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Linux to be Official OS of People's Republic of China
Cy Guy writes "YAHOO UK is reporting that the People's Republic of China will be naming Linux as its "Official Operating System". The story is repeated with more details and notes that government officials are "enthusiastic about the community ethos behind the open source community." The story also links the announcement to the recent deal with Graphon Corp for Linux Server-based computing software. " I dunno how I feel about this. I think having a state bird is silly enough.
Shouldn't the icon for this be a little tux rampant on a red background?
:-)
JUST KIDDING...! Sheesh!
A match made in heaven. The power of the common folk creating a superior OS. Let the capitalist pigs die the slow death while they use MicroSloth's products. Maybe what we need here is a revolution similar to China. Look at the progress they've made in 50 years. A country of peasants to one of the few superpowers.
Well, Linux is kind of a communist OS.. but this may be something good for Linux. Imagine, a country of 1 billion people.. 1 billion potential linux users and developpers.. now if they only started to forbid Microsoft OS-ses..
of course they do this right after the US feds declare war on M$...
- passion
I can just see it now. Microsoft strikes a deal with India to become their official operating system.
...isn't."
"Windows is the OS of choice for the world's largest democracy.
Linux
God help us if Pakistan signs a deal with Macintosh.
-jay
It would be interesting to know if any of Linux's development is being done in China currently.
Regardless, as various countries become more wired, hacker culture is going to become much more diverse.
Sometimes I shudder to think about what is going to happen to my employability when countries like China and India (which has the worlds largest english-speaking population) come online.
--
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
And do they really believe in Open Source or will they try to ignore GPL?
Seriously, though, I've been expecting this for the last few months, as a logical progression. And as a necessary prerequisite for Linux growth.
Will in Seattle
Someone refresh my memory.. what's the official sound card of the People's Republic of China?
...that Linux could seem VERY communist if you were in the right mindset. (IE, if you were a chinese official) After all, Linux was made through the cooperation of many, many individuals who were not out to profit hugely, it's available at about 1/10 the price of Win98, and it works really well. However, I don't think that having an official OS for a country made up largely of oppressed peasants makes very much sense. They should stick to national animals.
Marissa
However the official distribution is Chinux
Pork is not a verb
no matter what state! (-if you have any belief in mankind)
way to go!
I don't do much programming, so my opinion doesn't count for much -- but if it were my code, I'd put a specific exclusion in the license, specifically disallowing the Chinese government any rights to use my code. I'd probably do some research and also exclude some other governments that are abusive of human rights, like Indonesia.
:(
Not like it would stop any of them from actually using it, mind you, but I would feel better about it.
I wonder if I would include the US Government in that list of abusive countries? Frankly, the fact that the thought even crosses my mind is a bit sad.
It's rather ironic that Linux is a 'free' OS, and as people will tell you, the 'free' means 'freedom.' China, however, is an oppressive country; wouldn't they choose Microsoft? But then again, their whole country would fall apart, and what would they do then?
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Lets say that China starts backing linux, and even throws government programmers at future kernels. Could this not put the US Government in a precarious position? The US may not want to use Linux in government computers if it is programmed by China because of possible security holes.
That could be very bad for the Linux community.
Tanman
Like the subject says, imagine me going "Hrm..." with a concerned frown.
Is this good? Well, *scratches head*, well, yeah, kinda, I guess....
From a PR standpoint, does anyone else here see the potential for "others" (wink-nudge*cough*) to use this against our beloved penguin?
"Linux is the official OS of the communist-run monolith of China....do you *really* want to use an OS officially sactioned by the largest communist regime in the world? Use *our* OS instead....we're 'made in America.' yadda yadda"
Don't laugh.
On the other hand, this could be good for China itself. Since A. It don't cost nuthin, and B. Runs on older machines quite well, it could introduce "modern computing" into some of the more remote areas, and create a new interest in technology in places where the year is still (for all intensive purps.) 1936 or earlier.
AND, on top of that, an active involvement in an open exchange of ideas such as Linux and open source could open a lot of people's eyes to what the rest of the world is doing, rather than what Chairman whosit says is going on.
Does anyone else think it's strange that this comes soon after this LinuxOne crud? That's my seed for the conspiracy theorists.
Blech. Signatures.
There's a lot of people out there who think (sometimes unfairly) that communism is the Worst Possible Thing® on the planet. The last thing we need is to be pidgeonholed, as a community, as communists to the last code pig and riot grrl... particularly in this point in time where Linux is getting real momentum and the possibility of substantial numbers of people making a decent living off of linux solutions is reaching a much wider population.
While I applaud the Chinese government for making what I personally feel as The Right Choice (IMO, no government anywhere should be tied to any one company for any one service or product, no matter how big the company is), I think the timing could have been a bit better (like, say, a year from now).
I wonder if France is getting any closer to OSS OSes as standard. Wouldn't it be nice if Canada and the US did something similar.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
China is a country known for infringement of various copyright violations (music CD's, software). So, they think it is a good idea to support an OS that promotes free distribution. It's better than backing Windows and then getting busted for illegal copies.
I find it ironic that Linux succeeds because it operates in a sphere where the chief pitfall of Communism is a non-issue. Linux is from each according to his ability, to all according to their desires - Linux is an inherently abundant product. The fact that I get just as much Linux as Linus does doesn't bother Linus because I'm not taking any Linux away from him. (Well, at least, I hope it doesn't bother Linus.)
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Your all saying linux is perferct for communism, but why would a communist government endorse something that they don't have control over? Communism is all about control of the people by the government.
Linux is about free thought, not just free software. If this is for real, I would consider it to be a big slap in the face.
China has nothing to do with freedom. Need I cite examples of their complete disrespect of human rights? They jail and execute people who think freely, continue to occupy Tibet, and regularly threaten Taiwan. Is this a Good Thing©? I don't think so.
--
E2 IN2 IE?
Perhaps the real reason that the Chinese are even bothering with this is because its free. I mean, not to be stereotypical, but it is often assumed that Asians are cheap. There might be SOME truth to this, but nevertheless if you are a government that has to support the largest population of citizens int he world - you would be pretty concerned about cost too. Imagine paying for a 10,000 win2k licenses, as opposed to jus leaching off of the linux platform.
Not to mention the large underground (and above ground) market in pirated US videos, DVDs, CDs, pretty much anything they can get their hands on and copy.
From a political standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Rather than take a US commercial OS (such as Microsoft), where they'd have to deal with cultural differences, a lack of control of what goes in, and have to pay billions; or else risk antagonizing large US software firms who could pressure the WTO to deny China membership. Now they can simply take a free OS with open source code, modify it to their tastes, and use it with no worries under GPL.
Don't think that this decision is not highly political in nature, especially considering the upcoming WTO meeting in Seattle, where rumors have the admission of China as a possible agenda item. Everything China does is a political statement.
Somedays it's just not worth chewing through the restraints...
Considering that one of the reasons communism failed was because of it's monolithic bureaucracy which led to incredible ineffeciencies I don't think this is a good "endorsement". I can see it now: "Linux: The OS for commies!
Afterall communism is in a sense the ultimate monopoly, the government controls all, sets all prices and determines what does and doesn't get done. Sound familiar?
with the advent of high quality free software (thankyou GNU & hackers everywhere) such as linux, counties that had no hope of purchasing quality software now have a chance of joining their peers on the Internet.
...of course first they need access to a computer, a telephone, decent exchange and an internet connection...
I look forward to seeing what many millions of chinese hackers/programmers can contribute...
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
If you think that Linux is the best OS out there, don't sanction this action by the Communists of China! If Linux is a great OS, then it can only help, not hurt, the oppressive regime there, and we don't want that. We want the Democratic movement in China to have Linux -- let the Communits flounder on servers running Win NT w/o the service packs.
...
To those who say Linux is a "Communist OS" -- BS. Linux was created by programmers who were unhappy with the OS market as it stood/stands and did something that was in their self-interest. Moreover, they chose to do this. Now that the pinkos have adopted Linux, how many "coding peasants" will be enslaved by the apparatchiks to write patches, etc.? I don't want kernel patches written by bonded labor
If you're worried about getting off topic on this debate, feel free to e-mail me at smandal@mit.edu
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring bohemian. ***
It's really very simple. They have the source. In China, you can't use a computer without the state approved OS, and someone watching over your shoulder to make sure you don't view anything illegal.
Next step, official browser of Mozilla. If the PRC has the source, they can control every aspect of the software, including what people can do, and have it report to the police if they do something illegal. Anyone caught reading up on the Falun Gong from an unapproved source (ie; anyone who puts the PRC in a bad spot) they'll be arrested, more than likely.
Communism really isn't a bad thing, no. However, China's idea of Communism is not true to the Marxist ideals of communism really, and China is basically little more than a police state. They have no reguard for human rights, what makes you think they're going to use an OS they can't control every aspect of as well?
your company here.
shelby != ford
The word "Endorsement" keeps getting used in comments, here.
If we view this as analogous to selecting a State Bird, then it's not really an endorsement - the United States of America, in selecting the bald eagle as its State Bird, is not saying, "Bald eagles are really cool - you should all go out and get one."
On the other hand, making a firm commitment to using Linux and only Linux for all govt operations is a strong endorsement, no matter how "evil" those operations might be. Sure, it's possible that some of their evil might rub off on our operating system, but I don't think ANYONE will mistake the relationship for one of causation. A good tool is a good tool. I'm sure the Hammer is the official Hand Tool for Driving Nails into Wood of China, but that doesn't say anything about Hammers except that they're most excellent.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
CJK - China/Japan/Korea - now, the governments of 2 out of 3 have officially endorsed Linux. Hmm, that just leaves Japan. Now, this is *good* for governments in general - why should they be spending their citizen's tax dollars on software that costs money? When there is better software that can be had for free?
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Seriously, does it *matter*? Who cares? This is going to be talked about for a short period (not much longer than this is on the front page of slashdot), and then forgotten about.
The endorsement of the gov't of PRC won't make a difference in Linux development.
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
a pirated (I mean, shared with your comrades) copy of Win98?
Worry about the US, too. You can expect a few new "underground" groups to pop up, discovering, releasing, and using Linux security holes. And this also might lead to /leaning/ by the gov't on the Linux principals. If your enemy was using an OS developed partly by citizens of your own country, wouldn't you exploit that?
fh
In the face of the harsh tone of the Cox Report, which slammed Chinese espionage (both nuclear and industrial). It may be that China is trying to insulate itself from possible technology and trade restrictions, if Sino/US regulations remain fractous.
Some of the toughest U.S. trade regulations surround the export of High Performance Computers. With the recent advancements in clustering and other HPC technology in Linux Kernel development, the Chinese have made an important policy choice to adopt Linux, in that it allows them to make an end-run around export regulations.
It is an interesting reflection on the new nature of intellectual property and open source. How do you regulate an important technology with respect to national security when it's open source? (Remember those Apple G4 commercials about the Pentagon...Computers are majorly important to the modern state)
Additionally, making the official move to an Open Source operating system allows China to benefit from the millions of man hours of development to attempt to build a modern technology industry.
All in all, it poses interesting questions about the other result of open source. when you open the code, you foster cooperation, but you also can't control if it will be used to simulate nuclear detonations!
Then again maybe it's just me!
And will they call it Communix?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
[rimshot]
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
It is free in a country where money is important.
It runs on old machines in a country where industry and computing are not on par with much of the rest of the world.
For the PR, Linux is ideal. There is great flexibility and power inherint in the OS and it can communicate with other systems fairly easily (i.e. Mac, Windoze, etc.).
In terms of public relations for China and good spin control, Linux is also ideal. The OS is developed by many often scattered strangers in often remote places. It is a community effort. "A People's OS for a People's Republic."
For the Linux community outside of China, on the other hand, this could be bad. In the United States and in much of the rest of the world, we still fear the "red bastards" and every thing even slightly smelling of communism is seen as taboo and evil. Linux as an OS may be tainted by communism.
Of course, die hard Linux users will never go away, but convincing other people to use Linux (read: the US Gov.) may grow more difficult. Though it is a good, stable OS, it may be killed by paranoid politicians crying "commies! commies!" ("wolf! wolf!").
And then of course, it is hard to truely feel good about making the Chinese government more effecient in its ability to oppress the masses (even with an OS from the masses).
And the Chinux mascot should be tux in red, instead of black.
Da Zdrastvui Revolutsia!!! Da Zdrastvui Lenin!!! Da Zdrastvui TUX!!!!!!!!
Rhapsody in Numbers
I always thought that the charge that people like Richard Stallman were Communists was crazy. However, now that China is supporting Linux because they like the opensource idea, a lot of people will be reopening this charge...
I mean, the same people that have sent the tanks to reduce to minced meat the students on the Tyenan Men square, endorse Linux?
The same people that endorsed the nazi actions of the serbian army in kosovo, endorse Linux?
The same people that order hundreds (thousands?) of capital executions per year, endorse Linux?
(did you know there are doctors waiting for the poor guy to be shot in his had, so that they can take the organs EVEN IF HE IS NOT YET DEAD?)
Is this supposed to be funny? So, Linux is really going to have world domination, I mean, China is the most populous country by far.
