Red Caps Adopt Red Hat

China, in the news more recently for sentencing hackers to death, now looks set to encourage them. In this article from the South China Morning Post, Red Hat says it will establish a beach head in the rapidly industrialising sleeping giant to push Linux before Microsoft makes its move. We reported in November that Linux was to be China's official OS. I can see Red Hat stock jumping skyward if a billion communists suddenly decide Linux is their desktop and server platform of choice.

Comments

Jeez...

[Potatoswatter]

I can't believe they still say "in the news more recently for sentencing hackers to death." Even if that were valid (as the discussion then proved it wasn't) it wouldn't be valid now.

First post?

Work together for the Common Geek Good:

Sensationalism

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Usually when something like this happens, I bite my tongue and let the other naysayers come out of the woodwork. However, I would expect better from Slashdot not to use a sensationalist headline like "Red Caps Adopt Red Hat," and I would hope that the editors would know better than trying to stir up flames by pointing out their (not really that recent) sentencing of crackers (isn't this the same news site which is constantly trying to distinguish between a hacker and a cracker?). It seems that whenever things involve China or other non-English-speaking nations, Slashdot gets nice and sensational, showing only one side of the issue even when that side is relatively irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Thanks, Nathan, for putting a sour taste in my mouth tonight.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Re:Sensationalism

[Bruce Perens]

I think Rob and Jeff decided to fly to California for the hearing and they left Slashdot with the wrong baby-sitter.

This story really sucks!

There, I said it. It's not just you with a sour taste in your mouth tonight, Pascal.

Bruce

Re:Sensationalism

[JordanH]

• I think Rob and Jeff decided to fly to California for the hearing and they left Slashdot with the wrong baby-sitter.

Now that sounds like an interesting story.

What hearing in California?

-Jordan Henderson

Re:Sensationalism

[Dacta]

I suspect the DeCSS hearing. See yesterday's (? - timezones muck me around) story.

Re:Sensationalism

[Syberghost]

All crackers are hackers; not all hackers are crackers.

Thus, the statement about which you're complaining is correct, in the same sense that saying "sentencing primates to death" would be correct, since all crackers are primates, but not all primates are crackers. :-)

Re:Sensationalism

[Col. Klink (retired)]

The blurb seems to use both senses of hacker at the same time.

"China, in the news more recently for sentencing hackers [should be crackers or, more accurately, bank robbers] to death, now looks set to encourage them [hackers, NOT crackers]."

This raises an interesting question.

[tweder]

As mentioned in this Slashdot article the US Government is seriously looking into using Linux - specifically Red Hat 6.x. How will this fare with (potentially) billions of Communist developers contibuting to their OS? While it's good to get more folks on the wagon, what will happen here? Will the Red Scare strike fear into the hearts of the US government? Will they be forced to use the closed-source commie offerings of M$?

Red Caps? Hacker?

[adamsc]

It would be nice if the people with article posting access would share a common dictionary. Don't we cover into the "Hacker != Cracker" rant often enough? Should we even need to discuss why "Red Caps" is lame?

Boy am I tired off...

[shri]

hearing the "one billion" people slogan. If that was really the market size of any product in China, the best product would be underarm deodorants... "two billion armpits". I am sure red hat will do well, but I am also sure that they will face very stiff competition from existing companies that have better connections in China. China is a nexus of many things strange to the western mind and unless Red Hat can buy themselves into this nexus, they will not suceed. I would give a grass roots linux distro made in China a much better chance at making it.

china is the future of open source

[tao.ca]

regardless of recent market fluctuations, this should boost redhat in a big way. i think its a great move, and hope it spurs catalytic interest in open source computing in china.

its ludicrous to suggest that 'communists in china' would be the biggest user of gnu/linux/open source, when in fact, its the entrepreneurial class (mixed with the military) that is the driving (economic) force in china right now. the communists are doing their best just to keep up.

frame this within a deep and diverse culture of a multi-millenial civilization (that is what we call china), and you may find the utopia of new found developers and users. while the chinese state may be harsh and severe, the chinese people are as curious and interested in new things as the rest of us.

as our respective governments (american and chinese) continue to banter and boast of their power and prestige, is it not then up to us, the people, to brige the cultural gaps, and find a shared space (internet) of understanding (open source)? otherwise what is to stop the hawks on both sides from using we the people as fodder for their conflicts?

