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The Ongoing Saga of Linux in China 169

Posted by Hemos from the reports-from-the-front dept.
Dan Gillmor, who's currently on the road in China, has sent a report about the role of Linux in China. We've talked about this before. Dan hits on some of the high points for *why* the Chinese are interested, which makes for interesting reading.
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The Ongoing Saga of Linux in China More

The Ongoing Saga of Linux in China

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  • Red Flag's Liu thinks even this is progress. If end users even touch Linux briefly, he argues, some of them will stick with it.

    Is this a result of the GPL?

    • Red Flag's Liu thinks even this is progress. If end users even touch Linux briefly, he argues, some of them will stick with it.

      Is this a result of the GPL?

      *laugh* Cute. If I had real mod points I'd give you one.

      -- MarkusQ

  • I know this has already been posted several times but it's always a good idea to remember ;)

    freechina.net [freechina.net]

    --

    FreeMan [i don't think i'm going to watch the next Olympics]

  • Taiwan (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @08:00AM (#2612834) Journal

    I don't know anyone from China who lived there after about age 9 or 10 (all the families of my friend moved here [the US] at about that time) but I do know a good number of Taiwanese who went through higher schooling in Taiwan.

    In Taiwan (at least from what I hear), FreeBSD seems to have become very popular, and to have a better reputation than Linux. One of my friends still connects to Taiwanese BBS type systems many of which are running FreeBSD.

    So I'm not exactly clear why Linux making in-roads (which I'm not sure is really justified in the article--it seems a lot of if's, maybes, and predictions) in China is so important. Free software is in the Chinese speaking world and has been making in-roads for years--that is what seems important to me.

    Scott

    • Re:Taiwan (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The reason they're using FreeBSD because they don't want to download Linux kernel filesystem corruption patches all the time ... ;)

    • Re:Taiwan (Score:3, Funny)

      by tt2k1 ( 532907 )
      Free software is in the Chinese speaking world and has been making in-roads for years--that is what seems important to me.
      Yes, if by "free sofware" you mean pirated copies of Windows.

    • Re:Taiwan (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      At least a few years ago, FreeBSD was also very big in Japan compared to Linux. Part of the reason may have been pc98 support and an extensive set of japanese ports at the time; I don't know what the state of equivalent Linux functionality was at the time.
    • I don't know, I spent a couple years in Taiwan working for various companies and saw lots of Linux, but no FreeBSD.

      Of course, my stats have a 50% confidence level 3 times out of 20. I imagine so do yours;)

      Bill
    • As you guys mention about Taiwan, I've to say something.
      First of all, Taiwan is a different CONTURY from China. We stand on the biggest hardware vender of the world. We do have some BSD/Linux user here in Taiwan.

      I've wrote a page about Linux @ Taiwan one years ago, you can check the Linux @ Taiwan [linux.org.tw] for the old document. This is an pretty old document, and there are more progess going on here in Taiwan.

      We have CLE(Chinese Linux Extension) here in http://cle.linux.org.tw/ [linux.org.tw]. Sorry for no English version avaliable now. From CLE, there are RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Slackware, Debian Chinese packages. You can see Mandrake Taiwan [linux.org.tw], KDE Taiwan [linux.org.tw], and there is also an i18n project [linux.org.tw] for translate Linux project. A Chinese input project in XCIN Project [linux.org.tw], and a CLDP Project. [linux.org.tw]


      Recently, we also have a Software liberty Association [softwareliberty.org] for improve the opensource in Taiwan.


      Above are only a few information I know about Linux @ Taiwan. As for BSD @ Taiwan, I also know few BSD committer who spent lots of time on Chinese support for BSD.

      Anyway, for those who help the Chinese on Linux/BSD, I've to say THANKS to you all.

      Seventeen

  • Paradoxical antipiracy reaction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cigarky ( 89075 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @08:02AM (#2612840)
    In many countries in the past, it has been easier and faster to obtain and use a pirated copy of Microsoft software than bother with another OS, such as Linux. This still appears to be the case. However, ever tightening anti-piracy methods by Microsoft may decrease the former ease of pirating MS software and lead to a [somewhat ;)] higher chance of people utilizing Linux.
    • I would guess that Microsoft is well aware of this effect, though. Is there anything requiring that XP be equally tight about activation for all national variants? (Not a rhetorical question.) If not, I'd expect Microsoft to be much more lenient in countries where this was a real threat to their market share.
    • ...Microsoft has denied responsibility for a series of attacks carried out in the PRC during the earlier part of this month. The Chinese government has claimed that the bombs, which destroyed several major CD duplication facilities in the city of Xian, had been delivered by vans bearing the familiar Windows (r) logo.
      "We suspected something was amiss when we received Windows XP boxes without license agreement stickers or shrinkwrapping," sobbed a survivor, "but the prospect of a new version was too tempting. My partner loaded the disc, and then all hell broke loose."
      The US has responded to allegations of complicity by placing the blame firmly on the shoulders of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. "Bin Laden is an enemy of Western culture", declared a White House spokesperson, tucking a tuft of her hair back into her Microsoft (tm) baseball cap. "It was inevitable that he would try to blacken the name of our finest cultural exports."
    • Problem: The WTO is making China pass & inforce anti-piracy laws. Clearly, China dose not want to prevent people who can not afford Windows from using a computer.