Don't missunderstand me, I am not willing to say anything negative about Linux and the community, quite the opposite, I think of the positive ideals that have lead to Linux. I prefere BeOS, but I know who was breaking the ice...
Sigged!
....of, say, a hundred million PCs.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
How so many Americans are so quick to slam the 'Red Opressors' and the 'Commies'. Go read your history. Specificaly, the history of China. Then you tell ME how you would do it better, PERIOD.
Why is it that the Macintosh is always the exception to the rule? It has to be the most internationally-capable OS (without kludging) -- Be, Linux, and Windows sure aren't. But anyway...
----------------------------------------------
What would the official distribution be?
.
.
.
And as I sort of said in a previous post, Debian and Red Hat's "RMS Linux" would probably have the least chance, since they're actually interested in freedom, not just free beer.
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E2 IN2 IE?
When they realize that the same people who brought them linux want to bring strong crypto to all their dissidents.
Or when they understand that the free in free software is speach.
It's sad that linux will be used as a tool of oppression (I'd much rather that my dossier of anti government activities was stored on a windows box) but once you GPL your code you don't get to say who can use it.
It is a very logical move for the for the PRC government, not because it is produced communally (which is just good PR fluff), but:
1) It is not a US product, unlike most other mainstream OS's
2) they have been repeatedly accused of pirating vast numbers of US software products. Being able to reasonably deny this might give them a better position in trade negotiations
3) they can customize it to their needs.
Now the question is, will we see patches for MySQL to allow it to maintian personal files (in unicode), photos and fingerprints for about a billion people. Maybe modified slash code ?
Many posters don't seem to realize that China is one of the U.S.'s biggest trading partners. Think about it -- a potential market of over a billion people.
I guarantee that U.S. companies that sell to China certainly aren't worried about any "stigma" that Chinese endorsement of our favorite O.S. could cause.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Just because it's describing a potentially silly, knee-jerk and predjudiced reaction doesn't mean the reaction itself won't happen. I can pretty much guarantee it will, as judging by how many Joe Everymans in the states spit on the sidewalk whenever the 'C Word' is mentioned.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
This would be great if it results in more Linux software being internationalized. One of the great things about projects like KDE and GNOME is that they are striving to write software that is language independent-- that is, choose your language when you log in and the interface will be written in words you understand. This is a lot better than commerical OSes like MacOS or Windows, where you must purchase a separate version of the OS and apps for the lanuage you want, and it then only works in that one language.
This would also be good for Linux users who are interested in learning the Chinese language.
About human rights! there are certain things that are absolutly impossible to regular diplomacy, like punishing countries that are absolutly untouchable under the political/economical point of view (china, but also US afterall). I personally would put a statement in next kernel releases something like : Not legal to be used by governamental agencies of countries that do not comply to the declaration of human rights according to .. bla bla. Of course they wouldnt care. Of course we'd make a point. As a shareware programmer i am seriously thinking of doing something like that. (Against death penalty in the US) but i think it would seriously damage my sales :)
I think I've realized why so few of these comments, and the whole "Stallman is a Communist!" take on everything, make so little sense to me.
I see China, and the old USSR, as playing for a sports team whose mascot was "The Communists". Just like the failure of the Dallas Cowboys is not an indictment of the rustic way of life, the failure of China and the USSR to support or even treat humanely their citizens is not a reflection of the evil of Communism. AFAIK, there are "Democratic", "Capitalist" countries which abuse their citizens and have miserable standards of living. Sure, Communism isn't the beer of choice in the United States, or in many other regions, but it is no more to be feared and loathed than Heineken.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
"Enthusiasm for Linux is coming from the very highest level of the Government in China,"
;-)
Ehm, excuse me, but I hardly believe that top politicians have an idea of what an operating system is, let alone being able to make an educated evaluation of the superiority of Linux over, say, NT or Solaris.
Imagine Clinton, Chirac, Blair, Schroeder talking about 'their favourite OS' - an amusing thought. Of course I see the advantage for a country like China of having a free, reliable OS that comes with no trap doors included and can even run on older hardware. As the decision maker of such an isolated country that is not in close relations to the US (to put it mildly) I wouldn't trust any 'NT server, Chinese version', tested, modified and approved of by the NSA. Wherever you want to go today, we're looking over your shoulder
Man, there are some anti-commie sentiments floating around this drink tank ain't there??
First of all, the Linux OS is a perfect match for "ideal" communism. The very idea behind OSS is somewhat communist in it's doctrine. The Idea that everyone pitches in for the good of the group, "each according to his needs and abilities".
Secondly, the inherent belief that communism is "bad" is something that it seems that we have been indoctrinated to at birth. The truth of it is that communism is a good system marred by the actions of bad leaders. Would you defend democracy when one man owns a 15 Million dollar house and another sleeps on a sewer grate?? That seems like a poor human rights policy to me.
Now, in light of what I said, I think that the Chineese government most likely likes the ability of Linux for hacking systems. They have been defacing the web pages for a while now...
Also, If the Red Government violates the GPL??? Egad...
~HamBoy!
"By the half-light of burning republics Joe Stalin looks just like Uncle Sam"
~Andy Partrige
There are *billions* of people out there in PRC. I have a friend from PRC who told me that in the recent past many entrepreneurs who wanted to bring the benefits of the Internet to the people were stopped by the government. Nevertheless, so many people there are virtually dying to get their hands on something wonderful like Linux. Now if they legalize the use of Linux there, think about billions of people there that would be reached -- Linux will take off!! M$ will never be able to beat this if it happens.
Although, if this doesn't turn out right, the PRC government might just force people to use their own "customized" (read, bugged) version of Linux without access to source code. After all, who would enforce the GPL with them?? This will be *really* bad for Linux then... Hope this never happens!
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
If you observe the free software community long enough, you can see that its trajectory will allow it to break all historical bounds of government, law, and power. Information will be free. Encryption will be widespread. Intellectual property will not be hoarded. Multinational corporations will not hold power over nations.
Get ready.
I don't believe China is even on the internet are they? They wanted to keep out those unwanted ideas that float around the web. So how they get there paws on Linux? Perhaps this is a hoax?
Woh Duh Monitor Way Sa Ma Lan Sah?
(translation) Why is my monitor blue?
How hypocritical would you be if you decided to say Linux is free, except to people in China...
:) ).
It's just like they have free speach.. except to speak out against the government. If you're going to lead by example, you have to do it the whole way.
At least they have some value for community. They have a long way to go to learn about treating the individual right. What a great oppertunity to learn from each other. Perhaps they will learn that the free software community is made up of highly individualistic folk, and begin to learn the values of this.
Perhaps we can learn some things about how to work together, they've got 20% of the worlds population, I believe.. it must be excrutiatingly hard to keep any kinda government together there.
Human rights... They have more blatent problems.. we mask ours in a economic system, and revisionist history. There are plenty of oppressed people in the US. And don't even begin to respond without looking into the plight of Native americans (although with casino's they might finally win the longest war of attricion there ever was!
This does not make them innoscent, they need to work to allow basic human rights. But just cause we use money to confuse our system of oppressing people, doesn't really leave us guilt free either.
Eastern Europe has been trying to become more capitalist in the last decade and the people there are suffering horribly. Perhaps it is time that we started trying to find something more moderate, and thinking creatively to solve these problems.
Working together in a common goal is a first start, but just like when working with SUN or IBM or AOL we press hard on the License issues.. when we work with the Chineese, we need to press hard on human rights. When working with them we need to take into account how each project will add or take away from that plight. Don't help put down people, but work together to help each other.
(a bit idealistic.. but if no one trys, we won't even approach our ideals.. it's too easy to cheat and be cynical.. so get over that)
I was actually kinda intrigued by Communist Chinese history, because of a bunch of Maoists I knew who insisted that China had the closest thing we could see to the One True Communism.
So I read up on it a bit. Read about the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Apparently Mao et al sent everyone with even vague intellectual pretentions out into the countryside to farm beets, while they selected their new leaders based largely on their degree of fanaticism. This had predictably rotten results, widely acknowledged by pretty much everyone outside of the central government itself.
The cold truth is that private trade is a lot like a cockroach - it will survive in even the worst conditions, just a bit mutilated, because trade and exchange are basic human needs. You can have a much better society by just liberating those impulses and letting them fly. If you try and suppress them, as has been tried in Russia and China, all sorts of ugly things happen. Thus, stuff like the Cultural Revolution in China and grain shortages in Russia.
So no, I would certainly argue that letting capitalism take its course in China would have made things work significantly better than they do now. The Chinese economic recovery of recent years is mainly due to the increasing permissiveness regarding private exchange and property.
D
----
Perhaps Linux is attractive to the PRC for the same reasons it might attract many developing countries: its low cost, a source base to tailor a system for a non-english interface, freedom to modify without dealing with a (from their point of view) foreign concern in obtaining licenses, etc. If this article is true, it really shouldn't surprise us.
I thought you were asking what the official computer sound was.
Marx himself is quoted as saying "I am not a marxist"... I think you are confusing stallinism and lenninism (and totalinarism) with communism.
So there are no oppressed people in the US
(of course not.. we like OUR brainwashing... ALL SPEACH IS FREE.. but those with more $$ have MORE FREE SPEACH on the radio and the like.. we've got a long way to go as well).
But don't misunderstand me.. FREE SPEACH IS VERY VALUABLE... but don't think that we've REALLY reached the ideal.. we haven't.
(and yes Marx was flawed but remember he was a student of Capitalism.. And alot of his princilples about capitalism are still looked at today).
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
OK, some people don't seem to understand. Communism has nothing to do with Linux.
Linux is about cooperation and sharing.
Communism is a form of government based on the ideas of _socialism_. If Linux is close to anything, it is socialism. Communism, to my knowledge, is about a "ruling party", with a socialist property system. Communism is dictatorship, at least in practice. A democratic socialism is entirely possible.
Cooperation and sharing are good things, no matter how communist governments choose to pervert the concepts.
In this case, the sharing is not enforced, and so, so far, it works! And further, if you don't like the dictatorship, start your own country! Those are the fatal flaws in the socialism analogy.
Now, China's government obviously has some sort of belief in sharing. So do I, and I hope most of you.
I believe most people would prefer socialism, if it could be shown to work. It was a great idea. But so far, it's failed.
Free software has been shown to work. Maybe it will fail too eventually. Let's hope not.
How ironic that the Chinese government agrees with the open-source ethos, but doesn't agree with democracy. The two are very similar if you think about them.
Well, if I remember correctly, somthing like 90% of all the ms software in china(and the gov) is illegal copies. I bet he will turn this into "Linux is the official OS of the bad guys, show your U.S. pride and use MS software!" if it gets any more attention/news coverage. Oh well:/
A B, i said a B(illion) linux users will have _no_, I repeat zero affect on Linux develoment. I mean those little chinamen couldn't even finish building that wall. How the hell can they be expected to write code??
For the sarcasm impaired, I totally disagree. I think this can only have positive effects on linux, and the chinese population as a whole. The Chinese gov't can't endorse linux without distributing it, right? (or at least encourage it's distribution.) And they can't distribute it without source. So now the people (who the republic is named after) have a new medium of commnication. Linux source as free speech?? Who'd a thunk it?
What I think is more likely to happen though, is that more internationalization will be done, and we'll have a big influx of new ideas. Since China isn't known for it's computer power, it's also more likely to generate small, tight code that can run on the 486's that the common man can get his hands on. I'm all for that.I can't say I've seen a whole lot of bloat in unix code, but more optimization can't hurt a bit. I welcome the endorsement. It looks like Linux is becoming the lingua fraca of OS's around the world. China, Finland, Japan, Mexico, USA, India, Russa et al. Welcome!!!
-earl
The fact is that regardless of weather this makes Linux a "communist OS" or any other such crap is irrelevant. Microsoft wanted this. IBM Wanted this. Sun, Apple and everyone else who makes any kind of OS wanted this.
They wanted it so badly that MS was flying senior executives over to china to sip tea with government officials.
They wanted it because for MS or any other per seat licensing OS vendor this means a massive amount of cash inflow. China is the only place in the world where a single committee can decide to spend a few billion dollars on MS Windows and Office and put a 50% boost on Billy's earnings. Yes that means 100,000,000 desktops but China will have that eventually.
Having them go with Linux hurts all those vendors badly. As for Linux's part in all this, the chinese government actually doesn't have any provisions for Patents and Copyrights are only of limited value there. They can and probably will set up a "contribute to open source" institute.
The chinese government wields enormous power. They can legislate Mandatory Abortions. If they say Windows is a second class OS... That is law for 1/5 of Earth.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
of course! repressive dictatorships tend to flock
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Uhm, how is linux a communist OS? It's built by the people, and only includes what the people want in it. Microsoft is much more communistic in the sense that they, not the users, decide what gets into the OS.
Save the children; quit overparenting!
I get the feeling this may change how US government officials look at the linux community.
Some individuals have likened open source development to Communism.
I think it is cool.... really cool that there will be potentially 1.2 billion new linux users... but is this the kind of publicity we need? Afterall aren't those of us that support OSS already called communists by the idiots who don't understand that OSS makes good business sense? This makes me wonder what kind of future linux will have because whatever distro is the official one will get unbelievable power. Let's just hope that the chinese choose either debian or slackware if they choose to have only 1 official linux distro. BTW I am using redhat if anyone cares so it's not like I am an advocate of debian or slackware.
