To persuade the Middle Kingdom to pick its software over Linux, Microsoft plays nice. Can there be such a thing as a kinder, gentler Microsoft? The answer may well soon emerge in China, where the software Ninja and Red Dragon are locked in a strategic duel over Windows and its free competitor, Linux. Elsewhere, Brazil moves to shun Microsoft software.
Microsoft: Courting China
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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it’s a good thing. Hope OSS can get it’s market share on the desktop soon enough to force, or better, convince enterprises to not wait for Longhorn but to move to the Next Generation Computing Platform !
:=)
I hope China does not give in. Even if it is not the most cost effective solution on a short term. Also considering MS’s extravagent profits’s
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12694
taking advantage of its monopoly. MS’s product are no longer new and with any other product alternative products would have surfaced by now levelling the profits to something reasonable. It’s time someone stand up. And of anyone I think the Chinese can and will do it.
Cue image of Chris Farley in “Beverly Hills Ninja.”
I mean isn’t MS like the antithesis of what their entire political/social system is about. If Communism is about equality, isn’t buying ANYTHING from one of the top ten richest men in the world downright wrong? Moa is rolling in his grave at the talk of such actions. They should get rid their “capitalist” leaders before they turn the country back into an western european fief…again…
OK, MS is not a monopoly…when the only real commies left have to deal with him????
“It’s time someone stand up. And of anyone I think the Chinese can and will do it.”
Yes I agree the Chinese can actually force everyone in China to use Red Flag Linux. Then all political dissent can really be stamped out. This is the real reason China doens’t like MS, they don’t control source, thefore they can’t control the information.
Ummm…..hello do you think that MS has/will being rally the people in China towards political freedom as well as freedom of choice in a free-market ? NO ! If anything they would bend-over backwards to help the Chinese goverment “control” the masses if that means that the masses are chained to PC’s with Windows as the only OS available to them. Please put away your idealism.
P.S. Microsoft already gave the source code for Windows to the Chinese goverment last year. Jesus you people have short memories.
yes, but they can’t alter it, compile it, or distribute it for there own needs and purpuses.
Microsoft showing China the code is a joke, it was mostly to show China there was no US CIA or FBI backdoors in the code or some bull like that.
The way I see this MS now thinks they can control any country on this earth. If china let’s MS walk all over them then we all know for sure even Bill Gates will think he is not just ruler but a God. MS is a very powerfull company but only cause the ppl and the government let’s them be. I hope China sees this and stops MS even if it means baning MS out of their country for ever. Now we need other countrys to do the same! Maybe then MS will drink some coffee and understand how wrong they are.
–Idoxash
They could do whatever they want with it. Remember this is a country were you can get a full blown pirated copy of windows XP Pro for $3 bucks on the streets. Trust me there is a reason why China is now developing their own goverment based OS and Office Suite. They got the source code and thats all they needed to help them hack together stuff to get it to work with windows.
P.S. If they ripped apart a U.S. spy plane that belong to the U.S. Armed Forces what makes you think they would be scared of MS ? Only group that is scared right now is MS because they know that China has a huge potential market for PC users.
Various countries and companies may be switching to Linux. However no one has made one simple request of microsoft. How about requesting “Interoperability”.
Large companies like Fujitsu, Nortel and Cisco have been requested by a few companies to make the equipment place nice with each other and guess what, it does happen. I dont think MS will make the concessions. But you know what, it never hurts to try.
just a thought.
Just showing them the source doesn’t even guarantee them that. If they can’t compile it, they have no assurance that there aren’t backdoors in the binaries. Even if they do compile the sources themselves, they can’t be sure that the compiler is trusted. Remember, Ken Thomson showed that its very easy for a compiler to insert backdoors into otherwise harmless source code.
Its probably a bit paranoid for regular users to care about something like that, but a country when national security matters are at stake? Remember, such things have been done before.
P.S. If they ripped apart a U.S. spy plane that belong to the U.S. Armed Forces what makes you think they would be scared of MS ? Only group that is scared right now is MS because they know that China has a huge potential market for PC users.
The chinese can’t even replicate cold war era soviet MiG fighters let alone modern spy planes. Oh… and if there are backdoors on software used by the chinese regime then all the better as far as i’m concerned.
Just clarification, Ken Thompson did not show, he explained in theory how it would be possible to compile in a backdoor in a compiler. But your point is very well taken, if the Chinese could compile the code, how would they know for sure the version they get from Microsoft is the same as the version they have the code for.
“Any requested changes must be sanctioned and performed by Microsoft programmers. By contrast, China is free to view and manipulate Linux and open-source programming ad infinitum.”
…this ought to settle it.
There’s probably some truth to that considering the Chinese’s blockages of some web sites allthough I tend to think that it actually is the price of MS products that is driving Linux.
