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Former Second Largest Linux Distributor Red Flag Software Has Shut Down
cold fjord writes with news that Red Flag Software, makers of China's Red Hat derivative Red Flag Linux, has halted operations. From the article: "Once the world's second-largest Linux distributor, Red Flag Software has shuttered reportedly due to mismanagement and after owing employees months in unpaid wages. China's state-funded answer to global software giants like Microsoft ... filed for liquidation over the weekend and terminated all employee contracts. Set up in late-1999 amid the dot-com boom, Red Flag was touted as an alternative to Windows ... It thrived in the early days, inking deals with partners such as Oracle and Dell which products were certified to support and shipped with Red Flag Software. The Beijing-based vendor was primarily funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Software Research, and later received additional funding from state-owned Shanghai NewMargin Venture Capital and the Ministry of Information Industry's VC arm ... 'A lack of brand awareness and sustained investments, coupled with the rise of rivals including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise, led to its downfall,' Eric Peng, Beijing-based research manager with IDC, said ... Peng noted that, during its hey days, Red Flag had enjoyed high adoption among government agencies, state-owned organizations, and schools.""
Red Devil will be released in Q3 2014.
I will bet on China bankruptcy. It's sad for the Linux branding, but all other big name in the Linux world are well.
The question, is how much this is a lead to other China gouvernment owned business that are going that route in the near future, and how much these will affect the economics partner of the China gvtm ?
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Wow, I've never even heard of it!
All is well with the world.
In other news, Russian investors take over SCO Unix, and Microsoft *still* has no comment.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Corrupt company in a corrupt country succumbs to the free market. I'm shocked...just shocked, I say.
Slow news week?
My guess is that neither you nor anyone in your circle uses Baidu either. There's lots of tools, services, programs and OSs that are quite popular in China and virtually unknown outside of it.
For example, did you ever hear about Tencent QQ. I have to admit, I have not until just recently, and it's apparently the second largest "virtual community" right behind Facebook.
It's just an East Asia "thing", apparently. Not very popular over here in the West. So I wouldn't quite yet dump an OS just 'cause I never heard about it, it might be very popular elsewhere.
And China is one hell of a big market!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
mismanagement might be a smallish understatement.
I don't like to bandy about terms like inept or corrupt, bit there it is.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The problem for Red Flag Linux is that the chinese market prefers Windows XP.
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Well, not to be rude, but you're guess couldn't be more wrong. I never said that I hadn't heard of them, in fact, I have been aware of their existence for many years, but as far as I know, Red Flag never saw success anywhere near that of QQ or Baidu, and I almost never heard it mentioned among my Chinese Linux using associates, of which I have quite a few. Granted, none of them work in government, but still, unless I'm a statistical anomaly, it's pretty good evidence that my assessment of Red Flag as a joke is spot on.
But if I am wrong, I'd love to hear about any major deployments of Red Flag or any awesome contributions to FLOSS that could be attributed to them.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
Perhaps Red Flag Linux steps down because China Operating System (COS) aims to replace it?
I have been using Linux since an early Slackware dist and have probably tried 8-10 variants in the years since. I never heard of Red Flag Linux; not once; not even a tiny once.
They needed more cowbell or something. All CS courses should have an MBA in a weekend course. Generally I rail at the MBA mentality but there are a few useful takeaways in a business course (just shouldn't be the 4 years of psychopathic indoctrination).
They love XP so much the Chinese have been trying to persuade Microsoft to continue supporting it.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Are you blue, or possibly browned off, that the yellow peril's pinko company Red Flag is waving the white flag because they don't have enough green coming in to keep them in the black?
Yes, I have heard of QQ, in fact, it is running on my computer right now. I use it for daily chat with, and to pass files to, co-workers. However, I only ever saw red flag linux once. I was in a shop in Xian and I happened to see ti. i was looking at it because I was so surprised to actually see red flag.
A salesman came over and the first thing he said was "If you buy it we will put windows on it for you." In over eight years in China, that was the only time I ever saw red flag. Everyone uses pirated copies of XP other then the people with Apple. Apple is well liked because of the reality that the Apple has a, near assured, minimum level of quality; whereas the XP boxes are often several generations behind and any part that could be swapped out for something cheaper has been. However, i am not going to pretend that Apple is even near common; but it is seen, unlike red flag.
