software that only runs on Windows. By deploying Linux without carefully planning strategic move, you cripple government internal communication instantly. 5) government regularly release document, public or internal, in doc format. Most word document doesn't look exactly the same when opened with OpenOffice, especially in regarding to line-height and table layout. 6) all government IT service partners will no longer be able to serve government well before they regain the ability to develop on Linux. Most of these IT service partners never used Linux and many of them never seen Linux running. 7) training and support is almost impossible to catch up in current level of number of Linux experts existing. 8) non of the employees are used to Linux. CIO must fact the challenge from grass root and stop them from installing pirate copies of Windows when they obtained Linux PC. These are just some of the most important issue. This is not saying desktop Linux is impossible in China or Chinese government, it just mean there is a way to go and is challenging. Please feel free to further contact me for anything as I probably is one of these people closest to truth and have been trying push Linux Desktop in China for years (me myself use Desktop Linux since college). Reach me at zhangweiwu@realss.com
"My point about ACLs was that a Linux desktop user cannot share documents on the network." Yes, a normal user should NEVER be allowed to share ANYTHING on a corporate network. That is in fact considered a major security risk.
and on a home network nobody uses ACLs anyway.
"Anyway, the bottom line is that if you want to cut something from gnumeric and past it into OOo writer, it's not going to work."
I hate to disturb your fun, but it *does* work. I just tried it, and even font weight and color are preserved. Gnumeric 1.7.8 and OpenOffice 2.2.0. They agreed on a common clipboard format a long time ago.
who's afraid he'll have to learn Linux.
I figured as someone who writes tech articles for money that Linux was going to be the "next big thing" 5 years ago and started running Linux full-time 3 years ago with Windows virtualization, then via Win4Lin, now via VMware Server. New article markets aside, it's the best computer-related decision I've ever made. Even Windoze runs better on a VM than it ever did with control of an actual computer. I take for granted stability, reliability, security, and speed I never imagined possible in a native Windows environment
Desktop Linux has vastly improved in the last 3 years, to the point where with some handholding, it's ready for high-end Windows users. There's still work to be done, when it's to the point where manual configuration of configuration files is practically never necessary for common tasks (e.g. running a UPS, powersaving on the desktop), writing scripts is NEVER necesary for common tasks, and driver availability can be taken for granted, it's ready for the average user.
With a major vendor selling Linux, things are finally at the point where somebody has to step up and solve these problems. Dell is big enough to push manufaturers on drivers.
We're looking at the finish line in the "get Linux ready" race and the start of real platform wars.
MS has been trying to break up the Linux scene for years because they've seen this, too. Perhaps instead of trying to FUD Linux to death, they should have spent the money building a reliable / stable / secure XP replacement, probably based on a proprietary *nix and running a bundled XP in emulation.
It's too late for them now.
Tech Public Policy stuff
average over 1 billion is useless in china. there are two chinas, the still very poor countryside and the well off urban dwellers. there are many more bumpkins than city dwellers and that will throw any average salary calculation totally out of wack. the people that matter have decent salaries compared to the "average" figure.
It's more like: one is free. The other you have taken all your life and the pharma corporation paid a lot of money for the doctor to prescribe it, for the health insurance corporation to reject payment if you ever were to use any other drug and for advertising in the media.
And even in the third world it is the latter drug which is used, because the pharma corporation wants to make money, thus forces out alternatives used there, too, and pirates only copy the latter drug because it makes them more money while the pharma corporation patents the former one so you can't use it anywhere on the world.
Because where would we be going if anything were free, making people healthy instead of pumping money into pharma corporations by keeping people ill so they need the drugs?
In Soviet Russia, government controls corporations.
In Capitalist America, corporations control government.
As a CEO of major Fortune 100 company I have to say that reading your posts on slashdot has convinced me that Windows does not in fact have 90% of the desktop market. I'd never have realised. Thank you very much!
0 27751
"Imagine a flat line, your brain and your balls are dying but non free CPR takes six years."
Twitter, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=257067&cid=20
Good God man, that's almost poetry.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Wow! You Linux geeks sure are hardheaded. I mean, c'mon!! This IS big news! After all, m$ and China DON'T really have what one would call "good relations;" and, for m$ to pull ahead in *CHINA* ... well then that's something... REALLY (I, for one, thought the PRC would've LOVED the idea of Linux over WinBLOWS (ESPECIALLY considering how much Vista SUCKS)!!
