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How Microsoft Beat Linux In China
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Jul 28, 2007 03:30 PM
from the always-did-know-the-value-of-being-the-standard dept.
from the always-did-know-the-value-of-being-the-standard dept.
kripkenstein notes an analysis up on TechRepublic detailing how Microsoft beat Linux in China, and the consequences of that victory: "With the soon-to-be largest economy standardized on Windows desktops, desktop Linux does seem to have an uphill battle ahead of it." "Linux has turned out to be little more than a key bargaining chip in a high stakes game of commerce between the Chinese government and the world's largest software maker... The fact that... Linux failed to gain a major foothold in China is yet another blow to desktop Linux. After nearly eight years of being on the verge of a breakthrough, Linux seems more destined than ever to be a force in the server room but little more than a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop."
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Uphill battle (Score:5, Insightful)
Slow down, cowboy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, Nelly! This article - and the discussion here - is rife with untested assumptions. Let's establish a bit of context here before going too far.
Microsoft beat Linux? That most certainly is how Microsoft sees the situation. But their entire ethos is of conquest, control and coercion. None of these apply to Linux. While it's true that some have used Linux as a tool to gain leverage with Microsoft, Linux as an operating system has no goal, except to be good at what it does. Unlike Microsoft, Linux is not controlled by any single actor, or even by a like-minded group of actors.
Linux doesn't fight Microsoft (though MS does fight Linux and FOSS in general). It just keeps improving for its own sake and for the sake of its users. If that has detrimental effects on Microsoft's control of the operating systems market - and it does - well, that is nothing more than a collateral benefit.
So, from Microsoft's perspective, maybe they did 'beat' Linux, but even that defeat isn't complete or permanent. When China donates PCs to its development partners, what OS does it ship? Linux. Is Red Flag dead and buried? No. Is China dependant on Microsoft for its IT infrastructure? Hardly.
What price victory? A more honest evaluation of the circumstances of China's decision to accept Microsoft at all shows that Microsoft's 'victory' may be more pyrrhic than anything. With trademark deftness, China has largely de-fanged one of the most effective and brutal corporate negotiating teams in the world. This is the corporation that managed to buy off the US government and avoid any real punishment following its conviction for abuse of monopoly powers. It's the company that has consistently and rather successfully thumbed its nose at the European Union, the largest economic entity in the world today. It has controlled standards processes, locked in countless corporations and ruthlessly dominated the supply chain world-wide.
Yet Chinese negotiators got everything they asked for. Price reductions? They pay about 10% of what other governments do per seat. Control? They not only have access to the source code, they have to right to alter it to suit their purposes.
Think about what that means to the Chinese. In economic, political and strategic terms, they've negotiated unprecedented access to an invaluable resource, and they've done it in a way that costs them next to nothing. Truth be told, Microsoft got almost nothing out of this deal. China still uses Linux whenever and wherever it wants.
A deal that would make Stallman laugh. If we think about the Four Freedoms that underlie the GPL, the same four freedoms for which Richard Stallman and the FSF have fought so desperately to support and preserve, the same freedoms that are so perfectly antithetical to everything that Microsoft stands for... these are exactly the freedoms that China has preserved in its deal with Microsoft.
Let's be honest here: Microsoft may have won the battle, but only by utterly compromising itself and its future in China. They have placed themselves in a virtually abject position vis à vis China. Happily, the Chinese know enough about loss of face to ensure that they never rub this in Gates' face.
Bottom line: This is not a Linux/Microsoft story. Linux is a bit player in this story, a Rosencrantz to Microsoft's Hamlet. The real story is how China managed to pull a classic con on one of the toughest negotiating teams in the corporate world, and how they did it so well that Microsoft keeps coming back for more.
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This, of course, is from the beloved children's story, "Rosencrantz's Web."
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This, of course, is from the beloved children's story, "Rosencrantz's Web."
Actually, it's a reference to "NetCraft Confirms It", the online version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead [wikipedia.org].
I'm posting from China (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention the fact
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Linux in China is the same as the US; nobody uses it except for a few nerds.
Re:Slow down, cowboy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it sounds like he's describing any number of legit businesses.
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Re:Uphill battle (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What stupid hype. Vista is a Failure. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Vista is a Failure. It's like it's not there. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah MS is in such deep trouble they made record profits this year.