Second typo alert

[Bruce Perens]

Oops, this one should have said shame on you Nathan, not Jeff. I must be tired. Moderate as redundant, I'll try _once_ more. Then I'll go to sleep :-)

Windows does beat linux for I18N

[poopie]

Developing nations *can* afford klunky M$ products. Pirated CDs with MS software cost the same as linux cds. I do not endorse piracy, but there *are* thousands of shops that sell pirated software in Asia and they do it publicly.

So, price isn't an issue. Maybe copyright compliance is, but not price.

The biggest problem I can see to increasing linux use in Asia is internationalization. I'm willing to bet that many millions of people would rather use windows in their own language than linux in english.

I know, for european languages, you can set LC_ALL , and I know that there are localized version of linux in Thai, Japanese, Chinese, but until we have a single distribution of linux that can imput and display all the major languages in every app, we're not finished.

There's more to it than meet the eye.

Do you have any idea how many different ways there are to type chinese? (at least 18 different imput methods if memory serves me)

Do you have any idea how many different and incompatible character sets there are for Chinese? (at least 3 completely different ones)

Do you have any idea how few of the total chinese characters are even represented in a complete UNICODE font? (I think unicode font includes about 20,000 Chinese, Japanese, Korean glyphs while Chinese has over 80,000 characters)

add on a batch of other languages with accents above, below, or on either side of character, and then start thinking about right to left text input. (arabic, hebrew, ...)

sadly, X wasn't designed with these in mind. The GNOME folks are working on pango to address these issues... seems redhat is putting a lot of work into internationalizaion...

Here's a link to gscript

Here's a gtk internationalization whitepaper

Re:Windows does beat linux for I18N

[BJH]

i'm no expert on Linux with Chinese

That's pretty obvious. If you're on Linux, then you're probably using Communicator, right? Pull down the View menu and have a look under Character Set (yeah, you know, it's that item that you've never bothered to check before). It lists three Chinese encodings - Big5, EUC-TW and GB2312.

And then there's Japanese, which has three widely-used encodings - JIS (not listed in Communicator but still viewable), SJIS (as used by MS and Apple) and EUC-JP (UNIX-related OSs).

Learn something about the subject before opening your mouth next time.

Re:Windows does beat linux for I18N

[poopie]

I'm no expert on Linux with Chinese
I speak, read, and write Chinese and I've used Chinese Windows, Chinese Turbolinux.

* perhaps there are a million ways to input Chinese, but 3 will cover 99.999% of needs.
WRONG! So Wrong. Foreigners will probably use PinYin, Taiwanese will start out using BoPoMoFo, Speed typers might want to use ChiangJie (sp?), Cantonese speakers will use another imput method based on different romanizations, data entry operator with a keypad would use other methods. 3 isn't enough.

* it is absolutely untrue that there are at least 3 completely different chinese character sets
I mean encodings. ... and it's quite common that Chinese text will not have any sort of text or encoding tag to indicate what encoding is used. So, if you get a text message written in Chinese, it's virtually impossible to have a program guess which encoding is used. You have to do it visually by switching encodings.

By the way, there *are* TWO different Chinese character sets as well, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan, HongKong, Malaysia, and to a lesser degree, China. Simplified Chinese is used mostly in China. The Character sets a similar, but they definitely are DIFFERENT.

* perhaps unicode has a very limited set of Chinese character, but they are enough for all practical purposes.
Depends on what you consider practical. Granted, unicode contains most characters, but how would you feel if Unicode left out one of the characters in your Name? How would you feel if you couldn't type the name of a Temple because Unicode didn't have the right character?

Re:Windows does beat linux for I18N

[BJH]

[SARCASM ON} Well, thank you so much for the news flash! [SARCASM OFF]

Hate to tell you, but I read Chinese and Japanese, and if you'd bothered looking, I said three encodings. There are two main character sets - the Traditional Chinese set, which uses the older, more complex form of characters, and Simplified Chinese, which was an effort by the mainland Chinese to cut down on the number of strokes required for most characters, as well as unifying similar characters into one.

As for your comment about the same set of characters for multiple spoken languages (actually dialects), that's true in a broad sense, but many Chinese dialects have words and phrases that cannot be expressed correctly in written Chinese.