      Solution: The punishment for being caught running a pirated version of Windows will be taking a class (payed for out of your fines) on Linux or FreeBSD and using Linux or FreeBSD for one month. You will be free to "buy" a copy of Windows after one month. The same law could be applied to buisnesses and individuals.

      I don't think China would have much trouble with Microsoft anymore if they passed such a law.
  • They don't like the Linux Chinese language support. None of the Linux boxes in the lab have chinese installed on them, in any case.

    I don't know exactly what they find wrong with it, but Chinese readers who don't use Linux should take a look here [erols.com]; which btw is actually hosted from here [chinesecomputing.com] and then give comments to people on sourceforge who will, given the attention this is getting, help to develop tools that better fit whatever people's needs are.

    The Chinese language is very different from English and features that are hugely convenient for English users can seem irrelevant while things that it would never occur to English users to want, or which are downright inconvenient, are very helpful when you're typing Chinese. This is a situation where Linux needs.... marketing (dum dum dum) and in a terrible way.
    • This is a situation where Linux needs.... marketing (dum dum dum) and in a terrible way.

      No change needed then, is there? I always believed that Linux had terrible marketing.

      Boom-tschak.

      Thank you and good night.

    • Re:My chinese labmates use Windows because (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mizhi ( 186984 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @08:39AM (#2612948)
      It's a nightmare getting linux to use chinese. But I have done it, at least partially... you can install language packs for mozilla/netscape to read websites, and also hack your .emacs file to make emacs able to handle chinese.

      Those of us for which chinese is a second language would like to see better support for multi-language platforms. That said, I have gotten java to do Chinese using unicode. The biggest weakness tho, is input. Chinese has like 2 or 3 different ways to input characters. The only method I know how to use effectively is the pinyin method, however from what I've seen, none of the methods are supported very well. It's the same old story though, software is written in english and then translated, usually through a serious of ugly hacks. :-)

      One thing I'd really like to see is something for latex that would allow me to do typesetting and printing of characters...

      I'm rambling, I'll stop.
      • Well, getting Java to use unicode shouldn't be a problem :)
        >One thing I'd really like to see is something for latex that would allow me to do typesetting and printing of characters.

        What about CJK-Latex? Or the TeX extension Omega [unsw.edu.au]?

        SuSE [www.suse.de] has some good information about its support of the CJK languages.
        And there is always the Linux Chinese HOWTO [ibiblio.org], which you've probably already read, but could be helpful to other people, who are reading this post.
      • I used to use a program called cxterm (Chinese xterm) under RedHat 5. It was very nice, and had pretty good input methods (based on pinyin, but it would guess the latter characters in multi-character phrases). I even wrote some software [cornell.edu] for doing Chinese vocabulary lookups in emacs, which worked great in cxterm.

        Unfortunately, cxterm stopped working under RedHat 6. I tried many times to get it working, but haven't been able to (I think it's a problem with termcap stuff, or the newer equivalent of termcap, which I never really understood).

        Unfortunately, the Linux Chinese HOWTO hasn't been updated for more than 3 years now. There are other methods of doing Chinese in Linux listed there, but I haven't gotten any of them working.

        I basically keep my old laptop running RedHat 5, and fire up cxterm on that when I need to write Chinese. One of these days when I've got enough time, I really hope I can get cxterm working under newer Linux releases...
      • It's a nightmare getting linux to use chinese.

        What distribution were you using. Every distro I've seen in Taiwan (can't speak for RedFlag Linux, which is a mainland product and hence not terribly popuplar here) uses CLE ("Chinese Language Edition"), such that all menus, most of the core apps (there are two or three Chinese term programs available, for example) and an increasing number of HOWTOs and man pages, are in Chinese. Input methods for Chinese vary, including pinyin (not widely used here in Taiwan, except for foreigners), handwriting recognition (which has improved dramatically in the last few years), and bopomofo (a system of phonetic transcription developed in Beijing, but only widely used in Taiwan). Taiwanese keyboards are universally labelled with both roman characters, bopomofo and a third transcription system with which I'm not familiar (I believe it's used in Hong Kong and, perhaps, Singapore).

        Generally, the bopomofo method is fairly quick, after a period of familiarization. As you type in the bopomofo representation, a list of characters is presented matching the bopomofo; generally, you only need to hit one or two keys, then pick the character off a list. Adept users can enter Chinese quite rapidly.

        Handwriting recognition software is also improving, though it takes a bit more skill to get it to work consistently. It depends heavily on stroke order (the order in which one makes the strokes that compose a Chinese character) so unlike English (and despite the complexities of Chinese characters) one's handwriting doesn't need to be pristine for proper recognition.

        However, even with the most recent versions of CLE (currently at either 1.0 or 1.1), one still sees a fair amount of English onscreen. This isn't too great a problem, as most Taiwanese have at least a passing acquaintance with English.

        I can't speak to the programmer's experience, as I aren't one. Ditto for emacs.

        • Well, I'm in mainland US. Not too many CLE distros available that I've seen. :-)

          I've been trying to get KDE to do the locale thing, but I apparently don't have things setup all the way.
          • Well, I'm in mainland US. Not too many CLE distros available that I've seen. :-)

            You might start by checking out this list [elinux.com]of foreign language distros. You'll find links to two Chinese language distros there: BluePoint Linux, which the site describes as the most-used distro in mainland China, and Linpus Linux [linpus.com.tw], which is the biggest distro in Taiwan and (I understand) also has a fair market share on the mainland.

            Chinese Language Extensions [linux.org.tw] (CLE) can also be downloaded separately.