Oh my... The uninformed rantings of those who
cling to proprietary licensing schemes will surely now add mention of this to thier chants.
"If the GPL isn't about the destruction of capitalism, then why do communists love it so much?"
This will be offered as 'proof' of the GPL's illegitimacy.
And the officially sanctioned distro will be ... LinuxOne! Suddenly many other things become clear.
-- Remember that we live in a world where all the really big decisions are made by people with short attention spans.
okay had to be said - is dr. whatshisface going to do a deal to be the official chinese distro or WHAT?
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
While I'm a big proponent of the GPL and Linux in general, these statements are partially to completely false.
A good portion of BSD's talent is a good portion of the "players" for the linux crowd. WINE, Apache, and a good deal of the smaller utils are BSD ones.
IRIX hasn't lost by any stretch of the imagination, it's just not a server OS, something that people seem to forget. Many would say that IRIX is significantly more advanced than linux as a desktop OS. (which it is)
Solaris.... Well, I can't argue with much of it, other than the fact that Sun hardware (speed and stability-wise) smacks Intel's jimmy so hard it's not even funny. At least around here (Portland, OR, a somewhat large tech town from what I observe) you start making real money when you know Sun & HP hardware.
Linux is great, and people should acknowledge it, but it doesn't mean that there isn't room for different ideas and competition.
-Erik-
If any other government were adopting Linux as the official OS, you'd be cheering, or at least calling it a step in the right direction, especially if it were the US government. But since it's the Chinese, and we know the Chinese are EVIL (sarcasm here, pay attention), it can't be good that they're using our favorite toy.
Linux is free to everyone (duh), and there's no room to complain when people that you might find unsavory start to use it. (Kinda like freedom of speech is given to everyone (in the US), and must be allowed, even if you find someone else's words offensive.)
Linux has nothing to do with world politics. I personally am excited that there will be so many more users and developers for Linux.
*Un*fortunately? Are you mad? Now look, I don't see how preventing anyone from using something is quite appropriate from a League of Programming *Freedom*. Come on, let's face it, Community Effort would appeal to a Communist party seeking brownie points for their ideals. Now if their ideals are only for power at heart, are backed up by military oppression and slaughter, well so be it. By Jove, I don't even give a bloody damn what their ideals are or are supposed to be. This is about freedom, folks, we're not about to make a joke out of it by inserting some damn fool idealistic arrogant judgment call.
Hmm... This could raise some interesting problems... What if they don't abide by the GPL? Whose going to enforce it.......
I can just see it now... Richard Stallman and the Chinese government.... In a cold war over the GPL...
Think about the rhetoric...
Yes... In world war one you had entageling alliances... World War II was a fight between the patriotic americans and th evil germans. World War III: The GPL war.
(Wow.... I just got into my head the image of RMS with a nuke.... that was.... scary....)
"As long as they are going to steal software we want them to steal ours."
Then, March of this year:
We are a very global company, and we've made huge investments in some of these developing markets. Over 4 million PCs a year are sold in China. Now, we don't make so much revenue off of those PCs, because of the software piracy there. If we could raise the money we get per PC in China to be even half of what it is in the United States, that would be hundreds of millions of dollars for us. And so as piracy goes down, as that market grows, it's going to be a fantastic thing, and that's what justifies the attention we put in there, and those levels of investment.
Clearly Gates had a seat-of-the-pants plan on China... allow the piracy to continue, and then call them on it and make them pay. The monkey wrench of Linux in China could mean the loss of more revenues for MS than almost any other single event.
I am very disgusted and I find this very ironic, so here is my list of new mottos for Linux in China:
7. Linux will now be called Maonix
6. Linux - the only software we can't pirate!
5. The only thing open about us is our souce code
4. Our operating systems are freer than our people
3. We put the Red in Red Hat
2. Our Linux is not made in prison camps
1. Use Linux - or your family will never see you again!
> about copyright. China has a history of not doing business with American companies who
> wouldn't play by their rules.
Like if the americans do business with people who don't play with their rules...
Not only that, but they RAM DOWN their rules DOWN THE THROATS of everyone else...
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
After reading all the paranoid posts for the topic, I have to throw something out there that may get flamed but I don't really care.
Firstly, so what if China is using linux, its just another organization/government which a good part of the population doesn't like using our beloved OS. Its like Microsoft using Linux, even if they do add security holes/backdoors the peer review process will find those nasty hacks.
And even if they do succeed in getting those backdoors in, it isn't like Linux is the only open-source system out there. There's the BSD variants, and we could always compile a previous kernel and discard the modifications/patches which China has added.
And besides, I highly doubt the Chinese Duma is stupid enough to even try to begin doing something like that, which could, and will inevitably lead to the very high-tempered US finishing off the conflict.
I can already see it now:
"CHINA ESPIONAGE IN THE US ! CONGRESS PASSES AN ULTIMATUM FOR CHINA TO SEND ALL BACKDOORS TO THE US"
The ultimatum, of course being a stall for the US to mobilize its forces, call in the reserves and ask help or dissolve the Security Council.
However, I doubt we have much to worry about, with China being the last bastion of Communism in the world, it is also beginning to fall apart. With the Tiennamen Square massacre, and rising democratic movements, I give communism to last two, or three more generations before the old guard is gone and change ushers in.
In any case, we also have to remember that Linux is really a state of mind. Using a OS which is open source, and the reason why Linux is so big is because its the first successful open source system.
So people relax, lets go back to playing Quake3, and if the worst does happen, I think the US has more nukes than the Communists do ; )
How about we just replace the republicrats with a 3 party system devided evenly between the libertarian, reform and green parties. Get those commie and fascist pigs out of office and we will watch the common man be able to take control of his destiny. BTW one of the interesting differences between "conservatives" in the US and libertarians is that libertarians believe that workers have the right to market their labor to businesses just like businesses have a right to market their products to the public.
You would think that with that kind of one-on-one personal attention, Microsoft would not have to endure these kind of announcments.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
This comes as no big shock considering China is known as one the biggest violaters of software piracy.
Isn't it very possible that if the Chinese government begins to modify and deploy Linux on a large scale, it will withhold source (and even binaries) for "security reasons"? Sure, more eyes mean better security, but with the people in charge there understand that?
This is a rather big issue. It wouldn't do any good to have 1/5 of the population violating the GPL.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Firstly, a comment on the political side of things....
It's not that China is a Communist country any more that makes it a "bad" place - after all, in an ideal world, where people aren't selfish and greedy, Socialism/Communism is an ideologically sound social structure (note I said social, NOT political. It is our weaknesses as humans that require the political side of Communism and Socialism to become the driving force in a country which embraces these idealologies. And no, I'm not a Marxist - I just happen to have my eyes open politically, and I also studied revolutionary and political theory).
As another poster mentioned, China is one of the few remaining "superpowers" - but at what cost? China has a well known reputation for supression of individual thought, by force when necessary (do we all remember the footage of a lone student standing in front of a line of tanks in Tienamin (sp) Square?).
China is now the "bad guy" as such, not because they are one of the few remaining Communist countries, but because of their shocking supression of what the western world considers to be basic human rights and priviledges.
But this is all off topic. Is China's adoption of Linux as "The State's Official Operating System" a bad thing?
For the Affirmative: Do you really believe that China will honour the GPL? Do you think that Chinese programmers, payed by the Chinese government, will release all that they develop, along with source code, and will give credit to developers of code they used to build their programs? Can you see the Chinese Intelligence Agency (what ever they might be called) releasing the code to the programs they have written to crack encoded messages, because the GPL says they should, after they used other people's code to assist them in their efforts?
For the Negative: Just because it's now the "official" OS, this doesn't mean that Linux hasn't been used up until this point. Acknowledging their use of Linux (while I suppose those still stuck in the Cold War mindset could use this against Linux) can only help to raise the profile of Linux, and give it more credibility (the decision to use Linux for ALL relevant systems in a government as large as the Chinese government is can't have been a small, or ill-informed decision). This will also bring a whole new group of programmers into contact with Linux, and hopefully will lead to new advancements in application and kernel programming (after all, for kernel inclusion, Linus and team still have to approve the code, so the chance of something "naughty" slipping through is very low).
Over all? I don't know. I really don't. I don't think it really does any harm, since whether or not it's official, there's a very good chance that it's being used anyway.
"Democracy" is not synonymous with "lack of oppression". Almost all of us living in a democratic country simply have to look to the bad areas in our neighbourhoods to see this.
Really, don't you think that Linux might be useful because it would forge closer links between the chinese people and the rest of the world? Don't you think that this will eventually move us to a more understanding middle ground, where the real issues of "human rights" abuses are tackled - and not these rancid ideological battles between countries where the propoganda on both sides is enough to make me sick?
"Linux is the official OS of the communist-run monolith of China....do you *really* want to use an OS officially
sactioned by the largest communist regime in the world?"
Sure, why not? The US govmt Windows...does that make it good/bad? Does it even matter? No
I have to return some videotapes...
From the article:
The deal will allow a variety of server side applications to be run on cost efficient Linux boxes in Chinese universities, military installations and even within the government.
Most of the Chinese population are peasants anyway, and I'm guessing (I don't have numbers, anyone who does please toss em up) that most of them don't have their own computers.
The article says that Linux was chosen because of the Chinese gov't's "enthusiasm". While this could be the author's choice of words, but I think it is exactly that. The Chinese gov't appreciated the idea that is a good thing, and therefore called it their "official OS."
Chances are it will just sit in campuses and military installations, and that's it. Better than NT, but not many people will care.
I may be wrong, I hope I am...
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
Discuss
I would agree that private trade is impossible to wipe out, and its probably not a good idea to try. However, since capitalism has never been allowed to run its course in any country, anywhere, at any time, (and for excellent reasons) I doubt that it would have done much for China.
The kind of mass socialisation that happened was probably necessary - the poverty of China in 1949 would never have been relieved by private investment. When a nation with natural wealth and ample human resources lives in abject poverty, socialism becomes equally hard to wipe out, and just as ill-advised to try.
Taiwan, for example, under roughly the same conditions in 1949, nationalised vast amounts property, subsidised and controlled large segments of its economy, and had as little political freedom as the PRC. We called it a capitalist nation, but it was more socialist in the early days than Cuba. Hong Kong and Singapore undertook large state-funded and controlled industrial development projects and price supports in the post war era. These economies had markets, true, but for the most part so did China - local trade was always present. And for the most part, those countries started with much greater levels of economic development and higher levels of direct foreign investment, relative to the sizes of their economies. A non-communist China could never have acquired that level of investment in that time, nor could it have developped on its own without taking just that kind of control of its industries.
It's hard to find a country with comparable circumstances and comparable improvements in standards of living that didn't resort to some form of political control of the economy. I can't think of any.
As a philosophy, Maoism leaves me cold. Even the Bolsheviks had better sense. The "One True Communism" thing is for the soft-headed. China would likely have been better for skipping the "Cultural Revolution" altogether. China probably would have been better off under a politically more liberal system, but economically, I have to question how much better they could have done, given the circumstances and information available.
Perhaps a more liberal regime for farmers in the pre-1978 era would have helped - although the contrary case could be made that modern agriculture would not have spread in China without state control, and modern agriculture is what keeps China from starving. A willingness to close inefficient industries might have helped, but given the unemployment that results, its hardly surprising that they didn't. But that's all speculation. The record in economic growth still heavily favours the communists.
dood, see this as a reform, as china, a representative of communism at large, as trying to mend their ways ... moving on to a new generation of freedom and open source thinking.
I'm inclined to believe that Judge Jacksons 207 pages have crossed the ocean. No time to rejoice. However bad M$ may have behaved, that really isn't the issue. Neither is communism. The Chinese sense of community and their propensity for pragmatism have historical roots. And, OSS is a very practical approach to crafting computing solutions - for any government, library system, educational institute, etc., to use. The business case grows stronger by the hour!
The vast majority of Americans have been either brain-washed through advertising by M$, are sharing in the profits through retirement mutual funds, throw money at most of their problems (especially if thinking is required!), have used Windoze for so long it is the best choice for them, or all/most of the above. This is not the case around the rest of the world.;-)
From a political perspective, it looks like the Chinese were just trying to beat the French.
I predict MinneSOta, will declare Linux as its official OS before Vermont does.
Character is most often discovered over time.Linux its now an OS for Commies, by Commies :). I miss the 80's. Michael Jantzen ^_^
you should learn the language too bro. this guy KNOWS chinese. you obviously don't get it. stop the paranoia. your concern is appreciated though.
Find and share links to celebrity profiles on MySpace! http://www.myspacecelebrities.com
Read here.
Specifically:
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups.
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. (rationale)
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor.
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. (rationale)
In other words, if you do what you're talking about, it's no longer Open Source Software.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
That contradicts the open source definition as given by Bruce Perens.
;-) Here's the URL of the chapter I talked about: http://www.oreilly.com/ catalog/opensources/book/perens.html.
There is a commented version in the book "Open Sources" on p. 82, point 6.
No discrimination against persons or groups. He gives the example of an abortion clinic and an anti-abortion organization, and I think he's totally right there. Once you start restricting organizations and people, where will you draw the line?