Oh, I forgot to mention, qq doesn't work on Linux.
That's funny. Which Chinese? The ones who produced Red Flag (state), or the ones who pirated XP (people).
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
" Peng noted that, during its hey days, Red Flag had enjoyed high adoption among government agencies, state-owned organizations, and schools.""
As someone who has lived in China for 8 years I can tell you that's complete bullshit. They may have been told to use such software, but nobody actually used it. I have never seen it used anywhere in China. 99% of computers in China are pirated Windows XP or Windows 7... end of story.
State funded companies are funded while it's interesting for the State that that company exists, and sorely abandoned in the exact millisecond that it's not interesting anymore.
Funny, I have always heard that as an "advantage" of capitalism - that investors would move their money elsewhere the moment it was no longer in their interest to keep it with a losing company. It is usually phrased in terms like "private capital is quick on its feet / nimble / flexible".
I have been in China ten years and had a QQ account shortly after I arrived. I use Baidu regularly. I'm also on Weibo and Weixin (Wechat). I have seen a lot of linux geeks doing their thing.
I have yet to see a Red Flag installation. Everyone uses the same linuxes as we use in the West. I have also seen people who do not speak a word of English but know how to read enough to install a system. From what I can gather, Red Flag is something that Westerners like to jabber on about because it's the only connection they know, much like how they won't shut up about Tiananmen Square. They just don't know anything else to say.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Peng noted that, during its hey days, Red Flag had enjoyed high adoption among government agencies, state-owned organizations, and schools.
Lots and lots of unpatched servers waiting to be exploited from now on (unless they migrate to a supported platform).
none
Like GPL?
s/East Asia/China/
And China is one hell of a big market!
Not only that, but it is far behind the rest of the world, at least first world countries, in computerizing. Many areas are just now getting electricity. Just think what an opportunity it would be to provide an operating system to a market that isn't locked into Microsoft.
The problem with the West, is they often misunderstand and underestimate the rest of the world until it is too late.
That's a pity. The Chinese have enough local talent to do far more than that.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The problem of the West, and here I can't help but put the biggest blame on the US, maybe because they just have the most opportunities to fuck up, is that they don't give a fuck about some country's culture. We (westies) come into some country and act as if our way of life is the only way people WANT to live, ignoring that the population there already has a culture and, at least as important, values. Values that may not be the same we have.
One of our big things is "self fulfillment". We want to be a special snowflake, we want to be something out of the ordinary. And one of the things I learned quickly when dealing with the far east is that this is not the same there. The "we" is much stronger there than the "I". Harmony and the group experience are held in quite high esteem in the "moral" chain of values, something you won't really see anywhere around here.
In my experience, one of the first things you have to do when you try to understand a different culture is learning their language. You will find out that the language of a people usually reflects their thinking (for obvious reasons). Languages that have many different words for people or groups of people are usually from cultures that have a very strong "we" sentiment and group oriented values. If you have many ways to address people, you're usually dealing with a highly hierarchical culture.
If you want to understand a culture, learn its language!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Red Flag was tied to the Chinese government. Other than others tied to said government, who would want to run an "Open" OS from a government with policies of censorship (not to mention spying etc)?
So I understand that lots of stuffs are being copied and developed upon by many Chinese companies.... They copied these things BMW 7-series car: http://www.chilloutpoint.com/s... Boeing aircraft: http://gizmodo.com/boing-474-t... and many more... But they didn't even have the decency to come up with a name? They have to derive Red Flag from RedHat... WTF???
Du Leh Lo Mo.
I understand enough Cantonese for an American.
Also Rusky:
Yob Toyo Mat.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Amateurs. Housewives are the people who maximize that revenue.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Android, now.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Yob Tebya Mat.
Yeesh, the youth of today. Digging up corpses 'cause they can't get a girlfriend but can't conjugate nor transliterate...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So I've been telling people to fuck their dead mothers?
Even better!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I have worked with quite a few Chinese IT professionals over the years and they were very good at their jobs.
North Korea too has a distro - called Red Star Linux. Wonder how they are doing?
I have a number of Chinese colleagues. They tend to do excellent work.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Nope, that should be 'tvoyu'---2nd person singular plural possessive, accusative case, feminine.
Unless you're telling your own mother to fuck off, that is. ('Tyebya' is the 2nd person singular accusative.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.