/. is FULL of desktop Linux (which doesn't work THAT well, IMHO) loving nerds who ABSOLUTELY hate Microsoft)??? I mean, I'm not a big fan of m$ (as you may be able to tell), but, then again, I'm not a big fan of Linux (on the desktop at least). However, AT LEAST I'm man enough to admit when m$ has won!
It seems ANYTHING with the word "Microsoft" gets tagged as "lame," and ANYBODY *SIDING* with Microsoft gets tagged as a "troll" or "flamebait."
Is there something I DON'T know? I mean, is there something I'm missing here (other than the fact that
This is an excellent strategy.
Microsoft's advantage in the US and the rest of the world is based on one thing: their early success during the explosion of personal computers. The explosion was happening with or without Microsoft. Microsoft did not *cause* the explosion. They simply took advantage of it. Their deal with IBM put them at an advantage when Compaq created the first clone, and so they were able to make deals with every other clone maker, making MS-DOS the de-facto OS on all PC-type computers.
This allowed them to put commercial pressure on the PC manufacturers as other competitors popped up. They have successfully used this advantage of scale over every competitor since.
In China, they currently have no such advantage. As the Chinese PC market is about where the US was in the mid-80s (with respect to growth and penetration), Microsoft has to get their OS on every sold computer, by hook or by crook. It's better they make a few pennies and make every copy legal than it is to crack down on piracy. This way everyone is happy.
Once China has reached saturation with PC deployment, MS can afford to raise the price again. By that point, they'll have their anti-piracy methodology honed to an exact science, and they won't have to worry about piracy nearly enough.
Remember: the first dose is always free. After that, you're at the mercy of your supplier.
The interesting thing is, this shows that China chooses US-style corporatism (a corrupt form of capitalism) over true communism.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I live in the country (Serbia) that used to have rampant percentage of illegal software.
Before the democracy arrived here in October 2000, there was about 99.9% of illegal software. There was no official distributors of the software; nobody was interested in suing the violators... Some companies tried to legalize their server software when they created Internet sites.
What was the result:
* There was no locally created mass software (like text processor or something alike), only software that required maintenance could be developed in such situations
* There was no diversity (take into account that Serbia the population of only 8.000,000). In late 80's, everyone used Novel netware (even the smallest companies) with Clipper for database work
* Similarly, now everyone uses MS Windows and its networking "capabilities"
Linux won its battle here in early Internet days, because there was fear that publicly exposed MS Windows web server will create MS's attention. UNIX boxes were too expensive - so typical solution in our ISP's was Linux, and it still is.
Meanwhile, software tools for programming are far more diverse now, because there is strong outsourcing industry here. Still, for local web sites, PHP is some kind of standard.
No sig today.
Anyone really thinks that in a repressive political regime an Open Source OS, which gives freedom for the users is going to be supported?
The very idea of Open Source is out of sync with the political idiology of a ruling Communist party.
Let's face it: as long as the Chinese government can be sure that there are only backdoors in Windows that they are aware of and they can use for their own purposes, totalitarian China and monopolist Microsoft is a match, made in heaven.
Microsoft had nothing to do with making that layer common - that credit should be given to IBM's PC. Microsoft just happened to be the company that landed the contract to have their OS (or rather the os they just purchased and put their name on) shipping on the IBM PC.
Not only did Microsoft's DOS and Windows not in any way provide the "common layer" of which you speak between proprietary software and any hardware except for the IBM PC, it didn't even have to do it well: it was shipping by default. IBM figured PCs were just a fad and expected them to fade away, so they didn't really shop around very much for an OS.
I'm surprised a "graybeard" doesn't remember that Microsoft made no effort to give you that common platform - IBM did that. Microsoft was just lucky enough to get the OS they just bought and renamed shipping as your common platform.
Wow you really did have some good LSD back in the day huh?
My understanding of U.S. tax law, is just about anything is preferable to returning revenues from foreign sources home and showing a profit. The result is that you want to make sure you don't make money on international operations (at least money that is bookable as profit in the U.S.) The quickest way to do that is to ensure that the international operations don't make any money. Have lots of revenue, but no profit coming back to the U.S.
Now, Microsoft is a U.S. corporation. It needs U.S. profits. The best solution is to make 100% of the U.S. revenue U.S. profits, which can be then buried under other U.S. tax dodges. You do this by lowering your U.S. expenses, and moving as many expenses as possible oversees.