And last of all, just because you don't bother actually learning about a subject before you spout off, don't assume that everyone else is on the same level of ignorance as yourself.

"One billion communists" = gross inaccuracy

[gavinhall]

Posted by Cmdr.Taco:

I know that characterizing a potential Linux market as "one billion communists" sounds kind of funny, but it's really quite wrong.

The newsmedia has been doing this for quite a while -- to set things straight: this is a communist government (which, of recent, has had some serious capitalist leanings!) Most of the Chinese people did not choose Communism, and several recent studies have shown that most Chinese don't even agree with Communist ideals. In addition, most of the "one billion" are rural people, who have little knowledge of their government. They abide by the Communists because they are unaware of other "options."

So, let's say "one billion people in a Communist country"... it's a bit more accurate!

sentencing hacker to death

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case, given with a particular country,
given with a particular hacker who commit
a particular crime(not necessary hacking) that worths death penality in that particular country.

I will not surprise to hear a story in Yahoo.com that "Sentence hackers to death".

However, if that paritcular country is the
Goddamn fucking CHINA, then everybody will
gone insane and mock, accuse and swear on it
whatever the reason is.

Similar titles can be heard from CNN.com and
abcnews.com everyday.

(1)China violating human right on XX YY ZZ
(2)China government sentence two AA BB CC
(3)YYZZXX organization were banned from China.

Just adding the term China in the news headline
makes the news worth reading. And then adding
violating human rights is another additive to
make it sounds "TRUE"--the correctness of the
story itself doesn't matter. Everybody gonna
love this kind of news.

Remember the USSR in 70's and early 80's?

I wonder why these people never learn.

Shame on you, Nathan!

[Bruce Perens]

I got so pissed off by this story that I've had to type in this comment three times just to get it right.

I'm trying to be diplomatic about this one and it's really hard. The headline isn't true, the story isn't true for the most part, and it's just an attempt to dig up that old Linux and Communism canard again. Did Jeff and Rob decide to fly to California and leave Slashdot with the wrong baby-sitter?

• The nation of China has not made Linux its official operating system. The story to that effect was a hoax.
• The Red Caps are not adopting Red Hat. They never said they were.
• One billion communists are not adopting Linux as their platform of choice. That is speculation.
• Exactly one thing in the story is true. Red Hat is opening an office and going after the Chinese market, like a lot of other capitalist companies.

But we knew this much already, months ago. So what's the reason for this story? It's about the worst thing I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.

Bruce

Moderate down as redundant please

[Bruce Perens]

Moderate the above down as redundant please. It's not often that I made two misworded posts, but this story made me that annoyed. I posted a correct one below.

Bruce

Unbelievable........

[rapett0]

I can not believe that you said "a billion communists". I am not Chinese, nor have I ever been to China. However, I have *many* Chinese friends, and um, not a single one is Communist. In fact, part of the stigma is pinhead Americans/whites thinking that way. They are people just like you and me. You think they like their government any more then we like ours? I think not.

Uh, so what's new here?

[Zico]

GNU/Linux is already entrenched as the platform of communists. ;-)

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

the China myth

[jedra]

Not again.....this China market myth has been going on since the days of Marco Polo. People have to realize that 99% of people in China couldnt even afford a computer , let alone an operating system. 70% of the populace still worries about three square a day and a roof over their heads while working in a rice field. Linux has great potential in China, TurboLinux leading the charge already, but it is hardly a tool for some of these half-assed "conspiracy theories" I keep reading about. oh and the hackers that were sentenced to death, I believe that was because they used their computing prowess to embezell $ from a local bank. Hey , Im against capital punsihment, but dont be mislead to think that these people were sentenced solely for cracking, they were sentenced for stealing

That would be rich

[Greyfox]

I know it's a hoax, but it would be rather amusing if MS couldn't claim its current 90% of the market share because of 1 billion installed desktops in China. For some reason Windows users seem to think that 150 million installed desktops proves the superiority of Windows. I suppose the same argument could be used to claim shit is the superior food, what with 1 billion flies eating it every day...

Re:A thought...

[odaiwai]

Ummm, I think your hat needs more tin-foil.

dave

Re:STOP

[odaiwai]

For many people in China, a desktop would be useful mainly to shelter under when it's raining or too sunny.

As for a computer, the big barrier is literacy in English.