            I can't speak to the programming aspects of the CLE distros, but as far as general use Chinese support goes, they're quite good.

      • Linux is open source. There are over 1 billion Chinese in the world. You would think somebody would have hacked Linux by now to give it superb Chinese language support.

        Are the Chinese so lazy that none of them can be bothered to do it ?

        Or are there no good programmers in China ?

    • I'm not sure whether I care how many copies of Windows are given away for nothing in a dictatorship anyway. When Bill Gates strikes a deal with the Central Committee, I'll start to worry about it.
      • They don't like the Linux Chinese language support

      Uh, wait... Red Flag Linux [redflag-linux.com] doesn't sell a properly localised version?

      Is that really the case, or is there some other issue? It's easier to get pirated copies of Windows than of Red Flag perhaps?

    • I was disgusted with trying to get Chinese working under Windows.


      The Microsoft input function worked fine, into Microsoft products. Unfortunately, a hard drive reformat eliminated some software for which there was no backup disk, and I installed StarOffice to take up the slack.


      Japanese character input continued to work, but Microsloth's IME simply didn't include Chinese when trying to put text into StarOffice applications. It was as if it had never been installed.


      People complain about ease of use in Linux, but when "My Computer" does stuff like this it makes configuring locals and xcin seem like a really fun project.


      By Cromm, I loath the infantile "My Computer" paradigm. F*ucking moron Bob interface.


      Bob-

  • Nice balanced, realistic article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @08:14AM (#2612867) Homepage

    In anticipation of the site being /.'d, or you lot being too lazy to read it, a few quotes:

    • More than 10 percent -- possibly as many as 15 percent -- of the desktop computers sold in China this year will come pre-loaded with Linux [...] In a nation that is paying somewhat more attention to anti-piracy campaigns, PC vendors have more incentive to sell legal systems. [...] But she and Liu agree that most of the pre-loaded Linux computers don't stay in that condition once buyers take them home or to the office. It's only slightly more difficult than it used to be to buy an inexpensive, unauthorized copy of Windows, which tends to make its way onto many of the hard disks that housed Linux when they left the store.

    This is very pragmatic stuff. The basic message is that users want Windows, and vendors will give then Linux only if they have to for budget reasons. But the important point is the 10-15% figure, and the following:

    • Red Flag's Liu thinks even this is progress. If end users even touch Linux briefly, he argues, some of them will stick with it. [...] Sun Microsystems will soon release [Star Office 6.0] localized for the Chinese character set [that] will sufficiently close the gap with Microsoft Office

    Bingo. If you haven't tried the Star Office 6 beta, try it now. It's the killer app. For Harry Homeowner or Cathy Cubeville, a KDE/Gnome/GNU/Linux distro with Star Office 6 will do everything they need, for a fraction of the (retail) cost of a Microsoft solution. And if it's pre-loaded, why would you pay even a few dollars extra to replace that with a pirated Redmond solution?

    I say this not as a long time Linux afficionado, but as a recent convert. Red Hat 6.2 and Star Office 5.2 came off my drive after a week, but SuSE 7.3 and Star Office 6 beta 3 do everything that I need. There's no way I'd pay £444 (UK retail prices) for WinXP + Word 2002, but I will pay £60 for boxed sets of SuSE + Star Office (assuming 6.0 ships for the same price as 5.2).

    And maybe that's the point in China too. You can afford to bundle real versions of non-M$ software, but the M$ stuff is just too damn expensive. The choice for OEM's and purchasers is to use open source, or to pirate Microsoft. Right now, many of them are still choosing the latter, but at least they're being given the choice. I really think that when Star Office 6.0 ships, they'll find to their surprise that there's just no need to do that any more.

  • Red Flag sponsorships (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thorsen ( 9515 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @08:16AM (#2612870) Homepage
    In various hacker circles we have often discussed the China market for one reason: Why don't we see more stuff coming out of China?

    Red Flag Linux is one of the biggest (maybe biggest of us all) Linux distributors, but you still see nothing coming back to the society. Try to think of the last time you saw a patch from a chinese developer - it's very rare.

    I would really like to see the chinese hackers contributing to the environment in the future. Then it would be really interesting how Linux is doing in China.

    Bo Thorsen,
    SuSE Labs.

    • Do you hear LIDS ? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The project leader is a hacker living in Beijing.

      As I know, most of chinese hackers are busy with localization of linux in chinese. Also, being a free software developer is much harder in China. Can you imagine a programmer with a $300 salary has any incentive of programming free code? So those Chinese
      free software developers are real idealist and heroes in my eyes. Just wait for another 3 or 4 years. I am sure you will see patches
      directly from chinese hackers
    • Most of patches from chinese hackers are specialize in chinese support or i18n. At the same time, unfortunately most of them don't know how to communicate with the upstreams. In face, the chinese hackers do lots of i18n work. Such as CLE (Chinese Linux Extent), TurboLinux Chinese, they have released most of their work about Chinese under GPL license. We are joining the main stream of opensoure society, but please notice the real opensouce history in China is less than seven years. There are already many users of Linux in collages of China now. As I known, the OS lesson of many collages is based on Linux now. And I myself am a Debian Developer. I believe you will see more and more opensoure projects from China in future.
      • Exactly. I get a lot of chinese, taiwanese, and korean spam on one of my web sites, since it's keyworded "pacific".

        Since I don't use the appropriate character sets, I have no idea if it's actually real email. I just trash it all.