Walmart does this quite well. The revenues are inside the U.S. for sales, and the expenses are oversees (in China.) If you look at the Walmart Canada operations, you will likely find that they spend as much money as legally acceptable on all sorts of expenses (like goods from China and expansion). The result is no money is actually returned to the U.S. In the process, the company grows and money is returned to the U.S. via shareholder equity, and increased profits from the U.S. division based on U.S. revenues (because the Canadian division has subsidized the U.S. divisions expenses).
Microsoft is doing the same thing, and Microsoft's big expense is software developers. Microsoft is opening software development groups in Canada, and around the world. If Microsoft senses even the vague chance of $100 billion in revenues from China, it would represent a tripling of its world-wide revenues (currently at $44 billion.) As such, huge amounts of expenses would need to be off-shored. This would allow large sections of the U.S. revenue to become complete profit, permitting profits to triple from $10 billion (current) to $30 billion. in the process, huge new foreign development houses would need to be opened, and Microsoft software development moved oversees.
The reasons why software development is moving from the U.S. to India and from the U.S. to China are more complex than just cheap labor. U.S. tax law is one of the reasons why. The result is Microsoft, Intel, and Google have all invested heavily in India and China operations. Some would argue at the expense of U.S. workers.
Not a chance--even if that is China's plan. Microsoft has a concerted strategy to frustrate interoperability of their product and services core by any other vendor's product as well as FOSS. Once China adopts Vista and Office 2007, even with second class converters for OOXML to UDF, they will be addicted and dependent. THe Microsoft addiction is strongest addiction known in technology--perhaps more powerful than addiction to fossil fuels. China may think they can walk away any time they want but the whole ECMA/OOXML/ISO/ODF war in government around the world with Microsoft slowly winning belies such foolish and wishful thinking.
What the hell are Chinese people thinking? Why are they using microsoft?
Advantage of linux
1) free quality product
2) setting a new industry standard
3) no more criticism about software piracy
I'm angry that Chinese choose microsoft instead of linux. It's a fucking stupid choice. I promote usage of linux at every chance I have. I hope other chinese who are knowledgable in computer software will do the same.
The trouble with Linux for the Desktop is that the Linux Developers ARE focused on the enterprise server market. There's little effort to getting the kernal up to par with what Desktop users need for easy, quick use.
I'm a Linux Desktop user, and have been so for a number of years and during this time, Windows has alway been a) Quick to boot on recommended hardware, b) Never LOST functionality between versions. and c) Easy to use.
To a) I have been waiting for a long time for linux to boot up quickly. Some purists ask me "Why turn off the computer at all?" well the answer to that is "To save power...." after all the desktop doesn't have a WORKING power management system, not like windows.
To b) On the weekend I had to 'fix' my mothers scanner system.. it seems that under Ubuntu Dapper my mums Canon LiDe20 scanner would have worked "out of the box" but in feisty fawn I had to make a script wrapper that poked the scanner to keep it awake AND install scanbuttond in order to get it working right... we ALL have to admit this is a DIRTY hack. To top this off, this has been a known bug for the last six months AND NOTHING'S been done about it.
To c) While the developers are working on getting it user friendly enough it's still not up to par with Windows unfortunately. And while I give kudos to the devs, this is a fact. I like the interface but then I class myself as a geek, there are a lot of others who aren't as IT savvy as myself and would die of fright having to go to the console or dig into the technicals to get things to work.
I think this China thing should be a wake up call to the kernal devs to start looking at where Microsoft got it's start... not on the servers of the world, but on the desktops. Once people are familiar with it on the desk they will not feel so daunted by getting deeper into if for other purposes.
Linux FTW
Has anyone else here noticed the irony in the worlds largest communist state (China).. idolizing the worlds largest capitalist (Bill Gates) ?
It was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
It is not public, but Microsoft and the Peoples Republic of China have had a very close relationship since the mid 1980's, when Microsoft helped the PRC get some badly needed technology that was forbidden under CoMo.
The interesting point here is not that, but how the Chinese people will react. Contrary to popular mythology, the PRC government has very little control over the populace, no matter how draconian (no pun intended) they get. It won't be government endorsement, but the availability of free software that determines the dominant OS. And what determines that is the number of open source developers working on Chinese software applications. The answer to that is an incredibly large number. The real question is, what OS will they be targeting?
