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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.
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
...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
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]=-
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
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)
Actually, I'm sure that China has been thinking about the very same question, in reverse. They can't see the source to Windows, and for all they know, the NSA has put back doors into every Chinese-language version of Windows. (Those of you who think that the NSA doesn't do this kind of thing, please read this link).
That is, the Chinese know that they can't trust Windows. But the Chinese can't sneak hacks into Linux either, since they have to provide source code and it has to pass review by Linus and the other kernel hackers.
I smell another AnonCow who hasn't been paying attention.
China is built around communist ideas, and considers itself (as does most everyone else) a communist state ie: a 'Peoples Republic'. In reality, it's barely communist in its actions... more like a despotic police state which is unsucessfully trying to hold back encroaching consumerism. Socialism, however, is alive (and well? depends on who you ask) in Canada, Norway, France and a whack of other places. Even the US has its socialist leanings (FDR's welfare state, for example). I think it was FDR. Wasn't it?
McCarthyism has *not* past. "Commie" is such an ingrained word in the psyche of baby-boomer and Gen-X american residents that it'll take another 2 generations before the intolerance has finally worn off, mostly based on the death of those individuals! If you think McCarthyism is dead, just take a read at some of the posts on this very same forum, which is supposed to have a higher average IQ than Joeseph Guntotin Merican. Ask your daddy what his opinion on 'Commies' is, and see what kind of rederick is spewed. Ask your grandaddy, assuming he didn't die in Korea or something fighting the... now, what nation was that again? I forget...
Personally, I've never found a problem with the idea of communist or socialist concepts, and thus have no need to 'get over' anything. I'm lucky enough to be a relatively young Canadian born citizen which never had to deal with a national stigma of lame congressional witch-hunts. My fear is that Linux will suffer stigma from those same intolerant individuals that made those congressional hearings a reality. (This is totally avoiding the conspiracy theorists' view that the hearings were mostly just pure anti-semitism cloaked in an 'acceptable' form for that day, of course)
Communism does seem very fair, very egalitarian, very nice in theory. Of course, what with people being greedy by nature (hard to defeat millenia of genetic imperative to cover your own ass) the implementation of tenable communist/socialist states have generally sucked hard ass. The fact that is HAS sucked in the past has cast a pall over anyone or anything associated with it, and I fear that it'll cast a pall over Linux too. I dearly hope to be proven false.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
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
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.
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