Chinese Government to Use Only Local Software 534
owlmon writes "CNET Asia is reporting that China has outlawed foreign software in government applications. I expect that software buyers outside of the government will have to follow this lead. It's the same "network effect" that has powered Microsoft's growth for years. When the entire Chinese government is using WPS Office, anyone doing business with the government will feel mighty encouraged to follow suit. Otherwise, how will they exchange documents?"
Double-edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)
They dont have to, who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if they dont, we will still get better software. Windows will have competition, Microsoft Word, and all the American software companies will now have competitors in China, this is great.
Sure not all the companies will be open source, but even if they are closed source you'll still be able to buy or download Chinese software which may be x100 better than the American software we have currently.
Re:They dont have to, who cares? (Score:2)
Do you say that because the American software is badly translated? or a sense of chinese superiority?
I'm not attacking you, just curious as to what prompted that bold assertion.
Re:There are more chinese, just do the math. (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, that these days you'll probably find most of the 'american' cars are actually mexican (wheres the factory!) anyway.
But with a computer , your typing into the factory as you speak!!!!!!! Thats the
Re:They dont have to, who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
They could just develop some local chinese lousy product. Or alternatively, they could throw in a few highly skilled thousand chinese software developers and develop good products. Either way, it wouldnt be an outcome of free market or competition, and i'd rather not see that product come out of China...
One Microsoft is enough!
Re:They dont have to, who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
A new policy by China's governing body will rule that all ministries buy only locally-produced software at the next upgrade cycle.
They haven't banned foreign software per se, rather they have banned buying foreign software. It is an important distinction.
One Microsoft is enough!
That's a ridiculous assertion. The government will be using the Red Flag Linux OS, which is hardly going to create the next Microsoft.
Re:They dont have to, who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand your exaggerating to make your point but I really doubt that any who sits back and really thinks about the actual impact of this would agree with you. Once you close the loop and force people to use a particular product or source, then your virtually creating a monopoly which as we all know tend to resists doing any real innovation (because frankly they don't have to) to soak up more profits. The real solution to getting better programs is to put them in place via investments/grants/R&D/tax brakes etc, reduce your government IT budgets and give the pencil pushers a choice. We all know the dangers in either making it too easy or too difficult when it comes to government pencil pushers. They'll end up doing what's easier for them and not necessarily what's best.
Just look at it from a business point of view...what better environment exists to create a lovely company?... 1) find a government that's thinks it needs a software industry to protect against the Americans, 2) grab some free software who's licenses/patents aren't particularly valid under the given government's rules, 3) hire a few severely underpaid code monkeys to make the necessary changes, 4) sit back as huge wads of money start to fall from the sky, 5) hire marketers to ensure that the government keeps coming back for regular upgrades until they become so dependant that they don't consider anything else.
Why innovate when you can suck the system dry when both parties are happy: the government feeling good about supporting the local community, and the business who's sitting in huge piles of cash..... Kinda reminds me of the Microsoft/IBM deal.... And we all know what happened there...
Anyhow didn't want to bring you down, we can always hope that your view prevails, but the realist in me just can't see it happen.
Re:Double-edged sword (Score:3, Interesting)
In traditional Chinese literature, which includes abundant pornography, it has always been considered a matter of good taste that an author who is proud of his works will sign it pseudonymously. Indeed, writers such as Confucious are not, in fact, individual persons, but popular pseudonyms. This is a
Re:Double-edged sword (Score:4, Interesting)
But the simple answer to your question is that in the history of Chinese literature there are five works called the five classics. All of these were written by pseudonymous authors. Basically, you can't claim authorship and hope to become a classic in Chinese literature. It's an unwritten law --Confucius say. Nah, just kidding.
But among the five classics is the Jin Ping Mei and I've read bits and pieces of it in Chinese, and several English translations and I can tell you that for the vast portion, it is pure porn. It's porn in the sense that there's no plot. It's just descriptions of positions, partners and sex scenes back to back over and over. In fact, it's got some similarities to Sade in the way it's so repetitive.
But despite being porn, it's still considered a classic. And other books among the classics also contain explicit sex scenes like the Dream of the Red Chamber although that's clearly not a pornographic work like the Jin Ping Mei.