My guess, based on following the Microsoft/PRC relationship since the 1980's, is that the Chinese people are going to take Microsoft for everything it's got, In one year, two at the most, every single application Microsoft makes is going to be reverse engineered (or whatever the term is when you have access to the source code) There will almost certainly be versions for Linux.
Those applications will also be available on whatever OS the PRC decides to put out, which most certainly will NOT be Windows, at least Microsoft Windows. We may see a new OS, we may see what Linux looks like when effectively unlimited resources are committed to it's development. One thing we are NOT going to see is the PRC promoting an American product, the Chinese people have more pride than to allow that.
25 years ago, JRT Pascal took off by dropping the price of software to a tenth what everyone else was charging. In the next year or two, China is going to do the same.
the notion that GNULinux is socialist. China should eat it up.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
I think it's more the fact that china doesn't want it's people having source-code access than anything else. If they can see every piece of the system they'll be much more capable of circumventing whatever restrictions the government places on their activities. This is a situation substantially different than Microsoft's theory of "security through obscurity" for virae: rather than crackers competing against a helpless party with less access to their own code than third parties have, potential dissidents will be dealing with a governmental organization with all the tools denied to anti-virus efforts in the United States.
CHINA!!!! We're talking about CHINA!!!! CHINA CHINA CHINA!!!!11!!one1 Read the fucking article! It's about China!
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
I am rather surprised no one else has mentioned how scary this is. Think about it. The Chinese government has access to Windows source code. Most governments use MS products. We all know how many zero-day exploits there are in MS offerings that originate from groups/people without access to the source code. Repeat after me (in Chinese). "All your base are belong to us!"
Here's another reason to be scared. Would you put it past the Chinese government to do the following: Modify Windows and include rootkits that would allow them total access to users of their version of Windows. Knowing how rampant piracy is in China (and probably Taiwan as well), somehow the improved version of Windows makes its way into the pirated software scene. Now, anyone who installs it has given the government 100% free and clear access to their computers. Go ahead and use TOR to surf the net. The government pwnz j00! Your butt is now in jail for doing stuff the government doesn't want you to do.
The truth of the matter is this: Microsux just screwed a ton of people by giving the Chinese government access to Windows source code.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Everyday life has little overt connection to politics in any but the most repressive societies. Yet politics cannot be separated from that life, from transportation, and education to the state of the environment, consumer choice, employment and the market, the motivations for software development. This is so pervasive that it becomes invisible, and people become convinced that politics is all about same-sex marriage or celebrating Christmas in schools. This is as true in my country as in China. Yet when I was there, because it was new to me, I could sense politics all around. Chinese pride and insecurity (e.g. over the Italian appropriation of pasta), the extraordinary proliferation of flags on the national holiday, the assumption that because China would fight for Taiwain Canada would fight to keep Quebec (hah), the strange restriction on movement in and out of compounds (with old ladies clambering over gates after 8:00 carrying groceries). Similarly, when I visited New Orleans I noticed things because they were new to me: the all-black hotel staff whose smiling formality verged on unfriendly, the strict advice of where to and where not to go, the (black) restaurant workers with bad teeth. If someone came to Vancouver I'm sure they would detect undercurrents as well.
I have been to China and Taiwan, but not Iran. However, my city contains a large contingent of Iranian immigrants. Iran is not an "isolated" country by any means. Its public society is restrictive, but in private the character of the people is reveals itself. I have heard from multiple sources that Iranians have wild parties with Western music and the latest fashions - only they do it in private. Did you know that immediately following the invasion of Iraq, Iran was one of the most *pro American* muslim countries? (I suspect they still are.) Iran is a restrictive society, but it is not totalitarian by any means.
North Korea is another story of almost cartoonish horror.
I know. I read a banned book about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution while I was there, and had discussions about Tibet and Taiwan in a cafe with natives. It was no big deal. The goal of the Chinese government is not totalitarian ideological control as it was in the past, but the retention of their political power. In many ways the society is more free than it was. In others (slavery, see previous post, or abusive corporations and local party bosses, high unemployment and the loss of social supports), it is less free - often *because* central control is weakening.
Religion is a different matter. The consensus outside China is that Falung Gong is suppressed not because it's a bit cult-like (as Chinese friends tell me), but in order to prevent the rise of a movement whose power could challenge that of the communist party. More mainstream religions (e.g. Catholics) also protest at repression in China, though I don't know enough to evaluate their claims.