In an inflationary economy, every year is a record. Vista and Office 2007 should have made a difference but did not [theregister.co.uk]. Imagine a flat line, your brain and your balls are dying but non free CPR takes six years. The game is over - without money, they can't attract the programmers and vendor "support" they need to make product, and without product they will run out of money.
Re:Vista is a Failure. It's like it's not there. (Score:4, Insightful)
microsoft leveraged their monopoly to make it impossible for customers for 6 years to get anything other than windows xp on a new computer. the result? customers think that a new computer means windows xp, and are deeply suspicious of change. now there's suddenly a new operating system none of their friends have. windows xp's main advantage was always its ubiquity. vista, due to being new, does not have this.
microsoft has told the customer for years that different=difficult. now they are reaping what they have sowed.
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Re:Uphill battle (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's always been like this (Score:2, Insightful)
That is exactly the problem with Linux. It's always almost ready dor the desktop. And it will always stay that way as long as there isn't a standard interface and and a good office suite that does MS'
Re:It's always been like this (Score:5, Informative)
I'm still amazed at the crap my Windows friends put up with on a daily basis, but they just regard it as the cost of doing business with their OS, I guess...
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Re:It's always been like this (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the "not ready for the desktop" stuff people talk about is a bunch of red herrings. What's missing is not technical capabilities in the kernel, UI slickness in the applications, or games but the massive entrenchment that Microsoft relies on to make Windows look magical: OEM installs, reliable drivers provided by hardware vendors, and a decade of user familiarity. No amount of work on applications or task schedulers will ever begin to address those issues. Linux-on-the-desktop fans should look for ways around those problems instead of obsessing over programming.
To put it more concisely: Slashdotters are programmers; programming is the hammer; widespread desktop adoption of Linux is the problem; and no, it is not a nail.
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I don't understand why you see a "problem with Linux." Success for Linux isn't measured in "market share" or whether the Chinese government (a shining example of rational decision making if there ever was one) decides to standardize on pirated copies of Windows. It's very existence is it's "success." The fact that I have a choice to run a stable, powerful, free OS that just lets me get work done is it's success.
People who let th
Linux has been ready for the desktop for years. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that with Linux completely or partially taking over in govt in Peru, Brazil, France, Largo (right around the corner from me in St Pete, FL), the Dept of Transportation (or the FAA?), etc, it's doing pretty well.
I have more and more people ask me about Linux. My mother runs Li
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There is NO reason for the average home user to install a completely new OS they've never seen. The hurdle for Linux is to get on enough work PCs that people are relatively comfortable enough with it, so that next virus they get, or next Norton Death Knell, they leap off their burning Windows install onto something stable.
For the 80% of "easy" cases where browsing/e-mail/word-processing are the important functions, there are several reasons to migrate:
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would that be impossible? Technically, it's quite feasible:
Big Picture (Score:3, Interesting)
(Of course there are many assumptions and guesses here - I don't think this is a serious economic prediction. But it does show the general idea.)
Two conclusions:
$100... less than $3; how China beat MS with Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Big Picture (Score:4, Insightful)
1) The China regime gets a monopoly, not Microsoft.
2) Payment to Microsoft doesn't go the USA. It goes to Microsoft's investments and business in China. China (or any other country) isn't going to to pay another country for bits that can be copied for free, unless they get something back.
To me it's quite obvious that the Chinese regime clearly has seen the problem with free software that would make public control much harder. Now they just have to call MS and say "Hey, people are using bittorrent to download porn!" and it will be fixed in the next update.
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Are we being ripped off? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if they still make a profit even at that low price.
Trusted Computing (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese government wishes to control the use of the Internet and of computers. The Linux community is hardly likely to help China take control of computers away from the users. But with Trusted Computing, Microsoft may be able to offer exactly that capability.
For a government concerned about control, Microsoft's obvious motivations (control and profit) may be both more familiar, more predictable - and because Microsoft is centralized, mor tractable. This in comparison to the diverse coalition of interests making up the free and open source community.
China's interests (Score:3, Interesting)
You're absolutely right, both about the motivations and benefits of maintaining independece from Microsoft. However, I have a suspicion that to the government hierarchy in China (and equally for many corporations everywhere), free and open source software may also appear to be outside their control. It's an al
China's Tragedy (Score:3, Interesting)
China is so complicated and so tragic. The control of the central government there is weakening. Much of the evil in China is a consequence of that loss of control. Recently, for example, up to 53,000 slave workers [opendemocracy.net] were discovered in the brick industry Shanxi province. That's 50,000 pepole in one industry in one province. The central government doesn't want this. Nor does it sanction the kidnapping and mutilation of children used as beggars, or the sale of women i
Not So Fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, come on. Just as those who have been proclaiming, the past few years, that whatever year it happened to be would be the year of Linux on the desktop were to early to proclaim victory, this is a bit too early to proclaim defeat.