I would suggest that the interweaving of sexuality into a culture represents a level of cultural maturity that is still mostly undeveloped in the West. And --watch him stretch it really thin-- you would expect the GPL to work best in mature and open cultures.
Having said all this, I realize you can easily demonstate that the current Chinese goverment is almost the opposite of these things. Indeed, the Jin Ping Mei is not legally distributed in Mainland China under the current government.
But my underlying position is that when you're talking about China you should speak of the greater culture that is China and is the real shared identity of the people of Mainland China, rather than the tenuous and questionable leadership in posion today.
Re:Double-edged sword (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry.
Re:Double-edged sword (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience working in the semiconductor industry, I know China's economy in that sector is growing at a rapid rate. Many big name companies here, like HP, SUN, etc are all trying to get a piece of the pie. The only company to successfully grow their business in China is Intel. Everyone else aren't finding a good way to set foot in China. There are many business standards that China does not adopt from global businesses.
A main one is China does not recognize Intellectual Property. You bring your products to China, a local company to rip your design and sell it at a cheaper price. The goverment will not protect you against that. In fact, I might suspect they allow that kind of business conduct.
This is what I've learn about growing business in China for the semiconductor industry. I would imagine software industry is similar.
Re:Double-edged sword (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW US policies in regards agriculture arn't that different. Fact is without the subsidies 'n tarifs, America's chemical & hormone feedlot beef wouldn't be supermarket price viable (cows can't normally live knee high in shit unless pumped full of a million chemicals) & Americans would be eating nice healthy free-ra
World standards (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but how will they exchange documents with the rest of the world that's using the de facto standard, MS Office?
Sounds like a pretty stupid plan to me:
1) Homegrown software
2) Force it on everybody
3) ???
4) Profit!
Re:World standards (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:World standards (Score:4, Interesting)
The DVD companies aren't the only ones to use regional branding.
Re:World standards (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:World standards (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike private users, governments should take public interest into account when buying software. For example, US government could do well to avoid buying software from companies that have excessive foreign development centers
They can still exchange documents with the rest of the world by exporting them to some standard format, like HTML or RTF. If there is no software to do it, government's demands will sure encourage some local programs to be written.
It would be another matter if they forced common people use a specific word processor, with a nice keyword scanner that reports suspicious documents to the government. Its not out of the question in China, and perhaps in US. But that's something unrelated to this article.
Conversion Filter? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Conversion Filter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine if you write a few letters or track your spending with a small spreadsheet.
However, anything complex and critical (like the stuff you send to your client or they send to you) must convert with 100% accuracy. This is why Koffice or OpenOffice will not do well in a business environment.
Re:Conversion Filter? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's "complex or critical", you shouldn't be using Word anyway. If it's plain text, use ASCII. If it's formatted, use PDF. By all means, use Word to compose your documents, but it's a terrible exchange or achival format.
Anyway, I've worked in offices for over 10 years. For business purposes, WordStar 4 was fine. It had spellcheck, it had bold. What else do you need in a business document? (I admit, I later upgraded to WordStar 5.)
I also do DTP. For that I extract the text from the Word docs that have unfortunately become ubiquitous before laying them out in a rational way using stylesheets. Then I make PDFs to pass on to the printer.
All this talk about "incompatibility" is basically FUD. If you want compatibiity, use an open standard, not a transient obfuscated undocumented one that has the bonus feature of including viruses.
Re:Conversion Filter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, last time I checked OOo didn't support WPS Office formats. Does China have local competition in the word processing market? Is there a Chinese Free Soft
Re:Conversion Filter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conversion Filter? (Score:3, Troll)
Actually, this isn't true. I regularly recover MS Word 2000 documents using OpenOffice. Word creates files it later cannot read back in on a fairly regular basis, and OpenOffice seems to be able to read them, even when Word can't.
Re:Conversion Filter? (Score:3, Informative)
Filter is a kludge, not a solution (Score:2)
While it is possible to write converters supporting to some degree some versions of Word format, they tend to work only for simple documents. If unsure, try importing a Word document with non-trivial markup or mathematical formulas into office suite of your choice. Or even try importing such a document from MS Word 97 to MS Word 2000...