The very interesting book can be read online and even downloaded from oreilly.com. Or you could just buy a copy!
just because you don't speak the language, you assume it's fair fodder for a incredibly boneheaded american joke.
*sigh*
Firstly, who said the writer was American?
Secondly, I would be careful about accusing people of mocking a language when you obviously have a complete lack of understanding of the language youself.
It's been a while since I've spoken any Mandarin, and I was never that good anyway, but what they wrote looks a lot like Mandarin Chinese to me.
Try not to be so precious, huh?
- "I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan (Tight Connection to my Heart)
mmm, both Maoism and Stalinism have obviously caused an incredible amount of deaths, but has Communism?...I'm not so sure about that one. When I'm in a whimsical mood I suspect that future generations will refer to this period in China's history as "The Mao Dynasty", with nary a reference to the Communist ideologies the emperors of this dynasty purported to hold.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Wow!
I have FREE SPEACH as well as FREE SPEECH?
Where do I get some?!
(oui, c'est un flamme d'épellation)
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Official operating system of 25% of the world's population ..... suck on that Billy boy :-)
I keep seeing posts like China's involvement in Linux is bad. China runs over students with tanks. China doesn't observe human rights. Etc. etc.
What one country does is their perogative.
However. You want that country to change? You want them to "improve" and see things your way? Great. By choosing Linux as an OS, doesn't that simply bring more of other cultures into China? Doesn't this bring information to a country which so many consider to be locked down?
What better way to liberate a people than by giving them information from the world?
But politics aside, China's involvement with Linux will be a good thing. While not every Chinese citizen has a computer, they can all think. Most of them if given half a chance at education are extremely talented and are inclined to mental manipulation of information and concepts. What new advancements could be gained by such exposure of a high quality OS to an additional few hundred million to billions of minds?
The goal of Linux was to be the OS which dominates the world, yes? If so, then doesn't this represent a major milestone? The cooperation and adoption of Linux by one of the world's largest countries?
It is a good thing for Linux. The recognition of the value of an OS by a country's government will have impact with the companies and software institutions of the world as in order to do business with China, they will have to run Linux compatible software.
This is a major step up for the Linux community and a day when the Linux community see's an influx of a new band of programmers and contributers as well as new ideas and cultural mores.
It is a chance for us as a community to show our good graces and not be shown as selfish egotists who are prejudiced against brilliant minds for the faults of a few in power in their country.
Just because the leaders of a country committed acts which we consider to be heinous does not mean that the people in China supported such an act.
Remember, it was a Chinese student who was killed fighting for Chinese rights. Killed by people in power in China who feared what? The flow of information. The flow of new ideas.
What is Linux? The embodiment of new ideas, of free information.
This is a good thing for both China and Linux.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
The fact that a nation would select an "official" operating system is patently ridiculous. Having said that, I'm glad they selected Linux instead of Windows. But watch out for a backlash against Linux for being forced to use it. (Of course, if there is a backlash in China, you probably won't hear about it!)
Fact: over 80,000,000 people have been murdered by Communist regimes. Did anyone notice? Does anyone care?
I would like to make the humble proposal that people don't rail on The Evil Human Rights Thrashing Oppressors of China unless they ACTUALLY LIVED THERE for a significant amount of time.
Having touristed through or spent a a week, a month, is not enough. If you are a Chinese citizen, or you have lived in China for approximately three or more years, then fine, go ahead.
Otherwise, how much of what you see on CNN et. al do you really trust? Even journalists are susceptible to the danger of overreacting and seeing things through our cultural filters and expectations.
I'm not trying to defend the Chinese Govt. either. They have their problems, but so do we. All i'm begging for is comments from people who genuinely understand the situation. And no, i'm not one of them, which is why i'm sitting my ass as much on this fence as i can.
Tone the hysteria down. More Linux users is overall a GT, right?
But you see... Linux is communist, or at the least Anarcho-Syndicalist. Its not a bunch of freedom loving libertarians starting up a flexible new economy operating system corporation, its a bunch of people producing a good for no reason other than some vaguely defined 'community spirit' and a dislike for microsoft. The fact that it actually seems to be working in a non-coercive manner (unlike the totalitarian socialist states which ended up enslaving 99.9% of the population to meet production quotas), is probably very appealed to latter day Socialist out there in China. The end result of this could reach beyond even the OS community (if China slows down on market reforms, since 'Linux' has provided some imaginary alternative to a modern free market economy...)
> shooting demonstrating students.
Don't they do that in the USA as well?
dave (in china, sort of)
PR can be bad as well as china being a communist country with a total lack of respect for human rights. Shame really, I would like to have seen the great wall. But I will be damned if I step foot in a place like that - running over and shooting demonstrating students.
Buddha knows, I try not to, but I really hate ignorant, ill informed, self-righteous prats.
Three words: Kent State Massacre.
- "I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan (Tight Connection to my Heart)
Communism strives to benefit the people by streamlining the production of goods. If there is no middle man to mark up the prices of goods, then the people benefit from lower prices. The people benefit from sharing resources on a massive scale rather than spliting them between competing individuals (economy of scale).
Linux strives to benefit end users by combining the efforts of many minds, rather than having small groups reinvent the wheel.
In capitalism, the workers are paid by, and directed by, a capitalist. The capitalist's primary concern is in producing a product which will enrich the owner, not in producing a product which will benefit the most people.
Linux is produced to benefit the most people. The development of Linux is not guided by monetary concerns. Those involved in coding the Linux kernel, for the most part, do so on their own time and are not managed by corporations to line the pockets of stock holders.
In a practical communist society, the development of goods is ultimately controlled by a small group (the party) for the 'good' of the people. Resources must be controlled by the party to take advantage of possible cost saving measures. The party can distribute the resources around in the most effective manner, thus a 'planned economy'. The party in turn is lead by a strong figure head to guide the party.
The Linux kernel in practice is controlled by a small group of developers which filter the production of the developers, to produce code in the most stable, efficient manner. This small group in turn is guided by a strong figure head, Linus.
Of course the communism described above is theoretical and doesn't work well in a complex society, and Linux benefits greatly from being developed in free, rich, technologically advanced countries such as the US, but one could see how an idealistic communist could make parallels betwen open source and communism.
so there's a billion people (and change, something like 1.2) in china right? And linux is this fabulous(sp) multiasking multiuser, lean mean OS right? So why would you need a billion computers for a billion people? you can support hundreds of (non-simultaneous) users on a 486. So even if they just set up terminals in marketplaces and schools and army bases and universities, that's probably a couple hundred million folks. IIRC the last linux counter said around 10 million users so far. A couple hundred million might as well be a billion as far as I'm concerned. It's boatloads more than exist today. Even if the counters are way off, and we've got 50-60 million users right now. Another 250 million totally outnumbers the current user population. I can imagine in a country of a billon+ people e-mail would savea shitload of money over say, conventional mail. Set up all those pesants with elm or pine, and save a few trillion trees.
-earl
Contribute or don't contribute to the Linux community - you still get the benefit of the work of everyone who does. Your benefit does not cause others to receive less gain from Linux.
Contrast a communist system for the production and distribution of material goods. Your car, or house, or loaf of bread, is one less car, or house, or loaf of bread for someone else. Communism doesn't work for a material economy, because of the problem of scarcity.
Linux isn't scarce. The more it's used, the better and more abundant it gets.
Get real, linux is a western invention. Only
the west provides the tolerance and freedom
necessary to incubate phenomena like linux.
I'd also mention that western corporations
didn't invent linux either. Again, the tolerance
and freedom isn't there either.
Just goes to show you how much power an open
standard has. Our corporations were the first
to submit. Now, red chinese must submit
to the Code.
One OS to rule them all, one OS to find them...
With, of course, the major difference: the Mao dynasty was not hereditary.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
I'll tell you why China likes Linux:
MS decries China piracy
To quote:
Piracy has twice in the last two years brought China and the U.S. to the brink of a multibillion dollar trade war.
I just hope the human right folks don't create a campaign... "Don't include code from china" On a similar note, didn't compaq make a deal to create a new distro called "red flag linux" in china?
It wasn't a joke, it was real (though spelled incorectly via Pin Yin)
Woh = Wo~ = "Me" or "I"
Woh Duh = Wo~.de = "mine"
Monitor = "Monitor"
Way = Wai~ = "what"
Sa Ma = sem/.me = "reason"
Lan Sha = Lan~si\ = "Blue"
Literaly "My monitor, for what reason blue?"
I'm not exactly sure about the spelling of Lan~si\, also I've marked the four tones with ascii characters. rising is "/" as in "guo/", "contry". Falling is "\" as in "shi\", "is". The 3rd tone, the 'up-down' one is marked with the tildie "~", as in Mai~, "beautifull, sexy". And the 4th tone is a hyphen '-' as in "fei-", fly.
"Wo~ shi\ mei~guo/ ren/" = "I'm an american"
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
1 Billion People Can't Be Wrong (TM)!
Gonna be a dental floss tycoon
Webslacker: Woh Duh Monitor Way Sa Ma Lan Sah?
1. Webslacker was not using standard Mandarin pronunciations. The correct way to put the pinyin as follows:
Wo3 de5 Monitor wei2 she2 me5 lan2 se4?
2. 'Monitor' is not Chinese. Chinese for 'monitor' is 'xian3 shi4 qi4'.
3. The grammar of the sentence is wrong. Simply put, Webslacker's translation sounded like a Chinese dub of Yoda's speech. Correct way to speak 'Why is my monitor blue?' in Chinese is follows:
Wei2 she2 me5 wo3 de5 xian3 shi4 qi4 shi4 lan2 se4?
For those without proper browser, the UCS-2 codes for the sentence as follows:
U+70BA U+751A U+9EBC U+6211 U+7684 U+986F U+793A U+5668 U+662F U+85CD U+8272 U+003F
References:
Chinese Characters and culture [http://www.zhongwen.com/]
Unihan Database [http://charts.unicode.org/]
I guess our way is more humane because we aren't opressing the now dead natives anymore, eh?
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
And here we vote out the fascists who do stuff like that. Your option in China would be, what? You could voice your concern, and be killed. Or write a book about it, and be killed. Or...
Did you have a point?
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
"Simplified" character support is not a watered down version of Chinese.
Mao Zedong made attempts to simplify some of the characters during the cultural revolution, so that there are slight difference between written Chinese on the mainland and Hong Kong or Taiwan, who both use the traditional character set.
If you look at some 16bit character sets you'll see ones for big5 (traditional) and simplified Chinese.
dai wai "chi shao bin dowah!"
Dude, if there not in america, they can't be whatever-americans , I mean really. Besides 'sino' is rarely used, most people are ether Asian-american, or straight Asian (There's really of a preponderance of foren born Asians in Ames, Iowa)
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Ok, I haven't read most of the comments yet, but I am worried that I'll see a number of the "Communism is fundamentally evil!" or "Linux isn't Communist! Don't say that!" comments that might be expected from the heavily libertarian Slashdotter demographic.
I'd just like to point out that one of the ways I get a kick out of Linux is considering this little paradox: Linux development is communist, libertarian, and successful. It's rare enough that you see two of adjectives applied to the same concept, much less all three.
Think about it:
Linux *is* a communist-developed OS, in the Marxist sense of the word, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his means". Every Linux developer who can improve the operating system in some way does so, not in proportion to how much he's getting paid to do it or because he's being ordered by the government to do it, but because he has the ability to do it. Every Linux user who needs features that the operating system and related software can provide gets those features, not in proportion to how much they've paid or because they've been doled out some limited feature set by a bureaucracy, but because they can freely download whatever they need.
Linux is a libertarian OS, too. The development may be communist, but not Stalinist communist - the top developers like Linus and Alan are followed not because they wield any political or economic power to enforce what they say, but because they've proved themselves extraordinarily capable in the past, and so people voluntarily listen to them. You have the freedom to choose your software from a number of competing vendors, to extend and modify it yourself, or to apply other people's modifications whether or not they have official approval. What few restrictions there are come from voluntary software licenses decided by the software authors.
It's kind of cool, when you think about it. In a system where the economics of scarcity are non-existant (the marginal cost of copying software is trivial), communism actually seems to work, and works without using force or coercion on anyone who takes part in it. At a time when most totalitarian communist countries are spectacular failures, it's kind of cool to see a voluntarily communistic system work.
Who knows, maybe when nanotech is cheap and the production of a material item is a matter of feeding enough matter and electricity into your properly programmed Seed, open source economics might play a big factor in the physical economy too.
The GPL spesificaly dissalows 'spesific' restrictions on software. It's ether free, or it's not. So you're software couldn't be distributed with debian, for example
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Soon, all there will be left is Senator Slade Gorton...( R Washington ). the only person left in the world still running Windows.
Meanwhile, after they uphold Genome Patents, Bill Gates will be supplying all the prescription drugs in the world.
MicroPrescriptions.
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
Let's set paranoia to maximum for a quick second.. step through the door into a Realm where Prozac and Ritalin don't exist...
--ooOOooOOooOOoooOoo--
The easiest way to control people is to convince them they are free.
China declares Linux the OS of the State. Ergo, all computers sold in china run Linux. No doubt it will be customized somewhat, lets call it Chinux for the moment.