Handwritten input of chinese characters is big business here and that input method is something Linux needs to work on.

dave

Crackers vs. Hackers

[Taco Cowboy]

I fully understand the need for some to dig at China whenever they get the chance, but this time I am afraid it has gone too far.

The people who frequent slashdot should have understand the differences between CRACKERS and HACKERS.

A Hacker is someone who derives joy from discovering ways to cirvumvent limitations, while a Cracker, on the other hand, is someone who intentionally commiting CRIME using his/her knowledge of hi-tech hacking.

The reference to the guy who was sentenced to death in China as a "Hacker" is simply erroneous. The case involved was a CRIMINAL CASE, where two brothers have ROBBED A BANK, using hi-tech hacking maneuvers.

BANK ROBBERY, no matter via the "stick-em-up" way or via computer hackery, is still BANK ROBBERY, and I believe the very act of ROBBING BANK constitutes a CRIME in China, as well as US or Australia.

In US, BANK ROBBERY is a FEDERAL CRIME, that is, the case is immediately under FBI's jurisdiction, no matter where it happens in the U. S. of A.

If bank robbery is a crime in the USA, how come we have people here rooting for bank robbers who robbed banks in China?

Why the double standards?

A crime is a crime, there is no two ways about it.

There should not be a double standard here, especially when the people who frequent /. are supposed to be better than the average joe-on-the-street. We are supposed to be the people who understand things better.

My only hope for the new millennium (just a few days away) is the people who frequent slashdot.org would respect China's right in carrying out its duty to protect its own citizenry.

Please stop denying China its right to punish its own criminals, just as US wouldn't want anyone from India or Afghanistan to meddle in the US criminal justice system.

Just a side-note:

China is just another country, and we all know there _are_ people who would fault China for whatever reason they can find.

Of course, these people are experts. They would package their condemnations in such ways that they would appeared to be non-racis. But we all know the true reasons behind all those condemnations.

Meanwhile, lest we forget, USA is _still_ a country practicing capital punishment. How come we do not see the same people who condemn the death pernalty in China condemns the death pernalty in the U. S. of A?

Why not?

I mean, are the poor souls who were put to death in the USA _less_ dead than their counterparts in China?

We can do better. We should do better.

We should be able to differentiate CRACKERS from HACKERS, and we should be able to understand that in order for the Americans to condemn China for putting its own citizens to death, USA should first stops its own capital punishment.

Want to demand China to stop executing its own people? Let the United States be the first one to put a stop of all its capital punishment cases. Then perhaps you can start demanding China to do the same.

Re:Crackers vs. Hackers

[neutron42]

You said: "A Hacker is someone who derives joy from discovering ways to cirvumvent limitations, while a Cracker, on the other hand, is someone who intentionally commiting CRIME using his/her knowledge of hi-tech hacking."

Circumvent limitations? Hackers are people who enjoy solving problems, pure and simple. Seems to me like a cracker is someone who derives joy (and maybe money!) from circumventing security systems.

You said: "... especially when the people who frequent /. are supposed to be better than the average joe-on-the-street. We are supposed to be the people who understand things better. "

Huh? Who on earth ever claimed /. peeps were "better" than anyone else? Oh, wait, does this mean I finally get to wear my 3l1t3 badge now?!

Good grief.

You said: "My only hope for the new millennium (just a few days away) is the people who frequent slashdot.org would respect China's right in carrying out its duty to protect its own citizenry."

By executing somebody that stole something shy of $100K? Good heavens...

You said: "Of course, these people are experts. They would package their condemnations in such ways that they would appeared to be non-racist. But we all know the true reasons behind all those condemnations. "

Oh really? You know my "true reasons" for condemning a government for executing someone that stole $87K? Because I'm a _racist_? You don't even know what race I am.

You said: "I mean, are the poor souls who were put to death in the USA _less_ dead than their counterparts in China? "

Of course not. But our dead people take up less space.

You said: "Want to demand China to stop executing its own people? Let the United States be the first one to put a stop of all its capital punishment cases. Then perhaps you can start demanding China to do the same. "

Guess what, Skippy-I do ask that the US stops executing people. Guess what else-I don't make the decisions around here. I'll admit, I have a bit more eye-for-an-eye mentality than many of my ilk-I see a big difference between executing someone that raped and killed a child and someone that stole $100K.

Guess that makes me racist.

