The Intersection of Microsoft, Linux, and China

at_$tephen writes "Fortune magazine has an article stressing the Chinese market's importance to Microsoft's long term strategy, and touching on Linux's involvement in the Chinese market. In the early days of Microsoft rampant piracy helped establish it as the de facto standard in PCs despite good alternatives. History may be unfolding again here, with the exception that having the Chinese government as an ally has huge additional benefits. Or perhaps Gates has met his match with the Chinese government. 'In another boost for Microsoft, the government last year required local PC manufacturers to load legal software on their computers. Lenovo, the market leader, had been shipping as few as 10% of its PCs that way, and even US PC makers in China were selling many machines "naked." Another mandate requires gradual legalization of the millions of computers in state-owned enterprises. In all, Gates says, the number of new machines shipped with legal software nationwide has risen from about 20% to more than 40% in the past 18 months.'"

It's easier ... when there's Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA

| "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not," Gates says. |

OMG... What a business model !!!

A modest proposal

[goombah99]

Regardless of how you feel about MS hegemony, there is a certain practical logic to the argument that a naked PC is sort of a wink to piracy. Yes the owner might transferring over a legal copy of an OS purchased elsewhere. But realistically that's a tiny number. It's always a tricky argument to navigate. When is manufacturing lock picking tools a crime? They do have legitimate uses too. The argument is delicate because we've seen it abused, like with the arguments against the VCR, and these days, DVD ripping. One could go on and find all shades of grey (are people who write trojans and viruses committing crimes?)

In any case, there are other models for dealing with this issue that can be argued both for and against, though if we accept that it is a grey then are logical compromises. Namely system like the canadian model where taxes are paid on media and the proceeds, iirc, go to some recognized royalty distribution system. This anticipates that a lot of ripped music should have been paid for and was not, while also recognizing we can't criminalize everything, and simultaneously not over burdening legitimate use.

So how about if china were to impose a levy on all new PC's sold naked. The money would be shared out among a consortium of major OS makers. GNU/Linux should have a place at that table. I'm not quite sure in what form. But one could I think find some way to assist GNU/linux development even if there is no one recognized authority.

If at some point Linux became a major fraction of OS in China it would also make sense to stop that policy. No longer could one argue that naked PCs are piracy tools.

Re:How many?

[BosstonesOwn]

If your to believe the MS marketing machine , most of the government owned boxed are legit copies.

However knowing China as well as I do I would say the 40% they claim is being shipped to the people of china and none to the government. The seem to like to just take software licenses they want.

And as a side note. Why doesn't MS just lower the cost of windows ? They could all but eliminate piracy in low income countries if they were willing to make the costs less for windows. Just charge a couple bucks for it but , include only the nations language pack so it can't be used in another country out of the box. Surely more legit versions of windows is better then less, even if the profit per disc is less it is still profit.

Also I have been to chinese manufacturing plants, and let me tell you , just because they stop pressing dvd's for windows with keys they don't stop pumping out the discs for windows, they sell the over runs to piracy groups. They do the same with mislabeled dvd's as well. It's pretty weird to see.

here's a solution

[jack455]

HP has a Linux-based Quickplay OS for some of their laptops, on a seperate partition, that it can boot for quick access to multimedia functions. This is a legal OS. I belive Toshiba has a similar feature. These would be fine or Desktops as well. Major OEM's that don't want to preinstall Windows should provide a Linux version that can offer basic functions. Or a full implementation, the solution I would prefer.

When Chinese users want to install Windows, or another OS, they could choose to leave this on it's own partition and setup grub to dual-boot. There could also be a self-destruct button that wipes the partitions and formats the drive. Everyone (except MS) should love this as a government's job shouldn't be to force OEM's to help a company sell software. (think RIAA.)

Even as a Linux user I can sympathize with MS and their frustration, but their reaction does not help the cause of capitalism or Democracy in that region. This is very short-sighted and wrong.

Thanks to China, Red Flag Linux [wikipedia.org] is a popular Linux Distro. Even if you're a Mac or Windows user you should sympathize with Linux users' frustratioins with having to receive preinstalled, paid for OSes that they do not want. In China or the US or any region at all.

Re:Red Flag

[badfish99]

The only barrier to manufacturers shipping a "naked" PC would be a legal one imposed by the government. And the interested party that is asking the Chinese government to impose such a restriction is Microsoft. So you can be sure that, if there is any such law imposed, the law will say "must include a legal copy of Microsoft Windows", and not just "must include an operating system".