Re:Conversion Filter? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not an expert in these things, but isn't it possible that these conversion filters become illegal because of the DMCA ?
They won't buy our software... (Score:2, Interesting)
Who cares? They cant afford our software (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what, We cant afford our software, you go buy photoshop, I'll use Gimp.
Do you think I care if they dont buy our intellectual property when I dont own any of it and dont profit from any of its sales? Do you think I care if they pirate music when artists dont even own the copyrights on the music?
Its not a matter of them buying our goods, if their goods are better and cheaper why not buy theirs? Sure I prefer to buy goods made in the USA to support the US economy, but I'm not rich, so a choice must be made, if our products are equally as good and the same price I'll always buy ours, but if their products are better and cost less I'll be forced to buy theirs.
Either way their cheaper products will force the price of our products down, this will help the economy.
Re:Who cares? They cant afford our software (Score:3, Insightful)
Extremely good point and well made. Sure piracy is wrong and under current laws illegal. It is really hard to care when the alleged "victims" are multi-billion dollar corps who seem intent on stamping out real music in favour of plastic manufactured nonsense and who are unwilling to
Re:So, you've decided to steal movies... (Score:3, Interesting)
Read up on the stories of people involved in the music industry - to pick one at random - Bill Nelson [billnelson.com]. Recently Bill Nelson discovered that his first successful band Bebop Deluxe where not only earning royalities but he had not seen a penny of them. This kind of story is rife - when royalties are paid the
Re:They won't buy our software... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, the "free market" by military cooercion. Works every time. You do understand that this behaviour played a significant role in the success of the rise of communism in China in the first place?
Nevermind the fact that American copyright law does not extend beyond its borders and that the Chinese ( and Icelandics, Hugarians, New Guinians, Bhutanese, etc.) have the right to decide on their own just what constitutes "piracy" of intellectual property and what doesn't. The Chinese are free to take a more Jeffersonian approach to such matters than America is if they wish to. Ironic, isn't it?
Nor are the Chinese alone in such "piracy." Walk up to nearly any street vendor in NYC and you can walk away with bucket loads of pirated and unlicensed merchandise. At one point the Sam Goody Record stores were selling illegal rips as the legitimate article as fast as they could truck them in. Hell, you yourself just might be in possession of "pirated" music or movies obtained through various purely American channels.
Free Tibet. Up with Democracy. Fine. I'm with you.
But Intellectual "Property" isn't natural law. It's a purely human construct of extremely recent vintage and more dubious under the American Constitutional form of government than just about any other.
It's local code. Like how long you get to park at a meter for your quarter.
China isn't in our local jurisdiction.
KFG
Re:They won't buy our software... (Score:2, Insightful)
As for human rights issues - I wonder how they would compare if one actually made an honest analysis? China still does have some serious issues I'm sure, but as far as I can see, they are actually working on improving things. On the other
hold your nuclear horses, cowboy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They won't buy our software... (Score:4, Insightful)
And yeah, why not send in the troops when economic interests are threatened. Like invading Iraq for example (and no, they didn't find those weapons of mass destruction, or any proof of a connection to al Quaeda, all they found out was that all official reasons for starting that war were bogus and that Bush and Blair even knew they were bogus).
Nice to see ! (Score:4, Interesting)
Logic: No.
Re:Nice to see ! (Score:2)
-a
Re:Nice to see ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice to see ! (Score:2)
BTW gotta hate nationalism. If they were supporting Open Source or plain competition that would be one thing, but this protectionism is despicable if they intend to keep exporting stuff to the rest of the world at the same time.
Inter-suite data exchange? (Score:5, Insightful)
GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GPL (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think it does than you can hire a Chinese lawyer to make your case in the Chinese courts.
If they distribute in Newark and you feel they are thus obligated under US law all you have to do is legally serve them ( under US law) to appear in Newark.
Then we'll just have to free "Skylorov" all over again.
Remember him? The guy who wrote software in Russia that was legal in Russia and we all got bent out of shape over his being arrested for violating extortionate American Intellectual "Property" laws?
