China Bans Government Purchases of Windows 8

itwbennett (1594911) writes "Last week, China's Central Government Procurement Center posted a notice on new requirements for government tender, that included, among other things, the mysterious request that Windows 8 be excluded from the bidding process on computer purchases. The agency could not be reached Tuesday, but China's state-controlled Xinhua News Agency said that the government was forbidding the use of Windows 8 after Microsoft recently ended official support for Windows XP."

Comments

considering what is known about the NSA

[FudRucker]

seems like the rest of the entire world would ban everything that comes from the USA, or even just passed through the USA, things like routers, computers & software, TVs, Stereos, portable radios, cellphones, anything electronic, the NSA's spying methods have basically gutted any confidence & trust the rest of the world would have in the USA

They are going back to OS/2

[jfdavis668]

Might as well use some other unsupported OS

Re:So do we end up with the ironic situation

[gbjbaanb]

but to have it supported you first need to buy a licence for it... that kinda rules out Chinese copies of XP.

Breaking:

[mujadaddy]

This just in: China was considering paying for an operating system!

Re:Breaking:

[jkrise]

I think it's not funny any more. Windows 8 and later do not seem to be operating systems at all, that description seems to have stopped with XP. An OS manages the hardware resources and provides an operating environment for application software to run.

Windows 8 has made it very cumbersome to use the hardware, focusing largely on touch, which is wasted on a desktop. And many legacy application software simply refuse to run on Windows 8 or later. Even simple web based applications are a pain to navigate and use in Windows 8.

So China or elsewhere, people need a decent desktop operating system, and Microsoft seems to have exited that business.

And what's better?

[kevmatic]

If this is because they're upset at Microsoft for dropping XP support so quickly, then what are they going to? What OS has a longer support cycle than XP's 12.5 years?

Red Hat's is 10 years. AIX is 5-7. HP-UX is 8. Ubuntu LTS is 5 years. Mac OS is 4-ish. Solaris is likely the closest at 12 years... But its still less. Maybe they'll roll their own support?

Re:And what's better?

[jfdavis668]

Windows 2.0 was supported for 14 years

Re:And what's better?

[mspohr]

Microsoft was still selling XP until October 2010 and ending support less than 4 years later so this is about par for an average OS.
However, XP is far from average and still runs on about half of the computers in China, most ATMs worldwide and, of course, most developing country computers, granny computers as well as on many corporate computers which are in the dinosaur category.
Everyone knows they need to get rid of XP but "change is hard".
China seems concerned about loss of support for XP (i.e. can't rely on Microsoft) and US spying in Win 8 (can't rely on Microsoft).
They would be better off going with their own home grown Linux distro but "change is hard" and they have an incredible installed base problem.

Re:And what's better?

[Patch86]

It is disingenuous to count XP's support period from its first release date, considering that each Service Pack represented as big a change to the OS as each Ubuntu release (for example).

Support for original XP (without a Service Pack) ended in 2005- only 4 years supported. The last Service Pack, SP3, was released in 2008- giving it a respectable 6 years supported. If XP had exited support when it was scheduled to (2012- it was only extended due to a Microsoft product-line-up cockup at the hight of the netbook craze), it would have had 4 years in support too- less than any of the others you named.

Even if you stubbornly disagree with what I'm saying about SPs and wish to count it all the way from SP0-SP3 end of support, might I also reiterate above that support was only extended at the last minute due to a Microsoft cockup- namely, that Vista was wildly unsuited to the then very popular netbooks. The standard offer from Microsoft is 10 years support (which is what you might reasonably expect to receive from Windows 8). This is the same as Red Hat, and comparable with other Enterprise-market OSs.

only forbids purchase, not use

[z_gringo]

It doesn't sound like they are actually forbidding the use of Windows 8. They are just forbidding the purchase of windows 8. I guess as long as pirated copies are used, then everything is fine?

Missing the point

[Rant-a-Holic]

This is not about Windows 8. This is about the MS / NSA love affair. My company has done the exact same thing. No more windows after 7. Only approved Linux variants from here on....

Re:So do we end up with the ironic situation

[Mr D from 63]

On the flip side, forcing everyone to use Windows 8 would be a violation of fundamental human decency.

Re:makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is proof of the recent industrial espionage allegations against China; they've obviously seen the source code for Windows 8, and they know they don't want it.

Re:makes sense

[cpghost]

Yes, they give access to source code, but no instructions on how to build a binary that's 1:1 identical to the released version. This source code, for what it's worth, isn't proof that the release version is spyware-free.

Re:Linux

[Kjella]

Open source should naturally appeal to them, since they are nominally commies anyway.

When it comes to commodities they're not even remotely communist anymore, they literally don't care where you get your groceries and clothes and household items, unless those businesses or their owners try to have a political agenda. There's plenty of private enterprises and they don't care if the maker of the toothpaste factory cashes in big and the workers don't. What they do care about is control of public information, strategic industries and technology, infrastructure, natural resources and of course their own hierarchy and when that is at stake they will steamroll the individuals but my impression is that for most of the people most of the time it doesn't affect them very directly. The way most people don't see revolutionary changes if the US goes from Democrats to Republicans and back, the talk changes but daily life goes on.

Re:Linux

[david_thornley]

Compile clang with g++, and gcc with clang. Or Visual C++. The trick only works when there's only one available compiler.