        I even get the virii in largest quantities from such sites.

        So perhaps a lot of Chinese hackers would like to submit patches but are having diffuculty communicating with our processes. Many times obstacles are a combination of barriers on both sides - and we might need to work on making it easier for them to submit things, and listen to their suggestions for how they might change things to work for them.

        -
    • Others have said that Chinese hackers mainly introduce support for Chinese in other packages.

      I think there is also a communication barrier. I sometimes find nice Japanese software that is outside of the Western distribution circles. The documentation is in Japanese or broke English. And while well known in Japan it's unrecognized in Western societies.
  • A few days agoi there were a post here about china closing internet bars, because they failed to censor the internet properly. Now would open-source be a bad thing for this goverment?

    Since you can alter the way it work, I think it would be easy to create proxies that would make the international sites available to every one.

  • Fig Leaf? (Score:5, Informative)

    by cygnusx ( 193092 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @08:29AM (#2612908)
    But she and Liu agree that most of the pre-loaded Linux computers don't stay in that condition once buyers take them home or to the office. It's only slightly more difficult than it used to be to buy an inexpensive, unauthorized copy of Windows, which tends to make its way onto many of the hard disks that housed Linux when they left the store.


    Excuse me for being cynical, but I know what software piracy in Asia is like. These are places where you can pick up Mathematica, STAAD, Oracle - for $20 or thereabouts. So is this bundling of Linux anything more a fig leaf from rock-bottom assemblers to not appear as selling "naked pcs" to clueless consumers?

    The only two good points are -

    a) since pc penetration in china is less than that of the US, the avg pc user in china is a lot more savvy than the avg us pc user. hence the chances of staying with linux is higher.

    b) maybe (like the article notes) the users will dual-boot. At least the bright school/college goer will take a look at Linux and realize choice does exist.
    • I would think the average user in China would learn more about his PC at a much faster rate. Most old time computer users I know can tell you what a TSR is but have no idea what that stuff in the system tray is for. People in China aren't as busy running around in circles as people here in the US. I'd bet the average "computer owner" in China is ten times more savy than the average "computer owner" in the US.

      A good comparison would be children here in the US vs. their parents. Of course I might be wrong in assuming people in China aren't as pre-occupied as most adult Americans I know, but I doubt it.

    • Re:Fig Leaf? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ami Ganguli ( 921 )

      You're right of course, but don't underestimate the power of having Linux distributed to all those users, even if most of them blow it away.

      The fact that Linux actually ships with the system means that users in China have a real choice to make, whereas in the rest of the world most users have no idea that non-Windows operating systems exist. Microsoft actually has to compete on merit.

      As Microsoft takes steps to reduce piracy in China (including things like product activation), things will get really interesting. Nobody is going to pay the full price for Windows/Office - it's just not that much better. MS will either lose tons of market share, or they'll have to reduce the price in China. In fact, they'll probably find a compromise price to maximize revenue. That compromise will end up giving Linux a pretty decent market share.

      • Re:Fig Leaf? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by WNight ( 23683 )
        Well, given the average national income in many of the countries we're looking at... Microsoft would have to match Pepsi's (misstated) power of *bringing back the dead*, to be worth the price.

        Microsoft Win 2k Pro + Office Standard, is USD 699.

        That's USD 200 less than the total yearly wage in Rwanda, which is one of the countries people are considering trying to wire.

        Chine has a *much* higher average wage, almost USD 3600, but that cost is still almost a fifth of it.

        I know quite a few people (of those who use Windows) who consider that they should pay for it. Despite MS's illegal practices they still believe people should be paid for their efforts. But can you imagine if the package cost between USD 9000 and USD 30,000? That's the range it effectively is in many third-world countries. Who would choose to pay that voluntarily?

        Not only is hardware a more reasonable cost. After all, people are used to paying money for something that costs to make, not something you can duplicate for free, but they could get a 1.5Ghz computer with 1GB of RAM and a 40GB HD for the same price. Chances are though that they'd like to pay less for the hardware and that they'd choose to buy an old computer, maybe a P1 or low-end P2. Many businesses pay to have them taken away because they can't justify the cost of inventorying them. These computers frequently end up heading overseas to be repaired and distributed.

        When you could get a complete system for $50, or one twentieth of your yearly income, do you think you could justify 15/20ths of it for a crappy OS?

        Microsoft then biases this further in the direction of encouraging the pirates by refusing to let the computer legally be used with the old OSes they often still have on them. If someone boots on old copy of Win95 still installed on a P1 that technically was "upgraded" to 2k they'll say you owe them for a second license, of almost the same value as the brand new OS, despite that fact that W95 aged worse than the P1s it was run on.

        Pardon the rant, but the whole MS OS thing pisses me off. They have the power to be so helpful and yet they deny people everything they can, as if there's a chance of getting some poor peasant to cough up a year's wages for an OS for some old PC. No wonder those countries ignore our copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
        I know you were arguing the same point, but I just wanted to point out that unless Win2k came with a ton of rations, tools, and medicine, it couldn't match the pricetag they put on it.
        • As Microsoft takes steps to reduce piracy in China (including things like product activation),

        Sorry, but I think we can discount product activation as an effective anti-commercial-piracy tool. It's aimed squarely at Harry Homeowner.

        • Nobody is going to pay the full price for Windows/Office - it's just not that much better. MS will either lose tons of market share, or they'll have to reduce the price in China.