People, for God's sake, try to figure out what your stance on ip is and stick to it. The GPL only exists in the first place because of western copyright law and seeks to subvert it with its own weapons. If such western copyright law does not exist as such the GPL becomes a non issue.
KFG
Re:GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GPL (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats when we pirate their software (Score:2)
Simple, we pirate their software and then offer it up for download all over the internet to the Chinese.
What are they going to do? Sue you? LMAO
If they dont follow our rules why should we follow theirs? If they try to sell open source software, we buy it, crack it and give it away. Problem solved.
Re:GPL (Score:3, Insightful)
GPL'd code is usually hard to steal, since anyone who has it is allowed to make copies and distribute them.
But that's not what you mean. You mean they will use a GPL'd program, change it, and block it from being exported. Nothing will stop them (except ethics maybe, but I don't get the feeling world leaders have much of that). And it's not even illegal (according to international law, or even US copyright law (which is void in China btw)).
The people distributing the source allow redistribution, just
Re:GPL (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GPL (Score:2)
"What if" ? How about COUNT ON IT...
Agreed.
-a
I wonder: (Score:5, Interesting)
Would Linux and other open source be considered "local" if there are Chineese contributors?
Re:I wonder: (Score:5, Informative)
"China is placing official support behind the Red Flag Linux operating system, which they trust because the open-source code allows officials to see that there are no data spyholes installed by foreign powers."
What matters is that who's selling it is based in China, and that any standards that come from outside China are open. Even if there are no Chinese contributers, as long as it's Chinese selling and supporting it, it's fine.
OpenOffice support? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OpenOffice support? (Score:2)
http://wp.openoffice.org/
That's local *commercial* software... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: That's local *commercial* software... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Unfortunately, the article doesn't delve too deeply into the causes, merits, and implications of this decision.
No, but it does make passing mention of a couple of things, which were pretty much predictable anyway:
a) Stem hemorrhaging of cash from China to Redmond, Wash.
b) Stem hemorrhaging of information via spyware.
I've been predicting for several years that (b) alone will eventually cause most governments to convert to open source (or home-made) software. The risks of not doing so are simply too great, and in fact I'm surprised that there hasn't been a mass exodus already.
Re: That's local *commercial* software... (Score:3, Interesting)
b) Stem hemorrhaging of information via spyware.
I think you're much more correct with a) than with b). This is the same reason that China has developed its own processor. China wants to cut economic ties as much as possible to the US, particularly in the economic sector. This move, of turning to Red Flag Linux, was expected for a while now.
But as China follows this path, the US may lash out economically. Or maybe the US will just start a new opium [wikipedia.org]
That's local *proprietary* software... (Score:2)
Not so bad (Score:3, Funny)
Anyone remember paper?
Re:Not so bad (Score:3, Interesting)
I went to an office supply store and the little girl there had NO CLUE ON PLANET EARTH what carbon paper is. She didn't even know what isle to begin looking on, she thought it might be with the inkjet cartridges when I told her it was a special paper for making copies of handwritten or typewritten documents.
She even told me she had never seen a typewriter before but had heard of them. She thought is was some sort of word processor. (Yeah, it was one of the first!)
It's amazing how fast we've
If only it were *really* local (Score:3, Interesting)
But as it is, it's all going to be based on software written in English-ish programming languages, isn't that right?
So, I can understand the urge to go local, but I don't think they're going far enough. Imagine the impediment we would face if we had to learn how to write software for an OS that was based on, say, Mandarin. How many of us would really have ended up taking to computers?
So doesn't that apply in reverse?
And to make matters worse, they say English is the hardest second language to learn. And most of the advanced texts in CS are in English. The HOWTO's are all in English (yeah I know there are foreign language versions but let's be real, it isn't as complete or as up-to-date as the ones in English.)
Re:If only it were *really* local (Score:2)
It would be interesting to see an OS/software written from the ground up in a completely different language, esp. one that used pictograms.
If you have any experience in programming, you probably know that the trick usually is to translate functionality and ideas into abstract steps (algorithms). The translation to a programming language is then but
Data Conversion Between Packages? (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
It is interesting to see an oppressive government fighting for its freedom from an oppressive corporation.