Chinux is open-source except for one module used for backdooring and spying on their educated digital population, historically the hardest to control and the most dangerous.
After all, word only leaked about Tiannamen square from fax machines, not voice calls or video tape smuggled out.
Chinux could also put into operation the long-theorized "Chinese lottery". Imagine even 1% of China's population is given a computer. That's 1,000,000 systems running RC5/DES in the background. Forget Echelon - this is hivemind at its highest form.
--ooOOooOOooOOoooOoo--
Nah. It could never happen.
let me get this straight. you want to change the license to stop evil contries from violating the license. if they're going to violate the current license, what makes you think they won't violate the second one? "oh, yeah? you're gonna violate our license? well, i'll just add another clause saying you can't use it! hey, i said you couldn't use it!"
Linux is the biggest socialistic effort ever. Love it or hate it, that's the way it is. Even if not one person in china uses linux they have gotten their point across. It is a model for the people but not necessarily the way the country operates. They don't consider themselves communists but socialists, same as the ussr was. Communist countries pull these publicity stunts all the time because they can say, "hey, look at us, we are doing the right thing." Instead, they are doing the exact opposite (As far as most people are concerned, I try to be somewhat tolerant). Ah, the ironies of communism...
If someone really wanted to, I'd be willing to bet that they could hide somthing in some obfuscated C, that no one would notice, esp if the comments didn't mention the 'hidden message'. Think about it, have you really looked over every line in the Linux TCP stack? are you *sure* you analized what the code was actualy doing, rather then what the comments said they were doing? are you sure you checked every memory addres, etc?
I don't think that there really are holes in linux, nor do I think that the chinese government put any in. But to be honest, you can't say that beacuse it's 'open-source' that its inherently secure.
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
To say that China should not have the right to use Linux/*BSD is to limit their freedom to use it. That is like saying the criminal elements should not use it. If we're supposed to be free, then we're supposed to be setting an example, right?
(Next thing I know, Microsoft'll be adopting a new clause in their licenses to the effect of "this software may not be used to do anything illegal".)
It's a heck of a lot easier to set up extemporaneous networks, write encryption and steganographic software, and raise general havoc with *nix than with Windows or Macs. Try creating a neighborhood network with serial ports and slash wire using MSWindows or MacOS...
The powers-that-be may live to regret adopting Linux (if indeed they have, and this isn't just ZDNET's overeager newsmongering). It will ultimately prove far more corrosive to entrenched power than Billy's Mandarin-speaking dancing paperclips ever would have been.
In the world of free software, there's no room for national boundaries, corporate trade secrets, powerful governments, restricted information, or dictatorial regimes.
Rather than showing the Chinese people that we blame them for a government in which they have no say, let's invite them to participate in our world of [relative] freedom. Don't crititice the PRC regime; spread our culture (ours, not American/European pop culture) and ideas, because they will bring a greater benefit to the Chinese than making a point that we're going to limit who can use our supposedly-free software.
(I'm sure someone will shoot me down for the cultural imperialism in that last paragraph. :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Is this what RMS dream off?
Free Software influent to human society, to build better society.
The entire point of my post is not that there WOULD be security flaws, I don't believe there would be any.
My point is that politicians, forever saving their asses, would target linux as a sacrificial anti-communist icon. Senators aren't as technical as the typical geek. They would see a pamplet labeled "Official Operating System of China" where it was detailed how Chinese programmers have made contributions, then next to it the request to put this official communist(read: compromised in their minds) OS on a US Government server. That isn't A Good Thing.
Tanman
I don't quite think that using redneck in your title says much for your cause. I'm not meaning this as flameage at all but it definatly negates your point by using the term as well. I happen to be a southerner and while I didn't take offense enough to take up arms I still found it kind of lame considering the tone of your post.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Remember, you don't *have* to pay software if you don't want to, and unlike the US, most people don't. Its all a matter of convinence, it's easyer, and less time consuming for an american to go out and buy '98, then finding and downloading it off the net.
In china, however, you can just buy a pirated CD in a store for cheap.
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
...I believe this may be instrumental to helping the people of China eventually turn away from a totalitarian society. After all, right now the Chinese government is scared spitless of the Internet. Every PC connected to the Internet must be licensed, because the Chinese leaders know there is no greater force for freedom than the free exchange of ideas. Look what fax machines and samizdat accomplished in Russia...
Now, the Chinese government is making an operating system available to the people, and operating system, which any trained programmer can learn to modify for their own purposes. How long can the government keep control of what information flows across the networks once the Chinese people are riddled with kernel hackers? I expect in four or five years you'll hear about Chinese binary only distributions of Linux, and they'll start requiring a license to have the source. RMS has predicted that any entity that wants to control the distribution of information has to make programming and programmers tools tightly regulated, if not illegal. And thats just what things like the DVD-cabal and (I predict) the Chinese government will try to do.
How ironic that a truely communistic social movement (open source) may some day be the undoing of the totalitarian goverments who pretend they are communist.
After all how much difference is there between the statement, "We are doing this for the good of consumers..." (US Banking industry on the repeal of Glass-Stegal(sp?)) and "We are doing this for the good of our citizens..." (any rampant authoritarian government you choose to name)
Let the people run an OS that they can compile, that does not have secret snitch routines, that each individual can control. This is the stuff that brings down totalitarian governments. Look what the PC and Fax did in the (former) Soviet Union . Dissidents could pass information without state control, it quickly eroded the Stalinist controls that had been in place for so long.
I think Linux in China will do the same, the state will lose control of information flow, that's how they control the populace.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
If the Chinese use Linux to improve the performance of their intercontinental ballistic missiles, don't they have to release the diffs as a patch to the standard kernel? I can't wait for the modifications to surface at Freshmeat...
linux-kaboom.2.4.12-ac8.tar.gz : Linux kernel patch for the Long March IV strategic ICBM. Contributed by Lt. Shi Wong, General Tso and Capt. Ying-Yang; with patches by Alan Cox. Special thanks go to Loral Corp. of the USA.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
Free software is free for everone, not just the people we like. We can't pick and choose who uses Linux, and who uses NT. There is nothing we can do to stop it. I personaly wouldn't mind my code being use by the chinese, if you have a real problem, don't use the GPL for you're code
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
As observable in history, anything declared "official" by the PRC government WILL be used by most PRC citizen. Linux won't be an exception.
Eventually, PRC citizens will become more technically savvy than the free world citizens given that we're constantly being dumbed down by a dumb OS.
I'm not saying this is bad...but just in case, just in case a cyberwar breaks...
Well, your first problem here is automatically believing someone when they tell you that X number of copies of software are being pirated.
;) seem to have a piracy rate of 40% in business.
Where are they getting this information? In a communist country who's been historically closed to any investigation, where are they getting the access to collect the information?
Maybe it's a "commie" thing, since we here in Canada (who everyone knows is full of commies
www.turbolinux.com.cn
Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it,
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her, and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you now?
...
Gotta get down to it,
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her, and
found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you now?
Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio...
-CSN&Y (Lyrics by Y)
Also, There are about 1.2 billion people out there in need of some 5 million Linux Administrators!
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The difference is that in China it was a deliberate action of the government ordering professional warriors to attack the students. In Kent State a couple of "weekend warrior" National Guardsmen who were only there to prevent riots panicked and opened fire -- nobody ordered them to. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter.
Funny how people also mention that Linux is the purest sense of Communism, while the Internet is the purest form of democracy.
Its not funny at all, It is certanly possible to have a 'democracy' in a 'comunist' contry, just look at the socialst states in Europe. Remember, Nazi germany was a capitalist democracy as well...
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
See obvious FLAMEBAIT above, please...
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
I didn't say it was doing a good job of keeping its image up. You forget, the Chinese government doesn't percieve itself as we see it. I abhor what they do as much as you do.
But the fact remains, they see themselves as great protectors of the people (never mind that it's not really true; they have nothing to act on but their own perception of reality, however twisted). The GPL is likewise meant as a protector of the people, something the Chinese government appears to recognize. Since the two seem to agree at least on the issues which the GPL covers, I don't think China will attempt to undermine it.
Linux is of course _very_ communist; decentralised, everyone is socially equal, the worker has all the power, the individual can never become more important than the group (GPL) etc.
A better question would be how communist is _china_? I would personally say not very. I really wouldn't call any system that smacks of stalinism truly communism, especially a bastard half-capitalism like the current system in China.
Of course, Linux still depends on individual rights to a degree unheard of in the current chineese system. While the individual cannot place himself above the group-- he cannot take the work of the group and propetarize it-- the individual is in the end the most important part of the system, and he has total and complete control over his own setup in every way. The individual has complete freedom over what way he gives back to the community, if at all. But since by helping himself and improving the code of his own system, he helps the community as a whole, the individual gives freely.
Basically GNU/Linux is a communism that _works_.
-mcc-baka
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
THE STREETS WILL RUN RED WITH THE BLOOD OF THE NONBIELEVERS! PH33r!
And what the hell is a liberal?
I have to return some videotapes...
Geez; I did some bad wors choices this time (I'm rather surprised it didn't cost me any Karma as of yet).
Yep, you're right; China's government seems to have little regard for human rights, if indeed it has any at all. The last time I read the GPL, however, it didn't seem to cover anything about what people generally consider to be human rights. And the Chinese government seems to agree with the GPL on those issues which the GPL covers. Therefore, I seriously doubt that China will attempt to undermine the GPL; governments don't tend to hurt stuff they like (unless they don't already have it, in which case they'll go so far as to destroy it while trying to obtain it, but that's not the situation here).
What's even more ironic is the fact that we also accept many of these 'illegal' boat people here, yet at the same time, turn away people who filled out the paperwork and 'deport' them because they can stay here no longer. The only reason the paperwork doesn't get finished is because of backlog.
How about Red Flag Linux?
(Ducks)
You *can't* do that. Free software is free for everyone, not just the people you like...
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
That's not QUITE accurate..
"Way" is "for" and "Sa Ma" is "what"
And you said "Woh Duh" is "mine" but in this context, it's "my", but you do later use it that way later.. though you also add a "for" later when you didn't have a "for" in your word-for-word translation..
Anyway, it is, literally, "My monitor for what blue?"
One can only hope the flow of more information will be able to free the oppressed masses from the Communist yoke. (Man I sound like a socialist.)
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
PR masquerading as news. Read the release:
http://www.graphon.com/News/pr-chin a991102.html
I'm glad to see at least one person that's worried about contributing to the Chineese Military. I'm not too keen on helping out a govenment that murders it's own citizens on TV.
Isn't your "wei2" supposed to be "wei4"?
Am I missing something?
But, you take the "-american" off when you're not in "america", and are left with a valid description: african-american results in "african" - there are prolly a few africans in africa... Same theory.
>If all the Chinese are oppressed peasants, who's pirating millions and millions of copies of American software?
I didn't say they were ALL oppressed peasants. But China is highly dependent on the output of its farming workers. (ie, peasants) And there are a lot of them. And they are oppressed. However, just because that's true doesn't mean that there aren't enough educated people to pirate software.
Dude, Marxism fits perfectly with open source Ideals. I'm not a Marxist, but I'm not and idiot who believes '40s era propaganda ether...
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". Perhaps you should take a high-school history class before spouting off. Marx didn't want a 'state corporation'; in fact he wanted no state government whatsoever. I learned this in high school, why didn't you?
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". It doesn't work with finite resources, like food, but IP is infinite. Open source can in the 'real world'
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I always laugh when people make the "Photoshop versus Gimp" comparison.
It's not like there is only Photoshop or Gimp to choose from. There are tons of nice apps for image work (not on Linux, of course)
I personally like the Micrografx products. (I started using In-A-Vision, the predecessor of Designer, back when it was bundled with a Windows 1.03 runtime.) Right now you can get a boxed set with Flowcharter, Designer, Picture Publisher, some light duty 3-D modeling stuff, and tons of fonts and clipart for $60 retail. Picture Publisher definitely isn't Photoshop, but it's about the same as the Gimp. And the other programs in the package are good stuff. I've always thought the Corel stuff sucked in comparison. The flowchart program is really, really good. Much better than Visio.
Who says you have to work if you live in a Communist society? I don't think anyone would care if you didn't - the society just won't pay you. It's the same as in a Capitalist society.
And just to clarify: Socialist China and the USSR do NOT qualify as true Communist societies.
-Chris Andreasen
-Chris Andreasen
Check this: China Wants Linux
And then this: GraphOn Corp. Reports Q3 FY99 Results
It seems that Graphon has hooked itself into the Chinese market for Linux "back-office" work. I don't expect this means that the masses will have access to Linux.
[From the second link...]
In recent news, GraphOn announced a strategic alliance with two technology providers in China. Through the agreement, GraphOn software will help schools in China provide Internet and network access to powerful server-based applications. GraphOn thin, server-based software will help speed adoption of Linux as China's operating system of choice while extending the usable life of their aging Windows-based PCs.
About GraphOn
GraphOn develops and markets thin, server-based software to speed, centralize and simplify enterprise computing and enable efficient network deployment of applications to a wide variety of devices and platforms.
So there will be Linux servers, maby some Linux or pirated Widow's clients running browsers that can only talk to the dedicated server.
