Former Second Largest Linux Distributor Red Flag Software Has Shut Down

cold fjord writes with news that Red Flag Software, makers of China's Red Hat derivative Red Flag Linux, has halted operations. From the article: "Once the world's second-largest Linux distributor, Red Flag Software has shuttered reportedly due to mismanagement and after owing employees months in unpaid wages. China's state-funded answer to global software giants like Microsoft ... filed for liquidation over the weekend and terminated all employee contracts. Set up in late-1999 amid the dot-com boom, Red Flag was touted as an alternative to Windows ... It thrived in the early days, inking deals with partners such as Oracle and Dell which products were certified to support and shipped with Red Flag Software. The Beijing-based vendor was primarily funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Software Research, and later received additional funding from state-owned Shanghai NewMargin Venture Capital and the Ministry of Information Industry's VC arm ... 'A lack of brand awareness and sustained investments, coupled with the rise of rivals including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise, led to its downfall,' Eric Peng, Beijing-based research manager with IDC, said ... Peng noted that, during its hey days, Red Flag had enjoyed high adoption among government agencies, state-owned organizations, and schools.""

Re:Corruption

[phoebe]

I'd like a technical post mortem and a list of contributions that Red Flag Linux has made to the community. There is surprise that a company running so long with state sponsorship has relatively few staff compared with Red Hat in a country of lower wages, and similarly has produced less original content than its neighbour Sun Wah Linux.

Re:What a Joke

[Opportunist]

My guess is that neither you nor anyone in your circle uses Baidu either. There's lots of tools, services, programs and OSs that are quite popular in China and virtually unknown outside of it.

For example, did you ever hear about Tencent QQ [wikipedia.org]. I have to admit, I have not until just recently, and it's apparently the second largest "virtual community" [wikipedia.org] right behind Facebook.

It's just an East Asia "thing", apparently. Not very popular over here in the West. So I wouldn't quite yet dump an OS just 'cause I never heard about it, it might be very popular elsewhere.

And China is one hell of a big market!