        Not necessarily. If the vast majority of M$ products are pirated in China, and StarOffice starts eating into few sales they do have, they would have to drop the price substantially and sell for tens of dollars, not hundreds. And they still won't necessarily get a big rise in sales. They actually have to undercut the pirated stuff (which means giving it away) and/or pay huge bribes (sorry, tributes) to Chinese law enforcement to crack down on the pirated stuff. Until they change the culture, they can't control the market in China like they do in the US and to a lesser extent Europe.

        During their monopoly trial, Microsoft made the point that the price of Windows doesn't have to be as low as it is. The admitted quite freely that they were had a monopoly strangehold, and that there were already plenty of people locked into using it, and that their figures showed their maximum profit point (after lost sales) to be at $800 a copy. Their point was that they weren't gouging these customers, even though they could. Strange way to make a point, but it seems to have worked out OK for them.

        There's no reason why they can't operate on this basis in China. Target a few markets (e.g. government), gouge them on price, and pay for plenty of jackboot audits to keep them honest. If the bottom falls out of the market there, well, they aren't making money as it is, so no loss.

    • Why shouldn't they ship a naked PC? We ship naked PCs here. I'd suggest that shipping with Linux serves some more above board: People with no computer experence do not want to pay for a computer that dose not work. This way you can sell them something which dose everything except run the newest coolest game.. and they can pirate and install Windows when they pirate and install the game.

      I would suspect that the "computer savviness" has a negitive impact on Linux use. A preloaded RedHat 7.1 is easier to use then Windows is to install (assuming you speak English). Remember, installing Windows involves countless reboots and confusing instillation of drivers which often do not work correctly. Indeed, you are sometimes better off not installing some drivers and uninstalling Windows drivers is often impossible for inexperenced users. I seem to recall that it took me half a month to find the *text *file* to edit to make Windows run with 1 GB of memory and AGP. You also must edit the registry to remove some of the crap your drivers force uppon you. Hell, my roomate's motherboard BIOS pops up a little broken uncloseable Windows program on boot up which you can not prevent without manually editing the CMOS!

      If Linux fixes the lack of games and poor langauge support then you will see more Chinese stick with Linux simply because it will be easier to use once preloaded. Preloading and configuring a good release of Wine (rare) would help the game situation too, i.e. you should be able to just instert a StarCraft CD and click install.

  • LinuxONE (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, isn't China the market that LinuxONE was going to corner and then use to make their millions...? What ever happened to those clowns, anyways...?

  • ..when Microsoft OS's and applications are the biggest black market in China. I believe Steve Ballmer was actually quoted as saying that while he wasn't happy about the piracy, he admitted it was a useful foothold.

    It's good to see Linux getting *somewhere*, however, and as long as the internationalization effort continues, I think we stand a chance. Just don't underestimate the task!

  • The Chinese government chose Linux not because... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frleong ( 241095 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @09:01AM (#2612990)
    of the price, since MS software is largely pirated (piracy rates in China is more than 90%), but because they fear that MS has somehow planted a backdoor that helps the U.S. government to spy their communication channels (remember the NSAKey registry that was introduced in NT SP5?).

  • State of the PRC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26, 2001 @09:05AM (#2613000)
    Let's not kid ourselves: Nothing is as easy and widespread as Windows XP in the PRC. The internet cafe I'm sitting in has had XP since XP's launch day. And I imagine the laoban paid 10 RMB for the one or two cds and proceeded to install it on all 20 or so computers. Maybe Linux is catching on a little bit with enthusiasts (a few of my Chinese friends have heard of it, and you can easily find it in stores) but wrestling with some install and Corel's Office lookalike is just not worth the effort. The whole pile of Office XP cds can be had for 20 RMB. Windows XP and OFfice XP can probably be had for 25 RMB if you buy them together. That's three American dollars.

    Though to be honest I wish he'd stuck with Windows 98. An upgrade to XP without a hardware upgrade is a speed downgrade (eryi).

    Also, if I could comment on the misperception presented by these somewhat sketchy articles that Slashdot features every once in a while, the Chinese "control" on the internet isn't oppressive, it's quixotic. I can read NYT, Reuters, but not the LA Times. And there's practically no restriction on any 'illegal' content bearing sites. Please bear in mind the reporting in the mainland is sketchy -- bad news, good news, it's all blown out of proportion or deflated down to managable levels. The best way to check out the real deal is to come out and see for yourself.

    China's beautiful!

    An American abroad,

    c.d.

    • Re:State of the PRC (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      China is a rad country (says the Canadian workin in Changchun).

      And he's right about the costs of pirated software. it's 4 or 5 rmb per cd for any peice of software (10 cd visual studio with july 2000 msdn update cost me 45, office 2000 cost me 20).

      Internet controll does seem half arsed to me too. Some porn sites are blocked, but not others.

      A few news sites are blocked, but not others.

      The store where I pick up my software, a big arsed 8 story mall, has stores that sell legit copies of software too. I believe Diablo II, chinese version, real copy, goes for... 80 yuan ($10 american, $14 canadian). Pirate copy goes for 15 or 12. Which is a big difference (and when you consider that the highest pay of any chinese person I know is 1000 yuan per month, no one in their right mind would pay for a legit copy.)

      Best part is, if I were to look long and hard enough (there's at least 20 booths that sell pirate cd's, as well as some versions of linux, xteam, redhat, red flag, and I think I may have seen another few), I could possibly find every version of every release of windows since 95 osr2.