Dave

Linux and Asian languages

[Taco Cowboy]

Dear Poopie,

Thank you for bringing up the issue of how difficult it is to use Chinese in the cyberworld.

Yes, there are 22 different ways - not 18 ! - of inputing the Chinese characters into computer-understandable form.

Yes, there are three completely different encodings for Chinese characters.

And the problem faced by most Chinese (and most Asians as well, for that matter) is not that computer is difficult to use, but TYPING IN their own languages, be it Thai, Korean, Japanese, Tamil or Chinese, is SO DIFFICULT one would have to re-learn the whole concept of typing !!

It is no longer QWERTY or Dvorak keyboard routine, but mind-boggling act of memorizing STUPID key sequences that has TOTALLY NOTHING TO DO with how the characters are shaped....

For that matter, using MS-Windoze to type in the Chinese (or Thai, or Korean, and so on) isn't that easier than Linux. You _still_ have to memorize those STUPID key-sequences, or there is no go.

But help is on the way. IBM's "Via Voice" and all other voice-recognition softwares are transforming the landscape - we no longer have to crack our brains in order to type in a simple sentences, - using the voice recognition software, all we have to concentrate on is WHAT WE WANT TO SAY.

I hope, in the near future, all the languages in the world will be easily used in computer, and I would like to express my sincerest thanks to all the talented individuals who have done such a superb job in creating the voice-recognition softwares, and companies like IBM which has generously supported such herculean efforts.

Re:Linux and Asian languages

[Lawrence Ho]

Yes, there are many different ways of inputing Chinese chararcters. However, people usually make use of only two or three of them. They choose the input methods which suit them best.

I don't think those key sequences are STUPID, they have SOMETHING TO DO with how the characters are shaped or how they are pronounced. There are rules behind the key sequences, they are not random, nonsense keystrokes. I rarely have to memorize those STUPID key sequences.

It is not difficult for people to learn and get familiar with typing in their own language, in a month or two. Some people do complain, but they are the ones typing their English letters with one finger, in most cases.

What about LinuxOne?

[lordsutch]

I'll choose a different horse to beat with this post... ;-)

Seriously, most of the accounts I've read of what LinuxOne is planning indicate that they're going for the Asian market, particularly the Chinese community in these countries (i.e. mainland, Taiwan, Singapore, and the overseas Chinese elsewhere). If RH is ratcheting up their efforts in this area, will LinuxOne have a decent shot at establishing a market? Will being run by ethnic Chinese help LinuxOne's "China cred" enough to overcome the "Red Hat is Linux" impression out there?

Irony of Irony

[Inoshiro]

I can't believe no one picked this juicy nugget out:
"I can see Red Hat stock jumping skyward if a billion communists suddenly decide Linux is their desktop and server platform of choice."

Yes, a communist country feeding a free market economy -- Association with communism will increase the free market valuation. :-)

<cliche>Only in America.</cliche>
---

Re:Windows does beat linux for I18N - RTFM!

[Greg Merchan]

This story is sending lots of bad feelings all around.

'X wasn't designed with these in mind'

RTFM

Xlib Programming Manual by Adrian Nye
Chapter 10 - Internationalization
Chapter 11 - Internationalized Text Input

I can say nothing that hasn't already been said many times before by Kenton Lee or by Christopher Browne.

The War in Asia for Linux

[Conspire]

The War Ahead for Linux in Asia

Hello All!

I am an expatriate living in Asia and running a trading/consulting company.

I recently switched our network over to a RH solution from NT4.0. I did this for the following reasons:

1. I did not want to fork over upgrade fees for NT4.0 and Office 2K next year.

2. I installed sp5.0 on our NT4.0 Alpha server a couple months ago, crashing the entire server, losing lots of valuable information, and forcing me to re-install from step 1. I decided on that day that I want a stable Unix based solution for our enterprise server.

3. I had played with Linux (RH6.0) on my workstation, and found it easy to install, configure and use. I then installed on another employee's computer, and he found it to be ok for application use. The stability of the kernel is VERY GOOD (Thanks to all you developers out there!!! Drinks are on me when you are in town!)

4. I believe in Open Source as a defense against possible dangers to the free world caused by proprietary network solutions and protocols.