It looks like both sides are getting a taste of their own medicine.
Why not open and unencumbered standards? (Score:5, Informative)
And AVS for audio/video is patent/royalty encumbered [china.org.cn].
How is it in the interests of the people in any nation, that daily government operations and communication be dependent upon a private corporation?
When will we see a government -- a people -- that will stand up to large corporate interests and fund the development and deployment of an open source office suite and groupware servers and clients, of similar or higher quality than existing proprietary solutions, so that the daily operation of our government will not be dependent upon the business strategies of private corporations.
propoganda wording!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Chinese government "outlaws" foreign software! Oh those evil bastards!
But when the USA government mandates MS it's not "outlawing foreign software" it's just "helping the economy by buying domestically".
What a crock...
Force investment in China (Score:3, Insightful)
This is nothing new. In the middle-east most countries require foreign companies to partner with a local company that holds the controlling stake. So for example, IBM operates as GBM (Gulf Business Machines) in the middle-east.
So, the Chinese government won't buy software from M$(US) but from M$(China) after M$ sets up a development facility in China. This will also force MNCs to divert investments from other competing economies like India, Indonesia, Philipines etc.
On the other hand, desktops and servers could run Linux and other open source software customised for Chinese, networking equipment would be sourced from Hua-Wei, chips are already manufactured in China. What else's remaining??
based on the latest microsoft word debacle ... (Score:5, Informative)
From BBC News [bbc.co.uk] -- "Your Microsoft Word document can give readers more information about you than you might think. Even Alastair Campbell has fallen foul of the snippets of invisible data few of us realise our documents contain."
If you use Microsoft Word in a business environment -- or for anything where your information is valuable -- it is recommended that you look into what hidden files [wordsite.com] may be hiding in your Word documents.
It is becoming more clear that all of Windows and every Microsoft application is likely to be similar to Microsoft Word -- filled with hidden information and hidden functionality that has never been disclosed by Microsoft.
An aphorism of gambling says, "Only make a bet when you can afford to lose". In China's case, your entire nation's strength and health is at risk when they are using Microsoft software, so it simple to see that it is a bet that cannot be made.
Sun Tzu wrote "All war is deception." The big deception is Microsoft's "Source Code for Governments". What does that matter when you download binary "security" patches, "updates", "new drivers", "service packs", etc? What does that matter when you don't get to see the Microsoft Office source code? Microsoft's "Emperor's New Source Code" program is nothing but smoke and mirrors, deception at its finest. It looks like the Chinese have wised up to Microsoft's deception and given Microsoft the boot.
What will it take for the rest of the world to wake up and realize that the only software you can trust is open source?
On a similar note ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in 2002 one of the Danish Prime Minister's opening speeches written in Office XP was made available on the Net. The document included previous drafts which could be rolled back.
The drafts revealed that he did not write the entire speech himself, and of course, also things which should have been left "unsaid". I remember the "unsaid" part caused a bit of a stir - to some extend it revealed
How? (Score:2, Interesting)
Text files? Other non-proprietary standard formats?
Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
If Microsoft wants to stay on top, they will have to distance themselves from the US government, or they will simply not be trusted.
Or perhaps it's too late...
Funny how China is blacklisting everything (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, this is not the same kind of commodity (obviously) but it's the same kind of attitude. I wonder what's the next step for the
Re:Funny how China is blacklisting everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan in July 2003 upped beef tarrifs to 50%
America pushed up Steel tarrifs recently, has massive subsidys for farmers.
Europe well their farm subsidys are ridiculous with some places in Ireland been better off not growing their crops with the subsidys offered.
So yeah obviously bad China, the only country in the world to use tariffs. BAD BAD BAD play fair no tariffs just like all those other countries in the world, oh wait there isnt any!!
As for banning people from certain countries, every country does that it is called a VISA and what happens is you simply do not let people in from the country you do not like.