Some copies may get spread around to the greater population, but without an open netwrok in the country, it won't propagate quickly.
The reason faxes worked for them during Tienamen was because that worked in a point to point fasion.
How are they going to have a IP net in their country if there are no public ISPs? Sure, they could go back to the days of UUCP and do it like we did in the 70's, but I doubt they can pull it off without getting squashed. Their government's next step is to squash the audio bandwidth on the phone lines. Enough to let voice and low speed fax through, but not realiable enough for high speed modems. Hard to do? Don't think so Tim.
Freedom people, Freedom. Most definitely because of this I urge everyone to refer to GNU and GNU/Linux as FREE software. With free software you have all the freedoms to use, modify, and redistribute. This means freedom to all users. If we deny China these rights, no matter how horrid their government, the software no longer is free then.
But, hear this! Communism (in every implementation we know of) and dictatorships rely on censorship and controlling all forms of communication to keep in power. Does GNU or GNU/Linux bear ANY resemblance to this!!! If anything the GNU operating system and derivatives are in complete opposition to what we think communism is.
This will not bring down GNU/Linux by any degree. Perhaps some will see this as some mark of tyranny on GNU or Linux. But I see the opposite happening. Perhaps. Just perhaps, a little bit of freedom will rub off in China. With source code, perhaps someone will modify. Perhaps someone will get educated and use this software in ways their government never thought possible. Perhaps, by some slim chance, it will be GNU/Linux that will help, in some slim way, to take some power from the government back to the oppressed people. Perhaps GNU/Linux can democratize China like it has democratized all of us!
This should make all the free software developers feel good. The internet is a much bigger place now.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
The "idea" of comunisim is to have a *very* weak government, China, and rusia are not true communist nations. communism is not about 'dictatorship' in anway.
I leanred this in highschool, why didn't you?
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
My knee-jerk reaction is to say "Oh (deity), one more FUD tactic for people to use against Linux."
After reading a few comments, I think that there may be a realization that if China, a very large state with scarce resources, is using Linux successfully, maybe it would be a good idea for the US, a very large state with abundant resources, to use Linux so that resources that would otherwise go to a proprietary system, could go into a system that is already endorsed by the academic world.
The US does have a histroy of condemming communism and anything like it, but then borrowing the good ideas for its own use. While welfare is not an ideal solution, when people were starving the dole helped at least until government work could be provided. NOTE: FDR despised the dole, he wanted government work programs. Nationalizing work is definitely a socialist ideal, but unlike the communist implementation (where a military state forces nationization) the implementation in the US was to vote (albeit indirectly) for nationalization when it is necessary.
Hopefully the US government will realize that it is better off not depending on proprietary systems such as Windows, Novell, Solaris, MacOS, and others. The US government would be much better off if it followed China's lead and spent my money (yes, I pay taxes, so it's my money) hiring good system administrators and using open solutions from the academic world.
Though ZDNET most likely tried to put a polish on a turd and got this story a bit wrong, even if it is 1/10 right, there's some real irony here.
Everything Linux is about is what the Chinese gov't is against:
Namely: borderless sharing of everything, breaking down of divisions, an OS in constant flux and state of improvement. Plus a diffuse locus of control.
Funky.
As much as some people like their choice of OS, nobody wants to be locked into using only that particular OS for the forseeable future.
It doesn't matter how good Linux may be, it still puts people into the same boat as they are with Windows.
Hey, he capitalized Open Source Software so he's right. We need to defend the right to intellectual property like the Open Source(tm) trademark.
Did you hear about the new cartoon on Saturday morning? "Open Sourcin' Power Users" has thus far been a real hit with the kids!
Unfortunately, the Richard Stallman(tm) Action Figure isn't selling so well. And body parts keep falling off the Air-sick Raymond(tm) Figurine for some unknown reason.
Think about it. We've said before that all public agencies (government) should use free software wherever possible. I believe France did it (or maybe that was Australia, can't remember), and now, so did China. What's to complain about? Let's all remember that world domination can still be achieved, even if the only country that would refuse to adopt something based on emotional grounds (the US) isn't the first one on the bandwagon. Europeans will use Linux soon enough (they simply want the best products; think PAL vs. NTSC, or GSM phones), and so will other people, and the US will eventually follow suit, communist-supported or not. (I wonder what would happen if there was a news report that said communists drink water. I wonder if some USers ("Americans" include all people in North, Central and South America) would stop drinking water, just "'cause that's what commies do.")
The Chinese government wants to use Linux because they think it is, or will soon be, much better than the alternatives. I support this movement.
BTW, Linux has already achieved its critical mass of developers/users needed to keep it running despite political pressures (would YOU stop developing for/using Linux, just because of some media hype that says "it's a commie's OS"?), so the question of "will this hurt Linux" seems more and more absurd.
This will only hurt Linux if you, the users and developers, let it, which you won't.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
- Communist.
First: Being Communist is inherently evil? I thought we got over that.. Oh well...
Second: The government does some pretty bad stuff, but that's just the fruit of an oppressive government in general, and has nothing to do with "Communism" per se. Communism is primarily an economy philosophy, and in terms of economy, China is practically more capitalistic in many ways than the U.S. these days.
- They've stolen extremely sensitive nuclear weapon information from us.
First of all, if you're referring to the Los Alamos case, I'd like to point out that, not only has no evidence whatsoever been produced, the government has not even CHARGED the guy (whose name I forget) with anything yet!
I mean, if you like this country so much, ever heard of a little something called "innocent until proven guilty"? And that's usually for people who have been charged, at least...
Secondly, I'm not sure if this guy stole secrets, but I'm sure China has espionage teams here in general.. SO?! Do you think the U.S. doesn't have espionage teams in China and practically every other country in the world? It's part of international politics.. EVERYONE is spying on everyone.. Just because one guy is allegedly caught, that makes the country evil? At worst, it indicates incompetence (in getting caught).
I really don't why stealing nuclear secrets would even be that big a deal.. I mean, governments are doing it to each other all the time. That doesn't make it right, but I think there are far worse things we can accuse the Chinese government (or our own) of than that.
- They repeatedly and blatently violate the human rights of its citizens and Nepal.
Isn't it Tibet that people are riled up against? Unless China has been doing something with Nepal I don't know about (which I kinda doubt, but is possible), I think you're referring to Tibet.
In any case, I do not contest the truth of that. I personally disagree with the actions of the Chinese government in many cases, though I should point out that the issues are less black & white as people suggest. (For instance, you may not agree with their arguments for "stability" at the expense of personal liberty, but if you look at the results of instability in Russia, you would have to admit that the issue is at least somewhat complex.)
What I do contest is your implication that China violates human rights, and thus we should stop doing business with them. You know what? The U.S. violates human rights all the time. And I'm not even talking about such fuzzy cases as the validity of its troops invading other countries without U.N. permission.. I'm talking about internal problems like prison torture. (Prisons are gov't facilities.)
I wonder what the US will do to Linux when it is endorsed by the same country that endorsed the mass starvation of millions of people to forge their "community ethos". Perhaps, they'll start rounding up coders in order to force them onto colectivized programming farms.
and this is why communism (in this sense) works, is the nature of the product. Infinite supply means you can be very altruistic and the many can indeed benefit from the hard work of the few. However it must be reiterated that communism does not work for models with limited supply, as humans on the whole are WAY too selfish and lazy.
+&x
Yes Yes YES YES!!!!!
Remember this is FREE software! With the free exchange of ideas, information, and source code, China's Government made a big mistake with GNU/Linux. The Information Age is bad for Communism. But they don't understand it, do they? It is like magic to them. Poof! Break a code. Poof! More rapid communication. I wish all the Chinese geeks the best of luck liberating information and perhaps something much greater.
Boy! We are playing in a much larger ball park now!
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Top ten Linux Taoist / Zen phrases.
10. What is the sound of one flightless wing flapping?
9. Does Tux have Buddha nature?
8. It is said that hackers who write kernel code can walk through walls ('Specially if there is pizza on the other side)
7. Following the true path means not having to come up with ten funny things if you get tired...
1. When you snatch the packet out of the firewall, you are ready to go.
after all, in an ideal world, where people aren't selfish and greedy, Socialism/Communism is an ideologically sound social structure (note I said social, NOT political.
I personally don't even agree that pure Communism would work. Just read any sf novel dealing with "utopian" futures. They inevitably seem incredibly stale and boring.
After all, wouldn't life just lack excitement if everyone were the same and you couldn't strive to be better?
Dude, I said this else where, but minimum wage in the US is below the poverty line. I don't think those people making $6-10/hour with a family will be able to afford a computer either
In a communist society, i must do what I am 'deemed to be good at' even though i like picking mushrooms off of rocks and throwing them at squirrels all day.
I think the inherent assumption behind Communism (the chief reason it is a practical failure) is that you DO want to.. that you would be intelligent and realize helping your fellow man is the best course of action and thus you will do it. That you would choose to cooperate in a Prisoner's Dillemma.
In real life, that just doesn't work.. In real life, the Prisoners always get jail time. That's why we need to make the world unlike the Prisoner's Dillemma and create a system where selfishness is not a detriment, but an advantage: i.e. capitalism.
Manson probably had a favorite food. If I found out that it was the same as mine, I wouldn't be offended at his choice to eat spagetti or lasagna or what not.
Linux, no matter what concepts or ideals were kept in mind while creating it, is still a tool. Any entity has every right to make a decision about what tool is the right tool for the job. It doesn't pollute linux, even if it isn't the best bit of PR in the world.
It looks like a lot of posters on this topic are either:
1 ).html (Yes, this is in English.)
1) excited by the prospect of one billion potential Linux users in mainland China
2) worried about mainland Chinese government's domination of Linux
3) know zip about computing in mainland China and have nothing better to do than to resort to unsubstantiated remarks and epithets or political speculation
I'd suggest taking a look at China Internet Network Information Center's "Statistical Report of the Development of China Internet (Jan 1999)" at:
http://www.cnnic.net.cn/englishdata/English(990
(If you can read Chinese and have GB2312 fonts, there's a newer version from Jul 1999 at: http://www.cnnic.net.cn/diaocha9907/baogao.htm )
One should read it in its entirety, but here's
a summary, based on the Jan 1999 report (the Jul 1999 report is mostly the same):
- only about 750,000 computers online and about
2,100,000 users online (a very tiny percentage
of the one billion population figure that
everyone is so excited about)
- most users are single guys in their 20s from
Guangdong province (the one that's right next
to Hong Kong) or Beijing (the capital) who've
got a Bachelor's, and are engaged in
(in descending order of numbers)
computer, factory, or government line of work,
and 98% of these guys run a Microsoft operating
system and 71% of these guys use Internet
Explorer, and connect at 33.6 speed,
and only spend 1-5 hours a week online, which
is mostly spent looking up information (mostly
scientific) and doing email, don't shop online,
and mostly look at mainland Chinese websites
(aside from Yahoo, the mainland Chinese version
of Yahoo, and Microsoft)
Greetings,
Okay, it's obvious that zero cost, AND simultaneously not stepping on anyone's toes (through copyright violations) is a very high up reason for something like this.
On the other hand, this lets us do something we (as a technical community) haven't ever had the opportunity to do: Translate the technical vision of FREEDOM into a real-world political vision.
Linux isn't about communism vs. democracy vs. socialism vs. capitalism... It's about individual freedom to see, change, adapt, learn, and grow. It puts power into the hands of anyone who uses it, and lets them use that power to grow.
To hell with the 'public relations' portion of this. This is an unparalled opportunity for the Linux community to spread the REAL underlying beliefs of Linux to the people of one of the larger oppressive countries in the world.
The freedoms involved are so deeply embedded in the code, in the approach, in the system, and structure of Linux, that they will infect anyone who gets their hands into the system. Which could suddenly be a BILLION people.
I believe in these freedoms, and I believe that if we encourage an action like this, that it will become a catalyst for true social change. Not tomorrow, not in a decade maybe, but over the next quarter century, Linux could free a populace.
Isn't that worth believing in, hoping for, and maybe even fighting for? There's never been an opportunity like this, if it's true. Reach out with both hands and grasp at it!
Cyberfox!
But, unfortunately, this is NOT a good thing for Linux.
Why, please tell me how those horrible howling Chinese will taint your Linux. One of the things that drew me in was the total lack of PR needed to convince people that linux is a Good Thing. All the relations came from the public but that is a different beast. It stands on its own and it's only attitudes like this that will hurt.
How can anyone possible be negative about what are commonly referred to as repressed peasants embracing something as mind-expanding as an open-source OS? Even with national filters, some (out of a billion people there have to be a few) hardcore geeks who figure out how to get around it and show their friends. IWTBF, and so do people who figure out they aren't.
+&x
How do communist governments (in general or specific) deal with IP and copyright?
+&x
What one country does is their prerogative.
Would you say the same thing about Nazi Germany? just a question.
There are things that are morally wrong no matter what. Ideology doesn't mean shit, if it causes human suffering, its wrong, period.
Wether china does, or the extent of there violations are in question. And I don't have a problem with them using Linux. (In fact, I'm all for it). However, there are things that are never a question of perogrative.
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
In a LinuxToday, Eric Raymond wrote an article titled Communist China adopts Linux? Not so, apparently....
you don't *have* to pay for windows ether, especialy if you live in a contry that dosn't enforce IP laws, like, uh, china...