Ok, the war is ahead, and there are MILESTONE battlefields that must be crossed before anyone using, developing, selling, or banking on Linux and the open source movement can cheer: THESE BATTLEFIELDS ARE:

1. A STABLE INTERNATIONALIZED BROWSER. Netscape is half a load short of bricks for Linux. We all know it. It crashes all the time and drives me nuts. Options? Not Opera, which I have tried in beta form and find flaky. Not Amaya, which I can't even read WIRED.COM with. And surely not Lynx, which I like using now and again but find just a little too much like gophering for the year 2k. What do I do if I want to read a Chinese Big5 charset page in English Linux? If I am running M$, I can do this, and read Arabic, and read Japanese, without any glitches. LINUX NEEDS A GOOD STABLE BROWSER WITH INTERNATIONALIZED READING AND INPUT CAPABILITY. The future is the internet, and this is the key to having any market share on the desktop of the future. MS may realize this one day and just release IE for Linux. They may be working on it now, and if it were out tomorrow, I would pay for it.

2. STABLE INTERNATIONALIZED OFFICE APPLICATIONS. Running Office 97 English under NT4.0, I could read a Chinese big5 business plan submitted to me. Now, I have to go to one of the Chinese NT4 Workstations to read one. And why are there still Chinese NT4 Workstations in the office? Well, because there IS NO CHINESE APPLICATION software for Linux. That's right NONE. So the NT workstaions gotta stay, and I will have to pay M$ for upgrade fees sometime next year for NT5 and Office2K. I would much rather pay for a Chinese version of StarOffice, or Applix or even Office2K for Linux! The Chinese employees refuse to use English office apps, as they don't even speak fluent English! IF LINUX WANTS TO CONQUER THE DESKTOP, IT WILL NEED TOOLS TO DO IT. As this is a world market, Linux needs tools for worldwide use. There are posts about this above this one, so I will not go into more details here.

3. WORLD DISTRIBUTION. M$ is used on 90%+ desktops in China, and of those probably 90%+ are not paid licenses. M$ does not care, because this creates a barrier of entry to competitors' products at the present and in the future. WHEN the average Chinese user can afford to pay for the M$ License, which is much sooner than most of you who have never been there think, THEY WILL PAY FOR IT. And, they would rather pay for it than pay the time needed learn a new OS and Office Application Platform. This is the economics of software gentleman and ladies, and we are living in a single market world economy. M$ is available at every single software store, both legal and illegal, in China. What about Linux? It took me 4 hours of computer shop hopping and alotta "duh, what is Linux you freak?" looks before I found a book with RH6.0, RH6.1, CLE0.8 and some local disto CD all included in the book for about 12.00 $USD. I could have got a pirated copy of NT4.0 and Office97 for the same price, in about 2 minutes of shopping!

4. PROFITABILITY AND SHAREHOLDER VALUE. Wall Street can be very understanding and kind in the beginning of a relationship. Unfortunately, as time goes on (not much time et'all), investors start looking at the value of their investment and the overall profitability of the enterprise. RH, LNUX, and all the latest Linux IPOs companies will need to prove their value in bottom line numbers in the coming year. Anyone of you involved in Open Source based Companies, please remember, PROFITABILITY IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE FIRM, and you must be profitable to survive the years ahead and win the war. I hope that RH, LNUX and the others are very profitable and bless their shareholders, but it will be tough to beat M$. Per employee perhaps the most profitable company in the world, M$ buys new revenue streams with that income, and hence my next battlefield-M&A.

5. MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS IN THE LINUX COMMERCIAL COMMUNITY. Giants rule the modern corporate world with market share and profitability. Niche markets are for small players, and small players will get acquired in time. In order for Linux to compete, there will need to be a consolidation in the industry. Fortunately, M$ is distracted by the Justice Dept at present, and can not consider an open Linux buyout. Now that Linux related shares are a commodity, they are for the picking by the giants if they want it. It is only a matter of time UNLESS the Commercial Linux Community itself begins consolidations through M&A and grows into a giant itself. I was very disappointed to NOT read "Corel and RedHat finalize merger deal today" during 1999. Applix would make a great buyout target for RedHat. Get wise gents, and get together to get big.

Well, just a few humble opinions. Sorry if some stuff is repeated from above posts.

If I were a developer, I would be contributing to Linux in every way I could. Since I am not a developer, all I can do is educate and encourage friends to try Linux, and prepare them for the revolution that may or may not happen. I hope it happens, and Linux and the Open Source movement in general have my cheers, 100%.

