Slashdot Mirror
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.
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]=-
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)
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.
Did you know that the minimum wage in the United States is lower than the poverty line? Don't be so cavaliar about other countries problems, the United States has plenty of dirty laundry. And it's not just about our companies being just too damn competitive (that durn Microsoft).
I respond this way because I have close friends from China. It's a lot like the US. There are alot of good people, and a suspicious government.
Did you know that the New York Police Department had been cited by Amnesty International for Human Rights Violations? Did you ever hear of the US engineering the military coup of a democratically elected socialist in Chile? Or how about Mai Lai? Incidently, name the only nation to use a nuclear weapon on civilians? Yep that's right, good old clean faced US of A.
Get over the nationalist crap spoonfed into you -- if you don't trust the media to tell you a straight story regarding computer OS's, what makes you think that you'll get a clear picture of more politically sensitive stories.
Quoting Mark Twain (via Utah Phillips): "Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."