      Funny thing is, Linux is the only legal software you'll actually be able to buy at one of them booths. AND it costs just as much as windows (or more, depending on the version). I picked up a copy of Red Hat (with 2 cd's, I also saw 3 and 4 cd variants, they must come with source code).

      Now, to put this back on topic...

      There's no way an average pc user in china will switch to linux when they can pick up a copy of windows(insert version here) for the same price. Each booth I looked at just today had between 0 and 3 copies of any linux distro (cumulative, so 2 redhat + 1 red flag = 3 copies of Linux), but at least 2 copies of each version of Win98, WinME, Windows 2000 (workstation, professional, server) and windows XP(workstation, professional, server).
      • Maybe Linux is catching on a little bit with enthusiasts (a few of my Chinese friends have heard of it, and you can easily find it in stores) but wrestling with some install and Corel's Office lookalike is just not worth the effort

      Look, first read the article, then post a reply.

      Here's the salient points. 10-15% of retail boxes in the DPRC* ship with Linux pre-installed. StarOffice 6 is about to be released. Put those two together, and you get something very slick and very usable. I accept that you haven't seen any sign of this on the ground, but the point being made is that the two factors together might be enough to persuade a few percent of people to not go to the bother of installing WinXP + Office 2002. And that's a damn sight more than in the USA.

      (* I'll accept China's claim to be the Democratic People's Republic of China until I have it explained to me exactly why a system that uses a cabal of political appointees to choose a president is any better.)

      • (* I'll accept China's claim to be the Democratic People's Republic of China until I have it explained to me exactly why a system that uses a cabal of political appointees to choose a president is any better.)

        I think you're confusing China with North Korea. China doesn't pretend to be democratic. It's simply the People's Republic of China, and Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China. But North Korea calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
    • Ah china. A nation of thieves. I wish Americans were brave enough to sell pirated windows at the mall for a few bucks.

  • MS Helping Proliferation of Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KarmaBlackballed ( 222917 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @09:09AM (#2613011) Homepage Journal
    There are two complementing strategies for proliferating an operating system:
    1. Make it practical and easy to get.
    2. Make other operating systems expensive and difficult to get.

    Ironically, through WindowsXP's extreme registration requirements, it may be more of a hassle to install a stolen copy of windows than a legit copy of Linux. Linux with KDE and StarOffice is a practical solution for lots of business users now, all they have to do is discover it. Seems like several million Chinese are discovering it every day.

    Can anyone say critical mass?

    I'm not sure this is the effect Microsoft foresaw, but it is one I expect.
    • I'd agree with this; many distros are now getting as easy to install as Losedows (I found Mandrake 8.1 much easier and less painful than any M$ excreta), and I've nothing but praise for StarOffice as a viable alternative to M$Orifice
    • Actually XP's activation is only for those who actually *buy* a copy of the OS. The pirated versions turning up on the internet do not require activation and are fully functionnal (i.e. you can even use windowsupdate.com)
      • Ironically, this may be a good thing for MS and they would be wise to leave it alone. More users suckling on the Windows teat keeps people thinking "Windows."

        I heard that it was possible to hack old DirectTV (satelite TV vendor) boxes for premium channels and Hughs knew about it but left it alone because it had the effect of creating more DirectTV mindshare. It is a fuzzy area, but some companies acknowlege the benefits of attracting and keeping technical mindshare even when it is "stolen."
    • Ironically, through WindowsXP's extreme registration requirements, it may be more of a hassle to install a stolen copy of windows than a legit copy of Linux

      The fact is Microsoft's product activation is a joke. In the week or so after WinXP became available through illicit channels, there were some versions that "worked" and some that didn't. The ones that worked were corporate versions that didn't require activation (who wants to activate 1000 PCs?) I imagine by now most of the "broken" ISOs have filtered out of the stream, and all that's left are the "good" ones.

      The fact is, there are Windows XP ISOs out there, free for the downloading that require you to type in a CD key. That's it. No activation. And because of our lovely open distribution channels, just one person had to upload one of these ISOs and now they are everywhere.

      WPA is a hassle for legitimate users and a scare tactic for the kiddies who are too stupid to poke around and find an ISO that "works". I imagine in China, most folks will have no problem finding such a copy to burn.

      -Erik
  • Anyone know about the other big developing markets?
    India, Pakistan, Bangladesh?
    Indonesia?
    Arab countries?
    South America?

    Obviously WXP is available pirated in all these places too but it would be interesting to note the comparitive penetration rates.
  • Because there just aren't enough of them Chinese hackers. Growing up in a relatively rich enviromentin Beijing, I daresay I was one of the few first generation of kids brought up having used a computer: I used AppleIIs in the 6th grade. But it was not until 5 years later did I have another chance to touch them again, briefly. Both times learning BASIC.

    In college I used "BULL" system, for a intro class of computerscience with FORTRAN, then some PC, for a dBase class. That was already the 90's and a lot of my friends who went to other colleges ended up learning BASIC again, as we did in highschool, because most of their schoolmates didn't touch computer before and, I guess, there weren't enough staff members who could teach FORTRAN.

    At mid 90's, the computer started to get in to people homes, and mine too, and it's merely about 5 years now.

    I don't know any Chinese hacker, nor have I heard of many. And I myself am too far away from one, although I'm considered a guru. In the stead, those script-kiddies who launced the attack against US sites after the aircraft collision incident were regarded as hackers in China...

    you see a lot of Chinese "programmers" in the US now, but most of us were switched from other fields in order to make a living here, and couldn't even put together a pc.

