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Chinese Gov't Pushing Linux In Rural China With Subsidies
nerdyH writes "The Chinese government's 'Go Rural' program offers subsidies up to 13 percent for rural residents who purchase approved nettops or netbooks. The systems come with a version of Red Flag Linux built on the Moblin stack. Along with Internet access, the software is said to provide apps for crop and livestock management, farm production marketing, remote office access/automation, and even online tour and hotel booking systems. Of course, Windows dominates the China market, and if traditional patterns hold, about 30 percent of these subsidized systems could ultimately wind up re-installed with Windows."
the Chinese government began offering subsidies of up to 13 percent for residents in rural areas who purchase qualifying computers.
Is this really even a story? Having to buy a "qualifying" computer just to get 13% off doesn't seem like a deal.
Green Dam?
Because the name of the o/s is Red Flag, I guess that makes sense for the reds.
Would you use a binary of Firefox from a Chinese website?
So Farmville was made by the Chinese Govt
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
So these Chinese farmers can use Linux... but can their grandmothers?
What percentage of the Windows PCs in China are running a licensed copy of Windows?
The reason I ask is someone can buy one of these and "repurpose" it to a non-legal copy of Windows, ending up with a 13% + (the price of Windows on the same machine) savings.
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Seriously, where do people get these numbers? My thing about this is this. We know many small companies don't pay for their software HERE in the states (one of my biggest challenges as a small biz IT consultant/freelancer). We also know that Chinese piracy is considered an art form in some places. Taken together, the market share statement makes little sense. How can you know what the share is, if you've no legit data? One other thing, to someone who NEVER USED a computer and just want web, email, and simple things like YouTube or word processing(most people don't use even a tenth the total capabilities of Word or Excel). They will see nothing special about Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD as they all can do that with no real issue. Let me preface this with, I'm writing this on my Ubuntu powered notebook, that's authed against my 2008 AD that also auths my kid's Gallery running on another Linux server. Most people will cry, "But those other OSes have hardware issues please help us", and I'll whisper, "No." .... and then remember that these machines came with Linux and thus should already work fine since it's 2009 and not 1999.
"Chinese Amazons, power armor, laser swords.... things just meant to be." - Shampoo, A Very Scary Bet
This can be a very useful thing, if they keep their legal responsibilities according to GPL: They have to distribute the source code for it as well. Thus it should be much easier to spot every code that does not really belong there and aimed at spying on/restric/keeping in line the population.... as well as fixing these if one needs to. There's a future project for an NGO....
A governmental agency is supporting and distributing Linux and using subsidies to get people to buy it. But it's the Evil Communist Chinese. Oh no, what is a good China-hating Linux-loving Slashdot denizen to do?
Now that would be an even battle. Possibly ending with some bitch-slapping of Microsoft.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Copyright is a government grant anyway as is private property (they can just take it), so this isn't a problem.
Compared to the restrictions the chinese populate work under, not having the source code to Linux rates REAL low down.
Now that would be an even battle.
How would it be even? They only power MS has inside of China's borders is whatever the Chinese government choses to give them (and could take away at any time). MS isn't a government: no citizens, no army, no nukes.
Although, giving them enough time, and Ballmer enough chairs, then anything may be possible, I suppose...
I'm here in Shanghai right now.
Just got ADSL hooked up through China Telecom.
Unfortunately I couldn't get the ADSL to initialize, even though I had 2 different routers (both types suggested by the tech), 2 different linux boxes and windows server 2000 running their provided client.
The tech used his XP laptop to kick start the ADSL. It ran for a day and then I totally lost connection.
After getting the 4th phone number I got a hold of a higher tech guy.
Apparently you have to use a windows XP box to initiate the DSL because they're using some MS specific stuff in PPPOE. His claim was "linux doesn't support this". Apparently nothing else does either. I think I have a workaround in place, it's been working for a few days but I don't think I can ever shut down the modem or the router.
Point being, they have to take their infrastructure seriously if they even want to begin supporting anything else.
"Authorities" is government. Apple is not government.
The distinction is significant, because Apple's device was made by them — it is not attributable to a dime of taxpayer's money, and is not handed out by a government as part of any policy. Maybe, you should've used government-sponsored school and library computers for your example — those are, indeed, very limited by their government-related owners in what one is allowed to do with them.
Perhaps, bashing private corporations rather than government schools and libraries is part of a bigger fight For The Greater Good(TM), that is not immediately obvious? Or is it?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yes, give Ballmer some nuclear chairs! That should do it.
Thanks for the input.