Capitalism has the advantage that it is self regulating. With communism someone regulates and history shows that that someone unfortunately eventually takes advantage of the position turning corrupt.
The problem with MS is that there is no competition. The only choice is to not to buy it. And that is not satisfactory in a modern society. What if say one country like Saudi was the only one with all oil reserves. They would jack up the price too. Ok, I won’t buy oil. Well, I can’t do that. Allthough not strictly necessary everything falls apart without it.
That’s why the europeans are trying to get MS to offer its products in pieces. To make room for some competition. MS says it will criple their products. Yeah right.
Various countries and companies may be switching to Linux. However no one has made one simple request of microsoft. How about requesting “Interoperability”.
They were actually asked by other software companies to join OASIS and adopt the OO.org XML format. Microsoft refused to join.
The only way for Microsoft to get the message is for government departments to demand that all proprietary Microsoft protocols have to be openned up, free of charge for anyone to implement if they wished to be considered as a supplier of software for the US/EU/etc government departments.
The fact is, Microsoft is arrogant and unfortuntely the vast majority of IT people don’t have the back-bone to start demanding features. They forget, THEY ARE THE CUSTOMER, it is up to MICROSOFT to SERVE THE CUSTOMER and NOT the other way around.
A country without a leader is a mess, a software industry without a leader is “Linux”. We must have a leader, who has the pressure to make advances, and who also gets paid to be motivated. Microsoft might just be one of those companies. Yeah, other people are lossing jobs because of the “Monopoly”. But without unification… welcome to the era of Linux!
Yet they sure have made large leaps and bounds in nuke missle technology. Come on now your full of it ! China will be the number two semi-conductor producing nation in a few years from now. Just because they are asian does not mean that they are stupid.
Why does the software industry need a “leader”? Why can’t programs be written based on need. “Necessity is the mother of invention” after all.
“Yeah, other people are lossing jobs because of the “Monopoly”…” — MS is a convicted “Monopoly”.
Unification? This would be palatable if MS used open formats. Then we would have “unification” without dependence on any single vendor.
As for “…welcome to the era of Linux!”, I, for one, welcome our new Linux era overlords.
This is to be expected from China, they have no respect for “intellectual property” that belongs to anyone else, piracy there is greater than anywhere in the world.
They also don’t care for US imports other than food, and try to tip the trade balance hugely in their own favor even manipulating currency values if necessary.
Microsoft will have a tough time selling software to China, espcially outide of Hong Kong. I wouldn’t even waste money like Microsoft is trying to get them to clean up the piracy because that is the culture there that Linux isn’t about to help rectify. Only when someone like the World Trade Organization begins to sanction China for piracy of all forms of electronic information will it be a market worth investing in.
Posting anonymously now?
Actually, China moving to Linux is a great way to reduce piracy. Since most Linux programs are freely redistributable, an increase in the use of Linux will proportionately decrease the amount of pirated Windows software being distributed in the Middle Kingdom. After all, piracy is quite rare among Linux users.
As soon as the U.S. stops with the steel tarrifs.
I dont think Linux will totally displace Microsft Windows. It will get double digit marketshare but the 2 big OS’s on peoples computers will be Windows and Linux and of course OS X for the few Mac faithful. Windows is too strongly tied into the Computing world and believe it or not there are a lot of people who like Windows. Linux may be ready for the desktop but it will not be a major coup on MS. Microsoft will just learn to adapt and MS will drop the price on Windows to keep up.
> Actually, China moving to Linux is a great way to reduce piracy. Since most Linux programs are freely redistributable, an increase in the use of Linux will proportionately decrease the amount of pirated Windows software being distributed in the Middle Kingdom. After all, piracy is quite rare among Linux users.
I’d be a bit wary. I very seriously doubt that China would think twice about totally ignoring the GPL and integrating it into their own commercial type products. I’m not even sure how they could be policed at all.
This is to be expected from China, they have no respect for “intellectual property” that belongs to anyone else, piracy there is greater than anywhere in the world.
———
Maybe piracy is greater there because people would rather eat first, with high-priced legit US software coming in a distant second?
I think even European governments are now thinking the same way as the Chinese about MS. They are afraid of back doors that might be exploited for political and economic reasons. The push for Linux use by the Federal German Government is an example. I think think the US war in Iraq and its government sponsored anti “old-europe” hysteria has encouraged that.
has been to support competition amongst foreign standards and to support a local industry. They will do the same here. Microsoft won’t get a monopoly but they won’t get totally shut off either.
I think the western world is being very naive if they think the chinese are naive enough to give any of them the big prize of china. no way. the chinese keep playing it smart and the end goal for china is to become an exporter of high tech, not just an importer. they also have an alternative to intel under development.