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
uh... 'ren' 'qiueshur'
get a clue. Chinese do also have an 'l' sound
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I think communism is a wonderful philosophy and I think that many would agree. But the Chinese model is a poor one of both communism and social responsibility. The treatment of the peoples of TIbet over the past 50 years sickens me. The fact that things have not drastically changed while people suffer by the billions (insert actual figure here) in this country sickens me. And the fact that the rest of the world does nothing about it truly sickens me.
The fact that the US will trade with China but won't with Cuba, not to say that Cuba is innocent, but let the grudge pass. This as well sickens me.
Feeling Sick.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
from each according to his ability, to each according to his means
s/means/need/
I even used the preview button on that one, damn it...
From what I've read CDMA really does sound better, you're actualy using TCP/IP on each device. Its really quite cool, and elegant.
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I guess the Chinese decided that there was only room for one tyrannical superpower in thier country and decided to boot Gates and his legion of goons out. hehe
But kidding aside, I remember reading in Popular Mechanics or some such magazine that Mexico was already using Linux/Gnome in thier schools because Windows was to expensive. There have also been countless reports of branches in our (US) government making the switch to Linux. This has to be a major blow to MS as government buy lots and lots of computers, MS will lose lots of money on Windows Licensing.
150 million?
I think you're off by a few orders of maginitude there. or at least one.
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Wow... this was pretty cool. I got 2/3 of the way through this comment and started busting out laughing. To whit:
// begin quote from above
"If, however, we imbue all discussions of Communism with a clear and unrelenting focus on the EVIL of Communism, then we achieve true objectivity:"
// end quote frmo above
This person is either brilliantly sarcastic or frighteningly confused. Either way, he argues a point very well. (figure out which one yourself)
--==Hail Eris!!==--
Sorry, I've only been taking chinese for about 3 months, so I'm a little shaky. In my textbook 'weishem.ma' was translated simply as 'why', literaly as 'for what reason' not 'for what ', thats why I said "for what reason" in my translation.
from what I understand, the word for 'for' is 'dui\', as in "dui\ ni~, yong\ Linux hen rong/.yi" (for you, using Linux is easy).
I guess that's just another type of 'for', though. Doing a 'true' literal translation is imposible, due to the fact that the languages are pretty diffrent...
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Next thing we'll see is an anti-Microsoft gathering in Tianamen square.
My point is that an idealistic (zealous) communist in a country such as China who is well versed in political theory would attempt to make parallels between his strong held beliefs and the sucesses of things which appear to go against the grain of capitalism. In this instance Linux, at least in his eyes.
If, however, we imbue all discussions of Communism with a clear and unrelenting focus on the EVIL of Communism, then we achieve true objectivity.
Do you really believe this? Marxian communism began as a discussion of how primitive communities operated, hence the word communism. His studies investigated how communities operated before we developed a sense of greed and the need to accumulate individual wealth (...the root of all evil)
In fact, one could argue that libertarian, capitalist beliefs harbor far more evil. What happens when we leave it up to natural forces to find equalibrium in our society? Darwanism, the strongest survive. We no longer are driven by any ethical or moral values, but lower ourselves to the pure animalistic urges to guide our society.
I know, that doesn't sound quite right. That's because our society in the US is where it is not because of capitalism, but from a strong moral middle class which keeps the balance. Libertarianism as well as a communistic planned society will never fly in the US. We constantly tweak our society and economy to produce just that right balance.
"Wei4 shem2.ma wo3.de xian3 shi4 qi4 shi4 lan2 se4" would be an exact word for word translation. Given that the poster didn't even know pin-yin, and that the word order can be radicaly diffrent in chinese, my guess is that he's Chinese (or Taiwanese, etc), and what he said would actually be something someone would say in China. Most people don't really pay attention to there grammar when the speak in English (or even post to slashdot), and the same might be true over there.
:)
Of course I don't really know for sure. but thanks for the link to zhongwen.com, that's a sweet site
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
A corollary seems to be that Communism works whenever the marginal cost if extra goods are low. Probably the biggest flaw in Marx's reasoning was that the working class would act selflessly towards other workers and only oppose "the capitalist regime." Marx missed the point that greed motivates the workers in the first place. Linux works under a communist system of development precisely because it requires no resources to create extra copies beyond the initial investment.
Strangely enough, it's the greed based motivation of capitalism that makes the development model work. If a developer really _wants_ a feature, they'll put it in for themselves. Sure they're helping others, but first and foremost they're helping themselves. Open Source development helps developers help themselves. In some sense, Open Source development is the best mix of capitalism and communism. People have both the motivation to improve the product (capitalist) and the resources required to do so (communist).
-Ted
I agree with this to an extent. Specifically, with regards to the television clips we see of Chinese People. We really don't know a whole lot about them, and seeing this 30 second emotional clips of them being abused by government and being jailed, etc. might give us the wrong impression of the standard of living over there. Imagine what kind of reaction "Cops" would illicit in the average Chinese person and how that would affect their perception of North America. Just because our Chinese friends aren't puking on the street with a ripped tank-top and gravy stains doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't the same kinda trash we have over here.
Moral context is suprisingly irrelevant in a whole host of areas, including many scientific fields. (Pray tell us what relevence moralism has to quantum field theory.) In fact, moralism is a source of much bias, and a barrier to effective analysis.
Communist regimes have caused the deaths of million of people-- yes, but it is not appropriate to blame Marx, until you can explain why his political ideas led neccesarily to
human suffering. Bonus points for not mentioning Ayn Rand.
Some say that EVIL (as you so gently put it) is a social construction. In any case, it is very difficult to define-- there are many people who might well be evil, but very little in common among them.
wo3.de zhong1 wen3 shui3.peng bu2gou4 gao1, ye3.shi wo3 shi4 ben4 mei3 guo3 ren2. :(
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Bury annoying comments like "Free Tibet!", "Falun Gong Rules!", "Remember Tiananmen!" or "Independence for Taiwan!" in the source somewhere in the process scheduler or SCSI drivers.
Do it enough and drive their censors crazy.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
I'm really kinda surprised that this is one of the first comments that I've seen linking Linux to either communism or socialism.
Until now, I haven't really seen any public comments regarding the fact that the various Open Source projects are basically anarcho-socialist in nature.
As a "intellectual-indivdual anarchist", I'm really pleased to see some modern, real-life, practical experiments in anarchy. Particularly, when they seem to be suceeding so well! I can't wait for final Mozilla release.
Long live freedom and down with the State (in whatever form it takes).
I'd go so far as to say that Linux and most Open Source projects are "Anarcho-Socialist" in organization.
Personally, I think it's a great thing.
What the world needs is a little more Anarchy.
(and before you start flaming, read a little about the subject)
Another communist aspect of linux is the *complete* lack of property involved. Nobody has ownership of any aspect of the OS, including any intellectual aspects.
That's not actually the case. Somebody has to hold copyright on GNU GPLed code, or it would be public domain, not GNU GPL. This is because the GNU GPL restricts distribution in a very important way: it prevents code licensed under it from being incorporated into commercial products. If the code were not owned by anyone, no one could enforce this restriction.
For example, the FSF is copyright holder on all the code in the various GNU projects. True, they cannot "unrelease" the code: a license to distribute under the GNU GPL has been granted, and their are no provisions in the GNU GPL for termination of the license. However, there's nothing legally preventing them from licensing the code for companies to use in proprietary products. Of course, that would be obviously be a very, very improbable thing for RMS to do :)
As for the GNU/Linux OS, the Linux kernel is copyrighted by "[Linus] and others who actually wrote it," a large portion in copyrighted by the FSF, and various distributions undoubtedly contain code copyrighted by the distributors.
The whole "NSA_KEY" thing, dosn't really mean anything, however, the NSA *has* weakened the encryption on the products of Novell (Basicaly, for everyone else, the key was 56 bits, for the NSA, it was 40)
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
so, are facts the entirely subjective as well? oh my god! nothing's real at all! shit!
For some people, abortion is moraly wrong, for others its not. Plese don't assume that you're whacko libratarian ayn-rand whorshping 'morals' are in anyway absolute.
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
And it's made from people! PEOPLE!!
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Ever stop to think that Gates' meeting with the Chinese leaders could be part of the reason they chose Linux?
I mean, regardless of any other qualities he might have, the one quality he definitely does not have is charisma.
Karl
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
If you mean that, without China, Linux will continue to be a minor OS, sure. But, if one adds China and the exponential growth that represents, then Linux has a good shot at becoming one of the top two OS.
The best thing we can hope for is that MSFT will crack down even more on pirated software, causing more people to adopt Linux and Open Source apps.
Will in Seattle
The development may be communist, but not Stalinist communist
nope, it's Stalmenist!
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"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Looks like this isn't true afterall. How could a government declare an official OS anyway?
ESR proclaims how glad the Linux community is that China didn't really pick us. Read some of the follow-ups, they range from why an oppressive nation like China is bad for an open source OS to why a greedy corporate driven nation like the US is bad for an OS OS. Personally I think the more people using and contributing to Linux, the better. When you have a great idea, and you have the ability to make it happen, differences pale in comparison to the good you are doing. Developing something like Linux has always transcended geographical, political and monetary differences.
Seriously, it should be interesting to see how many new coders suddenly appear. In a country with a billion people, there have to be some first rate hackers hiding in those crowds. I think this is a good thing.
Lotek---
What most americans don't seem to realize is that they live in a society where information is controlled by the big media corporations. In the recent 'war' in bosnia, iraque and kosovo, CNN wasn't exactly critical, they broadcasted pretty much anything the US army threw at them.
I'm not saying that the situation is the same as in china but I'm simply stating that you are not as free as you would like to think. Your government is pretty successful in manipulating the publics opinion. You're free to think whatever you want, the government simply tries to influence what you want by spreading their version of the truth through the media.
As for linux becoming the official OS of a communist country, I'm not surpised. The OSS model is sort of communistic itself and since it works very well it is good publicity for communism in general. Also the chinese will probably appreciate the fact that they won't be accused of illegal copying of software if they use OSS software.
Jilles
or perhaps even a COMMUNAL OS.
Anyway even the idea of open source doesn't prevent people making bag loads of money from support, and becoming a wealthy capitalist.
'nuff said.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
How true you speak!
:-)
With unlimited enegy and replicators of some sort the "supply" in "demand/supply = price" will be infinite hence "price" will be zero.
So hopefuly StarTrek utopia will be a reality in our life time.
Well according to Arthur C Clarke it will.
We need to defend the right to intellectual property like the Open Source(tm) trademark.
Hate to be a bitch, but isn't this sentence a contradiction? Admittedly I'm all for protecting the OSD from abuse and dillution at the hands of companies like Microsoft, but intellectual property is bad.
And yes, exclusion of certain people from the license does make it not technically Open Source(tm).
-- atomly
I think the last country to declare for Linux was Mexico. The minimal cost of Linux is a healthy inducement for take up in countries where per-capita income is low(er).
.. there is little reason why they shouldn't. Anyway, as far as COMMERCIAL agreements go, China is about as good or bad at keeping them as any other country. Secondly the GPL just effectively provides rights to give away software etc. In general it will be individuals rather than countries that (try to) break the GPL for their own ends.
Personally I'm a little dubious about a country having an official operating system, even though this is probably going to be incredibly good for Linux user base. I think operating systems, as with everything else, should win by merit and not by decree from above.
There have been a lot of comments whether China will honour the GPL
As for government take up, *BSD and Linux systems offer some advantages that other products don't. For one thing, since they get the source code, they have a reasonable degree of confidence that no security agency has asked for [and got] a back door fitted. Linux and BSD may have the odd security hole, but these are accidental rather than national policy. Even if one was engineered into an Open Source OS, the governments own developers would have the source code available to plug the leak.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
is because of East Timor, which is a massacre of civilians at the behest of the Indonesian government. Go look it up - you'll see why I mention it specifically.
go out and do some of that in real life.
when was the last time you volunteered at a homeless shelter or soup line?
Go here http://linuxtoday.com/stories/12221.html
Anyone know?
That might be true, but I would think that the availability of the source is making the OS attractive for security reasons. It enables the Chinese to verify that there are no hooks in the OS which can be exploited by someone else.
This is no conspiracy theory. Europeans have made experiences with American software version which have intentionally weak security. European military is considering if it can trust sensitive information to products like Lotus Notes, etc.
So it makes sense for non-US countries to rely on software where the source code is available. And with the increase of business on the Internet, this will, IMHO, make sense for everyone.
How can we legally accept digital signatures and transactions of all kinds, if we cannot verify that the code performing them is doing the right thing? Can a the worlds business be based on a black box made by a few companies in one nation? I doubt it.
Simply because communism usually means central control.
Linux and OSS are not centrally controlled. Most projects has an administering body or person, but that's all.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
Malaysia - VCD pressing capitals of the world.
well, it was one year ago. haven't checked back yet.
This Couldn't be more true. I try to tell people this and they tell me I'm crazy :).
Which office suites are available with unicode support? MS Office is, but it does not run on Linux. If VR China really goes Linux, it could give some of the competitors (Corel Office, StarOffice, Applixware) a new chance in the market. What do you think?