Can any of you please tell me which applications they are talking about? Or can you point me some OS livestock/crop management applications for Linux?
Thanks!
As soon as they discover their favorite QQ program on Linux is crap... bam, hello windows.
Am I the only one who thought that the article title was "Chinese Gov't Punishing Linux In Rural China With Subsidies"?
and install a pirated copy of Windows.
Isn't that what they expect to happen ?
Its the most effective marketing technique that Microsoft has.
This also makes me wonder.
If China can't manage the adoption of a socialist software model then who can ?
Read that as: "Comes pre-installed with spyware". Although, as some have previously commented, rural Chinese probably have enough of a time affording the basic necessities for living and can't even dream of affording a computer of any sort.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Spelling, sure. All the words conform to whatever spelling rules were in effect in the language we borrowed them from, at the time we borrowed, them, rather than to some overarching set of spelling rules. That does make it hard to spell English words. Vocabulary might be an issue too, as it's my understanding that English has a lot more total words than many other languages.
But grammar? English nouns don't have gender. That alone is a giant simplification from other languages - at a minimum, you don't have to memorize the forms of the articles (as an example, in German, the words for knife, fork, and spoon each have a different gender, and there's no particular rhyme or reason to the selection). Also, English has a relatively simple case structure: we have the subjective, objective, and possessive cases. German has four - Nominative (subject), Accusative (direct object), Dative (indirect object), and Genitive (possessive). And of course, the articles for the each of the noun's genders are different for each case, so you have 12 variations on the word "the" to keep track of. Other languages have even more cases.
Word order is also the fairly straightforward subject-verb-object form, and beyond that, you can be fairly flexible in how you arrange your sentences. In German, when describing an action, you must specify "time, manner, place", in that order - so you can say "I went today quickly to the stadium", but not "I went quickly to the stadium today", or "I went to the stadium quickly today".
I've also heard tell of these studies that indicate other languages are easier than English to learn, but I'm sort of baffled by this. I spent some time learning German in the distant past, and my continual thought was "man, I'm glad we don't have so many weird rules". But then German is incredibly easy to spell - if you can pronounce a word, there is one and only one way to spell it - so that was nice.
Well, now the government has to pay people to use Linux. This is a completely obvious result, of course.
Look at the history- first, linux starts releasing a free OS in an effort to compete with the evil, for-pay operating systems, like MacOS and Windows. Then, Linux fails to gain marketshare, despite being free. So logically, the ONLY way to go from there is to either make the government force people to use it, or else PAY people to use it.
I guess the Linux community has some powerful meathooks in China- they're both getting the government to force people... AND getting the government to pay people.
So much for "free" as in freedom. But hey, anything to "win".
1. There's no such thing as a government sponsored linux promotion. The program is part of China's economic stimulus package that subsidizes for 4 years from Feb 2009 up to 13% of the sales price on qualified computer models purchased by rural population. There's no OS requirements to qualify. The bidding criteria are price (limit to 3500 Yuan or about 515 USD on desktops and 4500 Yuan or about 662 USD on laptops), performance, and reliability. The full selected brand/model/price list was published this March, see here: http://www.ccgp.gov.cn/cgbx/zybx/2009/834767.shtml, which includes brands such as HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, and Haier, etc.
2. Based on a Chinese regulation, all new PC must pre-install legitimate OS. Considering the rural population's purchasing power (It was reported that a copy of RFLinux costs about 70 Yuan, around $10, while the Windows Vista Home costs 800 Yuan or $117), it may seem a good idea to lower the price as much as possible. Therefore some vendors pre-install Red Flag Linux or even just DOS. RFLinux apparently was desperate to get into this market so they pre-packaged into the distribution some farming related policies/documents/links that they consider would help their sales pitch. Some other vendors, however, pre-install Windows anyway (e.g., Founder boasted all it's Go Rural models would pre-install either Vista or XP) and they voice their concern that RFLinux sale pitch would ultimately drive the rural population to the pirated Windows.It's apparently a market behavior and in the end it's up to the end user to decide which PC to buy. I don't understand what the government has anything to do with this.
3. In /. I've heard so much about Chinese government did this and did that but when I tried to search those stuff in Chinese, they turned out to be totally different. There's so much hearsay about China flowing around. Come on. If you think a clerk in Sandoval county, NM represents the US government you'd say US government endorses gay marriage. Apparently it doesn't. I hope people here understand that the Chinese government in most part operates like every other government in the world. If there're differences, they're not as big as you'd imagine. Chinese people are no better or worse than any other people you'd met on the streets. If they are, there must be good reasons for that.