I seem to recall something about one of the world's largest PC vendors starting to ship systems with Linux pre-installed. Does that sound like "a narrow niche and an anomaly on the desktop"? To me, it sounds more like one step on the road to being a recognized and respected operating system.
Uhm... (Score:5, Insightful)
victory with china???? (Score:3, Insightful)
But for this to be promoted as Victory of MS vs. Linux. Certainly it is a hype, as GNU/linux continues to replace Microsoft products in governments around the world. Before GNU/Linux what was the option?
Sooooo, in the bigger picture, MS has been down graded from a sure thing, only option, to a need to announce and amplify the announcement of victory over the competition in specific cases.
You will not find MS announcing competitors victory over them and maybe not even teh same level of media coverage.
The fact that it took the open source software development model to create competition for microsoft, where all other MS competitors business models failed, says a lot as to what to expect of the future of open source software.
Good Old Favoritism (Score:3, Insightful)
So it was good old favoritism. Buy a can of politicians, get one nation free!
This is why those with power should be watched and their use of said power closely scrutinized. Of course, there's no such thing going on in China.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, favoritism is a big thing, guanxi has to be built. But that's just about the same everywhere, including the US (what do you think those lobbyists do in DC?), it just seems more obvious in China.
However, you have to give Microsoft credit for doing their homework, they invested in building that guanxi. Where are RH, Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva, and the gang? I don't see any. They don't even have an office here. Microsoft learned the rule
Desktop Ready NOW (Score:3, Interesting)
99% of Windows users don't know how to use Windows, at all. Really. They just know the couple of APPLICATIONS they use, and how to launch them.
Example: I had just this week to teach a windows user how to remove entries from boot loader menu. He had to reinstall windows and the reinstall process partially borked, like it usually does.
It was like 'start a command prompt' (+long explanation), change file attributes on boot.ini in C: root (+long explanation), launch text editor (+explanation), toggle back file permissions - oops I mean attributes... and boot and pray.
How this was any easier than modifying GRUB config escapes me.
'Readiness' and 'Intuitiviness' do not equal familiarity.
Well, that's a slap in the face! (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's the fairness in that? Why the preferrential treatment? Are we rewarding criminals now?
Pffft!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
China GDP per capita = $5,453.31
Or put another way: $150 dollars in China would be the same as charging $1200 for a Vista license in the US
Mark you I wouldn't be too outraged, if I were you. Vista Basic is 150 GBP here. That's $300.
Okay. Want the truth? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's usually done through third parties that are hired and given a large operational budget.
Linux may be better for China but Microsoft money is better for some key officials.
And that folks is the way it works.
I guess that's one way to look at it (Score:3, Interesting)
If that if a victory I can't imagine what a defeat would look like. If they are going to get $3 per copy of Windows+Office Microsoft would be lucky to break even on the raw materials, packaging, and shipping. The thing is Microsoft can't afford to just break even, they have tens of thousands of employees, including many lawyers and accountants and sales people involved in pushing their products, plus the support staff for all of those employees. And for those that would say "well Microsoft is sitting on a huge war chest" this is correct, they aren't going to go out of business any time soon, but they also can't bleed money indefinitely and watch potential revenue streams dry up without their stock tanking.
It looks like their game plan in China is to sell their software at break even or a loss just to get people used to the idea of paying for it and hopefully maintain market share. I guess they could make a profit in 5-10 years assuming:
people in china get used to the idea of paying for their software AND they have the money to pay more in the future AND they are willing to do so AND a suitable alternative (desktop Linux) hasn't risen in popularity. Which to me sounds more like a pipe-dream than a game plan.
I wish Microsoft many more of these sorts of "victories" in the future. Though their shareholders may feel differently.
Give Linux a good Chinese input method, first. (Score:5, Informative)
But they all came back to Windows, because there are Windows input methods and word processors for Simplified and Traditional Chinese that kick the pants off of anything available for Linux. The wife doesn't even care so much for Mac OSX compared to the one for Windows. And the fonts for Simplified Chinese in Fedora are mediocre at best, and awful at worst. Looking at a Google.cn search in Firefox on Ubuntu 7.04 is hideous even to my untrained eyes -- you see many characters missing, and the characters that are there look like a mish-mash of multiple fonts.