Mika
Where oh where would the U.S.A. be if China didn't invent the compass which Columbus used? In Japan 98% of the high school students graduate. In the U.S.A. 30% drop out of something easy and stupid as high school. You American bastards like to pick on us, but you're the country with the most overweight, lazy and dumb people who give your children guns as birthday presents. There's no damn American, except presidents who ever came to China, so how can you judge the progress of our beautiful country? China is very industrialized and over 80% of the computers in the world, including yours is made in my country, so be a little more thankful you piece of shit! Chinese people are too forgiving to morons like you. That's why you pick on us so much. But if I'd cross your street, you'd better watch out. Everything you Americans enjoy in your daily miserable lives are invented in my country. What the hell is invented in the U.S.? The atomic bomb! What is the standard O.S. in the U.S.? Windows! That explains how much lack of taste you have. Asian power! Black power! Vengeance!
Regards
January
It probably was more like anger. I don't like the way the american system works. Some people (100% of the time, americans) think its the greatest thing the world. Well, its not. We kinda screwed over Iraq, and we DO poke our noses where it doesn't belong. On top of that, we can't be honest about anything. I would have really prefered if bush said "We're going to fight iraq, and help kuwait, to protect oil interests". Sadam was evil, yes, but they painted the wrong picture of what we were really there for.
What the heck this is turning into a Chinese class. I think this was just meant at a pun on BSOD.
It's not the user-base that I think we should look for in this adoption, but the publicity. We still have a butt-load of people out there who doesn't know what linux is, can't be bothered when Windows works for them, afraid of anything not Windows... bla bla bla. This publicity, should it happen, will get Linux some deserved media attention. Give Gates something to worry about. And of course change the FOF's stupid comment on Linux being fringe.
Windows is simply getting too much media attention. That is why other companies develop for windows only, cause everybody want their products to be in the spotlight.
So this is the result of semi-militaristic, but absolutely fanatic hostileness to other choices? Just like we laugh maliciously when another E-mail virus wrecked couple million poor windows machines, we give thumbs up for China forcing people to use Linux or die?-)
Makes me proud to be linux fanatic. The torches, the torches...!
- Kaatunut
No, you got it all wrong. What we need to do is to encourage contribution from the Chinese users--spread the meme of freedom of information and communication. That's the real way to subvert their government and hopefully, in some small way, effect change. (well, either that or write in subversive subliminal messages into the kernel...)
And when 1000 million (right?) people enter the community, how many new coders is that? Presuming they are about as intelligent as us (which would propably be correct - stereotypes about smart/dumb easties partly come from filtered takes - is your average university chinese average chinese fellow too?)... hmm, how many could code on linux atm? Another 1000 million? Then our coder count would theoretically double.
Just can't wait to see what's Linus of China like.
- Kaatunut
Very popular future view, world ruled by meag-tradercompanies, will drop because very important element in future, software (yes, I think computers are here to stay), will be free? If Windows ruled the world for some more time, it could start taking over the world with hidden spying, remote control and stuff. No, don't laugh, instead tell me why it wouldn't be possible. Who could detect it? Nobody sees the code and as for workings of OS/apps... who understands them anyways. If best shot for detecting microsoft spying is seeings letters 'RSA' in file, we're in shit. Thank god the messiah foretold saved us.
- Kaatunut
OK, to make life interesting, lets make it as unfair as possible. Randomly take cash from people and distribute it to others. Forbid people health care and education if they are too poor. etc etc etc.
Bravo! Finally someone says it. Investigative Journalism in America is a farce and has been since the days of the Watergate. Anymore, the media has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for whoever has the most money. It's rather sickening.
I should like to point out, however, that OSS is 'communist' in much the sense that Marx and Engels understood the term. It is not 'communist' in the sense that the old men in Beijing understand it. Indeed, it would perhaps be better to say that the Chinese are Maoist (as they themselves say) than to say that they are communist.
Communism is a far more subtle political/economic theory than most give it credit for being. For instance, the fact that United Airlines is owned by its employees is an example of a communist system in a larger capitalist economy. Further, the revolution in tech firms of making employees part-owners steps into the communist domain.
The key insight to communism is that the means of production ought to be owned and benefit those who produce.
Too bad that idea got perverted into totalitarianism and terror at the hands of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.
Sorry about the last message, i thought you were saying the FSF holds the copyright for all code licensed under teh GPL. :)
Here's an article on a new competitor to the Venus (set-top VCD/internet device) that MS developing for the Mainland Chinese market.
Unfortunately, the author of the new article doesn't seem to know the difference between VCD and DVD.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
They say linux is 5-10% of all computers? Now the number is *much* bigger. Think about this.It's great news for linux.
>Well, based on the comments on this page, I would
> say opinion is pretty much splt, of course, it
>wouldn't occour to ESR, who seems to think that
>Marxism is as evil as Nazism..
Quick history quiz. More people were murdered under which system; fascism or communism???
Answer:
COMMUNISM!!!
Suprise!!!
Four million jews in germany doesn't compare to at least 20 million (people of various (any) religions) murdered during Stalin's "purges" in communist russia.
Communism, of course, doesn't choose who to murder based on religion alone. Communism demands the silencing(murder) of ANY person who deviates from doctrine to the slightest. Gee, an equal opportunity genocidal police state.... whodda thunk it??
Another quick quiz... Place the quote... communist or fascist:
"One death is a tragedy, A milion deaths is a statistic"
Answer: COMMUNIST! Good ol' Uncle Joe Stalin, whom FDR was so buddy buddy with.
I, for one, agree completely with ESR. I have no desire, whatsoever, to ever be associated with the chineese. Remember, this is the same merry bunch who engaged in such niceties as the Tianinamen Square massacre and the occupation of Tibet. Not to mention their continuing harassment of Tiawan, giving Iran all the silkworm missiles they want. Oh, and don't forget they stole a good deal of our nuclear missile and warhead technology only recently, so they could have better weapons of mass destruction to point at us.
Why would ANYONE in the free software movement want to be associated with a governmental system that is the total antithesis of the word "free"???
And do you want to even think of the bad press Linux would get if it were to become the official communist operating system??? I can imagine the ads spread by Linux's competitors now:
"Linux, the choice of genocidal totalitarian police states all throughout the world. Invade your neighbors with the power of open source software on your side. Kill a few million dissedents, recompile your kernal, and do it all again!!!"
john
Imagine all the people...
This is SO ironic.
China, the repressor of human rights, liberties, and free speech, and the one who cracks down, restricts and censors internet usage....China is mandating Linux?...Finland I can see, but China?...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
While I am glad to see China embracing Linux as it's official OS (and if I recall correctly, France now has a government policy of preferring OSS to closed-source) I seem to recall that the main Chinese-language Distro had some problems with The GPL Licence, in particular not redistributing the altered source code. Does anyone know if this has been resolved?
--
-=DaveHowe=-
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"
I can tell it's been a long time since you last were reeducated. A year in a State farm would do you a lot of good.
-----------
-----------
Kandinski is a member of the
No it just makes most denominations of christianity evil.
You idiot.
If the open-source community spent its time worrying about how it appears to the computer industry pundits, we'd have a crappy OS but a great marketing strategy. Er....
Those that want to make noise about Linux=Communism would do so anyway. It would be just as easy to turn this around and say that Western ideas of freedom and individualism are invading Chinese with the help of Linux. Getting a good OS in the hands of millions of Chinese will only make for a more secure world order, IMHO.
"Classic UFO's
His logic is badly skewed, but he did get the words right. The "kulaks", a Russian term for prosperous farmers, got stomped rather badly. IIRC this was a Stalinist thing that happened in the aftermath of Lenin's "New Economic Policy" (mild free-marketish reforms in the early 1920's or thereabouts), but my last Russian history course was many years ago so don't quote me on that.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Communism on it self wasn't a bad idea, it's major flaw, according to me, is that it rules out things like greed and selfishness which of course doesn't work in practice since every person on this planet is in principle selfish and will ultimately favor his/her own interests above the common interest. It's exactly those things that converted the newly formed communistic states earlier this century in ordinary dictatorship. The communistic idealism is used as a tool to repress the people of those states. The motivations for the communistic revolution were not evil, the result of it was.
Jilles
Communism and Marxism are based on the ideals of 'the people'. Theoretically, it would be possible to be communist without violating anyone's rights.
The only problem is that nobody has been able to do it yet...
--
E2 IN2 IE?
-1 Flamebait?? .. jeez.. looks like NRA Guy is a moderator and can't take criticism against the USA..
--
Delphis
How about Saddam Hussein? (guess who supplied his weapons 10 years before the Gulf War)
Let's not forget Manuel Noriega.
Or Grenada. Or Panama. Or Somalia. And what about that Iran contra business?
The US government is up to their necks in the same stuff that the Chinese government is. The only difference is the US gov does it to other countries.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
This entire discussion must be the most bigoted, stereotypical, and racist bunch of threads I've ever seen.
I agree with your comments. In fact, I was thinking that some Chinese hackers (programmers, developers, etc.) might see Linux as being "uncool" since the PRC approves it.
Definitely very strange happenings in the world today.
"Classic UFO's
We use lethal injection in Texas, not the chair.
Praise the Force Field! Praise the Laser Project! Slackware Loon #19830573
I think he/she was just trying to "inject" some humor.
China today is more like a autocratic bureaucracy than communisim. The thing you have to remember is that when you make a deal with "chinese goverment", just exactly which branch of goverment could it be?
As all self-centered human being, Chinese bussinessman like to carry big titles. So a guy from Chinese Dept. of Agriculture can carry VERY impressive name card (you would not be able to imagine), and they struck a deal with you and promise you the sky... it's just the way they do bussiness. It's a "FACE" thing. (i.e. I have more "face" if I carry a big title, so that I am perceived in a stronger position blah blah ).
Different departments in central goverment doesn't really talk to each other much. If you had a deal with Dept. of Electronics Industry, which manages national telecom, then it's serious money.
But Dept. of Electronics Industry has no power (whatsoever) to tell Dept. of Education to implement Linux in University or highschools.
And if your deal is with Chinese dept. of agriculture, then it's almost means nothing except a few servers in agriculture research institute.
I remember in early 80's when I was in high school in Beijing, they "endorsed" Apple II as educational computer, and all high schools got several of them. It's a Dept. of Education decisition because they can "clone" Apple II easily.
Of course, in the next few years Apple II were replaced by IBM PC nevertheless.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
It is not just American society in which information is controlled by a few big corporations. Over 75% of the entire worlds communications are controlled by just 4 companies: General Electric, Disney, CBS, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Even worse is that they are all in bed w/ each other, so it is really more like 1 company.
I agree completely, there are big differences between the situations, and you succinctly elucidated the main one. However, and maybe this was unclear, my point was that picking one incident and making arbitrary and simplistic moral judgements based on it is naive and/or stupid.
:)
Not to mention extremely annoying if you're not in a good mood
- "I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan (Tight Connection to my Heart)
I said "in practice". I don't really care if you want to quibble over the true definition when all of the "communist" nations I know of are dictatorships.
Schools vary widely from location to location, and person to person. The fact that I don't know the original definition of Communism as per the original writers show that I, like just about everyone else, has holes in their knowledge. That's life.
Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Yeah, but four dead is a lot different from hundreds in Tienanmen and over a million in Tibet...
Aelfric Sorensen
Yes, but all the time we, speaking as an American, think that we are so far above all other countries in human rights. While the Kent State Massacre may be a misower in it's own name, it's still a testament that the US Government is not much better than other countries, if WE aren't capable of letting those who wish to demonstrate demonstrate, in a country which has a bill of rights which guarantees freedom of speech, even now which seems to be a joke.
Quickly rereading this thread will help you understand that this...
What is important is that you somehow assume that communism must be an ideal society, whereas capitalism must not.
is the first mention of capitalism. You're reading in too much when you see the word Communism and think Anti-Capitalism. I live very comfortably off the knowledge in my head (doing things I enjoy) in America and I love it. I think capitalism works *better* than communism as a basis for social structure because it plays on our innate desire to have to a better life for ourselves and our children
However, like communism, it is not workable in the extremes because, well, very few things work in the extremes. Build an incredibly strong tall building that doesn't bend with the wind and you'll see what I mean.
That being said, I've never been to Sweden and don't know much about it, other than a tendency for tech and buxom blond lasses, which rather makes me want to visit and deal with any type of government the Swedes have found appropriate.
+&x
NO WAY India will adopt Microscrap as the OS of choice. We run on Unix/Linux.
The issue with GPL is that you need to distribute or make available the source to your changes whenever yout distribute your software to someone else. If the PRC's government makes proprietary modifications to Linux and only deploys it within the governement, they have absolutely no reason to share it with the world. None.
Nowhere in the GPL does it say you need to share all of your development work with the world if you happen to use a GPL'd work as a starting point. The GPL kicks in the moment you try to redistribute your work, since you can't redistribute a modified GPL'd work unless you make the source available for the modified work.
The GPL really is about freedom, including the freedom to take the source and do whatever the hell you want with it behind closed doors. The only requirement the GPL makes is that you must extend the same freedoms to others that were extended to you if you choose to distribute your work. I doubt we're going to see a PRC Linux Distribution anytime soon.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!