Re:Alternatives NOT GOOD ENOUGH

[bieber]

And making it difficult to ship binary drivers is a bad thing? If the corporations in question would just release source---or even specs---for their devices once, the Linux devs would integrate the drivers into the kernel, and continue to update them through new kernel versions, and the hardware would work perfectly out of the box, just like all other supported hardware does...

Re:Well, yes.

[westlake]

Ease of copying coupled with an interface that really didn't require much in the way of brainpower was what gave Windows its boost.

But there comes a point, I think, where you have to stop reciting the old excuses.

Where the street price for the Windows OS is the same as the price for a "fully loaded" Linux distro and Windows remains the OS of choice - it is not a Troll to ask "Why?"

Re:Where can I get my own $3 Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I study CS in a Brazilian University. I can get, legally, many versions of Windows for free at my University. One just have to go to the library, borrow the disc, install and go to a specific page at Microsoft website to get a valid key. Then, return the disc to the library. My roommate, also CS student, did this and now his PC is running Vista, for free (I run Linux here).

That's a Microsoft offer to our institute (Maths, Stats and CS). They probably do that because we're mostly a Linux shop. All programs we write for classes must run on Linux (Uni provides ssh access to a Linux server and we have labs with a lot of computers - donated by a company - running Debian, so you can run whatever OS you like and still meet the requirements).

We also have some Windows labs, but most people, even non-CS students, prefer using Linux labs. Every year it's the same thing: a lot of the new students get surprised when they see that Linux is easy and beautiful; many of them end up switching.

-
Sorry for any spelling/grammar mistakes. English is not my first language.

Re:How many?

[iminplaya]

If they can lower the price in China, they can lower the price for the rest of the world. If they want to practice price discrimination then they should give it away to those with no money at all.

The Chinese Don't Type In English

[Anonymous Coward]

...and I have yet to see a distro that is not boneheadedly retarded about CJK encodings.

The fact is, China is not a priority for open source developers, while it is a priority for Microsoft.

Re:I couldn't ignore your comment

[the not-troll]

If you really think that names mean anything, I've got a bridge to sell.

If you believe that the Soviet Union was socialistic because it said so, you surely must believe that it was democratic because it said so, no? Of course you don't: After all, your government stands to gain from emphasizing the difference between your capitalism and their "socialism", thus creating a powerful image of an enemy, but didn't had any interest in claiming that you both are democratic, for otherwise you might realize that both the USA and the Soviet Union (and every other country, for that matter) is oligarchic, not democratic, and that it doesn't make any difference if you have one party or two. Indeed, what the Soviet Union called socialism was simply capitalism. That the Soviet Union "lost" the cold war was solely a consequence of it being more totalitarian than the United States.

What change, exactly, did capitalism mean compared to feudalism? In the end, it still is structured according the principle that some people are more free than others, entitled to infringe other's freedom. As you said, capitalism didn't really create the super rich. Indeed, it actually mostly just shifted the rankings of the rich and the unscrupulous. Didn't you ask yourself why that is? It is because capitalism is simply the adaption of feudalism into an industrialized society, like we are now seeing the adaption of it into an information society in form of "intellectual property". Above all, you should realize that the free market is indeed the very antithesis of capitalism or the so-called "socialism" of the Soviet Union or even China: for one is only truly free if nobody else will infringe on this freedom. But capitalism, as any feudalistic society, is founded on the principle that some people, be it by heritage or money, are entitled on infringing on others freedom.

The Chinese market

[PingXao]

Markets in China are supremely important to all US business interests. The foundation of capitalism is businesses must grow. As barriers to growth pop up both here and in other markets, new opportunities must be found. There are 1 billion people in China. So it's not just Microsoft who sees the importance of markets in China. It's every company that ever had a widget to sell. It has become a great concern to the US government, too. Business interests and growing markets drives US policy these days, like it or not (see Iraqi petroleum). These concerns trump everything else. 50 years ago there would have been a hue and cry over such massive trade deals with Communists *gasp*. You don't hear that today.

China could change its form of government tomorrow to a representative democracy with free elections at all levels in every area, but if they tried to close down their borders with respect to trade the US would find a reason to go to war with them. The way it stands today that's not about to happen.

Recent trip to China

[kramulous]

On a recent trip to China, I could not help but notice the number of people using Kubuntu. It was everywhere, far more prevalent than all the linux distros that I see here in Australia.