Free Software? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Free Software? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Free Software? (Score:3, Interesting)
My response would be the same should Suse rebrand their distro as Reich Linux, or the CIA released Uncle Sam Linux.
staggeringly naive (Score:2, Insightful)
This is all about the ageing despots who run China trying to keep political and economic control over technological changes. Instead of restricting access to dangerous material at the server/network end (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/02/09/02/0246224.sht m l?tid=153) it looks to me like they're trying to restrict and control at the client end. Think Palladium driven b
Re:staggeringly naive (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond that, I think you're being a little too cynical. It's perfect
Re:staggeringly naive (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt that the current Chinese government is the best possible for China, and they are certainly far from a democracy yet, but anybody claiming to know that they know better how to run China is either an idiot or an ideolog. It took Europeans hundreds of years and many bloody wars to become
Re:staggeringly naive (Score:3, Interesting)
It is no great leap of imagination that when all code can contain spyware, spyholes, hidden data, etc., that "opening the source" is a big step towards trust.
In China, there are many factions to the power base. If the source code for software is not open, then even these factions cannot trust each other. Maybe a general put in special spy code. Maybe the information ministry put in special spy code. The possibilities are endless. The only solution is keeping the source open. A government that fights too m
More hackable? (Score:2, Informative)
Their official IT people won't even fix the thousands of hijacked proxies that are already compromised.
This is a very good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
China gains in the short term by throwing off the handcuffs offered by BG. and Co.
Open-source gains down the road when China starts giving back. This may take a few years, but once open source gets a foothold in China it will be massively adopted (We are seeing this right now) but more importantly, we might be seeing the start of a common language for China.
What we get back from the Chinese via the GPL may be more than we bargained for.
And I am hoping uniting China under a Free software initiative will perhaps take on a life of its own.
Re:This is a very good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
While there is Red Flag Linux, I wonder whether we have any reason to believe that the government of China will not act in the interests of proprietary software producers just as much as do the governments of Western nations.
In the case of Red Flag Linux, it may simply be that it is deemed acceptable because there does not exist any satisfactory proprietary and locally produced operating system.
Whereas with an office suite and the audio/video protocol where there are existing local proprietary solutions, the government seems more than willing to favor these existing proprietary solutions over existing open source solutions, and also over developing new open source solutions which would compete with these existing proprietary solutions.
I'm not quite ready to praise the government of China over this move.
Trade implications (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trade implications (Score:3, Insightful)
They're already in. And this is a ruling on what government ministries can use, which is easily cast as national security, which is excempt from WTO rules. Could China complain that they can't tender for software for the Pentagon? Anyway, the US pisses on the WTO whenever it feels like it. The 3r
Protectionism is a dangerous toy (Score:5, Insightful)
In a similar way the Finnish government was stuck for years with a national government developed word processing program in the 1980's and early 1990's.
So from this point of view the Chinese government might be painting itself into a technology corner, potentially being stuck to an inferior product.
However the Chinese market is so huge that there is room for internal competition. Also software as a product has a tendency towards forming a monopoly, due to the high costs of entering the market and the low costs of replicating the product. So an occasional shaking of the emergent structure might well be justified.
We should also be asking how much the EU bureocracy is paying to Microsoft each year and how much could be saved by moving to Open Office.
It would be interesting to know if the Chinese directive is targeted only to office applications or if it applies to other software also. This could be a boon to the Chinese software industry in terms of ERP software, network managemet, CAD etc.
kiravuo
Compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
This really depends on how open the file formats are. Back when Microsoft was fighting for the Office market, I started using Word because the import/export filters were so good that I could use Word as a translator between the several word processors that everyone was dealing with. It wasn't until they owned the market that they started being incompatible with everyone, including earlier versions of their own software.
I see nothing but good coming from this. With one of the world's largest countries using something else, Microsoft will be facing a lot of market pressure to make their file formats regular and available for conversion to other formats and clean up thir act on being able to import from other formats.
China joined the WTO (Score:3, Informative)
This policy won't change how businesses or individuals in China have to operate, nor do we know if Hong Kong's government will have to change. China has entered the WTO, as of January 1st 2004 they are opening their market to free trade. A lot of the old intellectual property issues will be fixed over the next few years, mainland China is soon to become the biggest importer of British and American goods (by way of Hong Kong of course!)