    So, please be patient, people. We will make our due contribution, but first we have to make a bigger task force. :)
    • There never seems to be any shortage of Chinese programmers available to immediately crack any form of copy protection put on legitimate products.

      If your explanation -- not enough developers to be able to make a contribution to the world -- is valid, how do they find the developers needed to illegally sell (illegal by China's own laws) cracked versions of almost every copy-protected commercial product ever made?

      Programmers in China are like chemists in Colombia.

      This isn't meant as a troll. It's a genuine observation. A lot of my family still lives in China and, frankly, I don't hear "help make the world a better place" expressed very often by the Chinese as an important personal or national goal. This is true even among those whose incomes would put them solidly in the middle class in the Western world.
  • It seems to me that the article has little good news for Linux. Although systems may be sold with Linux, this is most likely a ploy to circumvent M$ 'naked system' ban. There was a time when countries like China just ignore M$ edicts, but M$ is a big company and China is trying to play nice. It is baseless to suppose that a significant percentage of users even notice the Linux OS before inserting their Windows CD.

    In addition, I must agree with article that cost will play no significant part in the Linux/Windows battle. As a matter of fact, I think that piracy may make Windows the cheaper choice, just as it was in the USA through most of the 90's. For example, when I was in High School everyone had an Apple II. This was a very efficient system to acquire as one never had to buy software. Each day we would copy off a number of programs for our group of users. We even put bulk orders in for a hundreds of diskettes. It was fun and simple activity. As we moved into the late 80's, the balance of easily pirated software shifted to the M$ OS as a result of the growing dominance of M$ and the introduction of the Macintosh. Even with the recent anti-piracy efforts, sales of PCs running Windows still seems to be partially driven by the availability of pirated or gray market software. This is true in the U.S., and I assume it is true in China.

    P.S. I mostly use MacOS and pay for my software, even M$ Office.

    • I just purchased a machine and selected red hat as the operating system from yeehamall [gift168.com]. When The machine came it had win 98 installed and a couple of redhat cds just thrown into the box. I wonder if I paid the M$ tax or if they just put windows on every hard drive that leaves the dock.
  • communism and open source go hand-in-hand. ;)
  • "And don't forget plain old nationalism -- an unwillingness to be so beholden to a monopolistic foreign company -- plus Microsoft's reputation as a bully. ``There is grassroots anti-Microsoft sentiment,'' says Michael Robinson, a technologist with long experience in open-source software who's lived in China for eight years. Robinson cites ``a popular perception of Microsoft being antagonistic to the aspirations of China."

    This is completely inacurrate. I haved lived in China all my life and the Chinese are very pro-Microsoft, for the simple reason that Microsoft is such a success story in business. Also, just like the US, there is a widespread fear of linux being "hard to use". There is no such thing as a price differential between linux and Windows, because anyone can buy a pirated copy of multiple programs for 1-2 US dollars. Pirating is such a rampant practice and is so commonly done that nobody thinks twice about it. I have never spoken to a Chinese friend who doesn't use pirated software. This article is obviously written by someone out of touch with China, who is probably seeking foreign investment.

    Although I'm a linux fan, I regret to say that this article is far from the truth.
    • As the person (Michael Robinson) quoted, allow me to respond. The context was a discussion about the attitudes of China's technical elite. And, among people who make their living writing software, selling hardware, or other related pursuits, there is in fact grassroots anti-Microsoft sentiment.

      One of the most common questions I get when interviewing prospective developers is whether the development platform will be Microsoft (.NET, Visual whatever, etc.) or non-Microsoft (J2EE, Unix, etc.).

      There is a marked preference for "not Microsoft", particularly among the kind of applicants who you would actually trust to write code.
      • I'm not sure if you mean the context of your quote, or the context of the article, because I think we should be able to easily agree that the context of the article was a discussion of linux as a mainstream OS.

        But switching tracks...I haven't hung around China's "technical elite" mostly because there just aren't that many programmers in China, and there is an even smaller software industry in mainland China. Based on the quality of computer science higher education currently available in mainland China, I don't think I'd trust very many applicants at all.
        • The context of my quote in the conversation I had with the reporter (who, incidently, is by far the most technologically "with it" reporter I've ever met; which is unsurprising, considering his beat).

          As for China's technical elite, they're there if you know where to look for them. As IT in China has been my livelihood for the last seven years, I'm quite familiar with the community and culture.
  • Bill gates said it was "communism" and "unamerican". That pretty much decided it for them.

  • Linux in Africa (Score:3, Interesting)

    by elem ( 411711 ) <ed@wel[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Monday November 26, 2001 @11:55AM (#2613843) Homepage
    Wired.com did a nice story about linux in africa about two months ago (here [wired.com]).

    In this article they were talking to an ex-Xerox researcher. He was making the point that in a country such as kenya it would set you back about $900 for Windows and Office, but the average annual income is only about $250 which pretty much puts the MS solution out of pocket for all but the rich and big companies. In contrast the Linux solution is esentially free (baring the Hardware) although his company does offer a range of applications aimed at the small/medium company for $6.50.