By the way, did anyone figure out that chess move Knight takes Rook checkmate move #5? It's got me stumped!

Free the software, the chinese people will follow.

[MattMann]

One billion communists are not adopting Linux as their platform of choice. That is speculation.

Absolutely correct. The official announcement from China stated that they would make "a billion free copies of free operating system softwares for the free Chinese people." 3chelon picked up that communique inadvertantly as part of its program to monitor the FSF, but dropped its hand to enlist Stallman's help in deciphering it. In this case, he has taken the position that only the latter usage is appropriate: "think of them as LGPLed", he said. TomC joined the discussion to say the Chinese government could do whatever it wanted with its software or its people as he would never presume to coerce anyone, and asked, did we know that they call Larry, "The Great Wall"?

To get to the truth, industry has been surveyed:

• Redhat has reported 1 download of 6.1 through China's internet gateway
• Microsoft has reported selling 1 copy of Windows 98 in China (an upgrade from Win3.1, actually), and 2 copies of NT (um, let's see, yes, 1 server and 1 workstation), both as competitive upgrades from OS/2 through a local retailer called Hundred Year Old Egghead.
• Microsoft has also reported several attempted downloads of Windows 2000 but they were from a Netscape browser and had not yet been successful, though the spokesman did twitch and then robotically issue an assurance of total browser compatibility, and went on to promise the imminent release of IE for linux which would "make the whole thing work more smoothly, that is if you can trust an unstable, unsupported kernel, with nobody to sue."
• Mac Warehouse indicated that they sold a Mac G3 and a Torx toolkit, but both were returned (for merchandise credit to resolve a lengthy dispute over whether stripped screwheads indicated that the cover had or had not been opened)
• after consulting the many factions, it was also determined that no copies of BSD had been downloaded, but it was pointed out that the core of Win2000 could legally be BSD for all anybody knew, and then the line went dead, then switched to a modem carrier right after shouts of "hey, let's grep for 'Regents!'" "Yeah!" "hey, grep for my name, grep for my name"

That's all we need!

[Dacta]

Everyone hates LinuxOne enough as it is.... if it went and dominated the Chinese market can you imagine the stories that would get posted on Slashdot?

And I'm only partly joking...

I don't have any problem with the Chinese - I'm one of the few people (it seems to me) who wouldn't mind if the Chinese govenment had declared Linux to be their official Operating System. I don't like LinuxOne much, though.

That reminds me... time to go and keep the Anti-LinuxOne-IPO stuff going on all the stock boards I can find.

Shame on you, Bruce!

[isaac]

Five posts, and no content other than bitching at
Nathan.

Hmm...

If you don't like the article, feel free not to read or respond to it. Slashdot is not required to genuflect to your editorial desires (nor mine), regardless of how often you post, or how high your Karma is.

Now, to add a little RELEVANT content, the article linked to in this story IS interesting, if a little obvious (Red Hat making moves to penetrate the Chinese market). Certainly, it's enough to qualify as newsworthy to someone.

Yes, the "China's Official OS" bit is bogus, but at least Nathan linked to the /. article on the subject, which is CHOCK FULL of comments explaining exactly how bogus it is.

Fine, so this article might better be titled "Red Hat adopts Red Caps". And, as others in here have pointed out, the "one billion communists" wording might have been better, but at least I got some actual news (Red Hat's opening of a Chinese office) out of Nathan's article. All I got from your posts was bile.

-Isaac

Re:Windows does beat linux for I18N - RTFM!

[poopie]

Thanks for the correction. I suppose I should have said that our current x-based applications haven't implemented any or haven't implemented a consistent method for dealing with multinational input methods and most distributions still lack a number of international fonts.

We really need to have a standard low level IME like windows has, where users can change input methods to ANY language from a single location and not need to run all sorts of different input method programs. That way developers could add an IME plugin instead of recoding the who darn language or input method from scratch in every application or input method program.

English programmers didn't really care so much about internationalization -- it's a lot more work to implement proper internationalized date sorts based on other calendars, and alphanumeric sorts based on different alphabets (with >26 characters or multiple ways to sort the characters)

No offense to the x developers intended. I was primarily referring to X intenationalization WRT the major apps in use today and the fragmented efforts for various non-compatible input method servers that run on top of X.