So, if you care about this issue, this is what needs to happen.
This is one of those times where we need to recognize that the better product won. And the only thing for us to do is to make ours better.
Re:What battle? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What battle? (Score:4, Informative)
The Chinese government has had access to the Windows source code since 2003.
Now when China uses Windows in President Hu's office, or for that matter in its missile systems, it can install its own cryptography. How Microsoft conquered China. [cnn.com]
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Re:Why does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft didn't kill that hateful environment. Unix (and I suppose some others) did. Remember the term "Open systems" from the early 1980s? It was the reaction to the situation you describe.
That too, wasn't Microsoft, but Unix and others. Heck, even the microcomputers of the mid-1980s had serious operating systems like AmigaDOS, RiscOS, Unix dialects ...
Is your beard really gray?
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Re:Why does it matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have gone through the Microsoft era, Unix era, Open Source era, Java era, and so on. YES I am a gray beard like the original grand parent poster. And if there is one thing that Microsoft has learned and keeps on propagating is that you can make money with Microsoft. This is not something to treat lightly.
I will give you another example; AutoCad. They are essentially the last standing CAD software. Yes there are others, but none as popular as AutoCad. Why? Well one reason is that you could copy it. BUT another bigger reason was that from day 1 AutoCad could be extended so that you could add value to AutoCad. AutoCad created an environment where people could prosper and thus secured their place in history.
Open Source did get one thing right in that they solved problems that people were having. Open Source did not focus on features. What Open Source got wrong is making money for people. The environment around Open Source is a cheapskate environment. Redhat offered Fedora because people stopped buying Redhat Linux. People did not buy software, and to this day still don't buy software. You have more people using for free than adding to the ecosystem, and that hurts!
Yes there are big companies using and supporting Linux. BUT add together the economies around Microsoft and I would not hesitate to use trillions of dollars. First you have Microsoft, then you have people selling software for Windows, then you have consultancies supporting Windows, then you have custom coders for Microsoft, then you have conferences, then you have trainers, etc, etc. It is an incredibly HUGE ecosystem that is profitable for everybody involved.
If you look at the latest incomes of the Open Source vendors it is down right disappointing after a decade of potential. For crying out loud Ubuntu is the result of a guy who made his money with something else and is supporting Ubuntu because he wants to have fun!
If Linux and Open Source REALLY want to beat Microsoft, then Open Source folks should STOP BEING DAMM CHEAPSKATES! I am sure everybody is capable of forking over 50 USD per year. If we use a conservative number of 1 million users world wide that would mean 50 million dollars income and that would mean a heck of a lot programmers could be hired to solve those darn user interface problems!
Do I buy and support software? Absolutely, as a matter of principle because I earn my money from software.
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Re:Why does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I actually would agree with you that there is less money in open source software. However, I think this indicates not a failing of open source, but of commercial development. I agree with you that the commercial software ecosystem is very vibrant, with great profit potential. But I view this as a drain on the rest of the economy. Just think about how many web startups are using a LAMP stack... would their businesses be possible in a purely commercial software world?
I'm not looking to see the software industry destroyed, or even crippled, since I hope to soon get a job developing software. I think there is money in development on demand, where developers make money for their labor in custom-tailoring software to a customer's demand. The software would be free, but of course the labor wouldn't.
Now, this kind of business won't thrive in current climates, because there is more money and easier money in commercial software. But eventually free software will dominate, because in the long term how can something be more attractive than free? Of course there is support to think of, but I don't see any inherent reason that free software should be more expensive to support.
So I think that whether we like it or not, free software is the future. And I choose to see that as a positive future, where software becomes more pervasive in our environment, more adapted to our specific needs.
There'll always be money in software development until we create machines that are smarter than us in every way.
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Also, I have to take issue with this:
So what? Why should I care what his motives are. And don't tell me that it's because the survival of Ubuntu is subject to his whims. It's open source.
I don't really care about OSS "beating" Microsoft in any
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When I saw it running a few years back (Chinese version) it was an extreamly shoddy red hat fork with KDE as the desktop and blatantly ripped-off windows 2000 icons. It was trying hard to pass off as windows 2000, but also there was no root password, user ran as root by default, and it seemed that some services...actually most of them, were running by default.
The whole thing was just so communist. As opposed to Linux.
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Gross oversimplification. The real difficulty is what happens after one of the applications is closed. This post explains how the W