    So, what I hope that we'll see is that the developing world, whilst developing choses to rely on Open Source solutions and not M$. Just think... in a few decades (or less) Linux/BSD might well have a huge, huge user base and there will be parts of the world that M$ will never be able to conquer.
  • Believe it or not, this was told by one of my friend who claim to be an insider. Don't mod me as troll if you don't like it. Just take it grand of salt. I found the second reason so funny, just laugh if feel the same. :)

    When you say people change to Linux because it's cheaper - actually it made little difference for people in China to use MS or Linux, they are both free(you know why). Even the anti-piracy movement targetting commercial sectors, the Government was using illegal copies of software, or at least 'unmatched' number of license. You know what I mean.

    Things changed drastically one day when Government suddenly announced to develop their own operating system and planned to gradually replace MS software in Government. My friend told me it's not out of accident, it's all political.

    First, it's been a floating rumor that some US printers had secret chips to guide missles when time comes, and these tailor-made printers are mostly sold to Middle-east. China Government is aware of this rumor and to their surprise their agents found out it's not just a rumor. Report said that there are actually some tailor-made hardware sold to Middle-East and Asia, I'm not sure whether it's related to missile-guide chips, but that was enough to began their worry in using US' software.

    Second, and most important, MS made the originally Simplified Chinese version of MS software in Taiwan. It's a major fault of MS. I think China Government might not mind who made them, but the DO mind when some innovative Taiwan programmers took the liberty to include some 'Easter Eggs' that humiliating communists and major players in communists party.

    My friend show me those Easter Eggs by a couple of secret key triggers(iirc in Excel), they were so funny, but I'm sure those big bosses in communists' party weren't amused. China Government was so angry about it and thus pushing the development of their own OS.

    It's not surprising Linux is their reasonable choice.

    Lessons for MS to put more efforts on quality assurance against 'unplanned Easter Eggs' and not to give development jobs to people who have opposite political believes with the country where the products will be sold. :)
  • I lived in Beijing for four years, and bought a desktop system for my kids while I was there. It was a TCL 718, SiS motherboard, pretty standard box. TCL is one of the large consumer electronics companies in China.

    Their support was great... they had a localized copy of Suse. I wanted to install an English distro. They actually sent two guys to my apartment with all the device drivers, etc, as part of their service agreement (this for a $900 computer!). They also have a web site with all the drivers and setup information.

    However, chatting with the shop owner where I bought the box, it seems I was one of the very few customers who did not immediately request that Windows be installed over the existing system. It's the shop guy who does this, so it's a lot harder to regulate than if the manufacturer does this.
  • I lived in China for four years, where our company was building the China Internet Backbone. I came back to the States this Fall.

    Based on what I saw, Red Flag is not a very popular distro. I saw it at the store for about 900 RMB (about $US 108). It could be the case that they are concentrating on large govt or corporate accounts.

    Xteam Linux seemed very popular at the stores, where it sold for 38 RMB (about $US 5). They had a nice-looking poster, which was displayed all over.

    You could buy current versions of both Slackware and Red Hat from the CD street vendors for about $US 1 each.

    Most of my Chinese colleagues seemed to prefer a localized version of Mandrake. It looked pretty nice... all the screens/menus were presented in Chinese, and it supported an input method for Chinese characters.
  • Hrm. Now all we need is ESR flying off his rocker [linuxtoday.com] (if he has one) and deciding to speak for all Linux users in decrying the Chinese government and saying how none of us want that government using Linux.
  • I beleive according to Microsoft, there has been only 1 license of MS Office 97 that has been purchased in Asia...bahahaha
  • the whole middleware model -- whether java or .NYET -- is about having a underlying object hierarchy in a known, unmodified state.

    once you have that, you can do things like digital rights management...and NSA backdoors, maybe even MS backdoors, for sale to the highest bidder.

    So, MS sells Goldman Sachs a backdoor into Smith Barney...or maybe the NSA gets a backdoor into various research computers at chinese universities. Or daddy gets his porno interests examined by the FBI.

    Seems entirely possible, and if it's possible, it will be done. There is not a single entity that should not be afraid of "MS World".
  • Security, that's all.
    A year ago there was one article written by a former Cisco-China employee. Basically he had a 3 month business trip to Cisco HQ in CA for a project, during that trip he noticed there were a special mystious group of people work in Cisco, who use special badges. Out of curiousity he asked his Taiwan friend who they were and he was told that those people were from Pentagon and their job was to plant code in chips that routers use so they can be controlled by special sequence of packets. He was shocked and after he went back to China he sent an email to president of Cisco china, unfortunately he was told to keep his mouth shut, then he quit his job and post that article on Internet.
    I am sure Pentagon has people work in Microsoft and trust a foreign company to build the fundation of a nation's security system is just insane.
    We all know that Pentagon monitors our communications all the time. what would be more efficent than back door in your router and OS?
    go figure.
  • The article is pretty out of touch with the real situation in china, as most of the linux in china articles are. Like most have said, piracy adn the ability to buy virtually any software for 1-3 dollars (at least in Beijing in 2001) make linux no cheaper than MS. The past year i was in china, i met zero people who use linux. The people who use linux in China are the same types of people who use Linux in America. If Linux really wants to gain marketshare on the desktop, it will have to address the same problems it has to address in America.

    There's another dynamic, which I haven't seen mentioned: gaming. Gaming is getting pretty huge in the major cities with the highest percentage of people playing games that run on windows. It's pretty scary how popular it is; when i went to the internet cafe after I was done partying in the weekend, I'd find the place mostly full at 3am with people who had been glued to their screens playing games.

    basically, this article is full of it.

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