We shall see (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at all the software packages that might be used in the Chinese government created by companies all over the world. Now these companies are being told "Nope, you can't sell here anymore." That's a great deal of the world's producers being effectively shut out based on nationality. This is not a win for Free Software, this is a win for protectionism disguised (apparently very well) as advocacy for Free Software. This is no different then farm subsidies in Europe, and U.S. protection of the steel industry. (I have problems with both by the way).
One final thought, the last country in the world I would expose my source to is the Chinese government. The Chinese have not been known to be respecters of intellectual property. How fast do you think it would take for source of your application you developed to be handed over to a competing Chinese company. A month tops I believe.
As for you apologist who believe it necessary to protect new industries in developing countries, I have a rebuttal when it comes to software. The reason to protect industries like this would be because they have high barriers-to-entry and large capital costs. For instance, the building of farm equipment is one I would support because it is both resource intensive and long lead times to development and production. Software on the other hand is just the opposite. I can seat down someone in Russia, India, China, Egypt, Costa Rica, or the US give them a text editor and a compiler and they can become a software company. The resources and talent to build software can be found anywhere in the world as long as you got a computer and an internet connection to download the software. Therefore protecting local software companies, especially as an inflow of jobs comes from other parts of the world at the same time, is protectionism at its worst.
If we replaced "China" with "Sweden"... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Hurray for advanced socialist societies that care! First health care, then the software industry."
"Good for them! Anything to reduce Microsoft's power."
"Those Europeans are smart, they'll save a lot of money this way."
Ah well. At least not all of the comments in this thread were completely negative.
Re:This is excellent (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This is excellent (Score:2, Funny)
YES!!!! This is the best news I've heard all year! (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you know what this means for the open source movement? Better yet do you know what this means for the global economy? This changes the whole dynamics of the game.
Now China will have two options, develop an alternative to Microsoft Windows using open source, or develop an alternative to microsoft windows which is closed source.
Either way, we will get better software through competition, this is good for capitalism, good for the user, good for the software industry, and I cant see anything bad coming fro
Slashdot users world wide now conflicted (Score:2)
Slashdot users world wide now conflicted. Film at 11.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Info regarding WPS Office Suite (Score:5, Informative)
The WPS Office Suite is produced by "Golden Mountain Software Company" (it's a direct translation from the Chinese characters) and the web site is located at http://www.wps.com.cn/
According to press release at http://www.wps.com.cn/newsview.php?id=174 The WPS 2003 Office Suite will be on sale starting August 30th, the WPS Office Suite 2003.
The WPS Office Suite will carry the price of 1298 Chinese Yuan, (about USD 160).
All previous users of any softwares produced by WPS are eligible to upgrade to the latest WPS Office Suite 2003 for Ten Chinese Yuan (a little less than USD 2.00).
Yep, less than USD 2.00 for a complete upgrade.
Dunno if that includes the postage and handling or not, tho.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Funny)
All the IT jobs are moving to Asia anyway. Who needs retail software jobs? Not me! Would you like some fries with that?
Nonono... it's "would you like noodles with that?"
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords.
-a
Re:Shucking standards.. (Score:2)
Or if you're the Chinese Government, you send it back and ask the submitter to redo it in something readable. They do have a fair amount of clout...
Cheers,
Ian
not so Hmm... (Score:2)
I have several friends who write math textbooks. They use equation editor and have to use Word. Sure, OpenOffice might be good enough for you to occasionally read a simple document made with Word when you don't have to be 100% compliant with the formatting a publisher is expecting of you, but find me one of the alternatives that you mention that perfectly
Re:not so Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
It certainly sounded as if you were saying there was no alternative to Word for that specific use (math layout), so I was pointing out others, possibly superior ones. As I work in publishing I've become aware of the tunnel vision that has afflicted publishers in recent years. Five or ten years ago you could submit files in several formats if you followed specific guidelines. Now editors with experience have been downsi
Re:not so Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not always that simple when dealing with the Microsooft monopoly. Several years ago everyone in our office was running Word 95 and whatever the version of Excel was that came in the same Office package. Bill wanted more money and so came out with the next release of Office. I could see that no one in the office except my senior programmer and myself even understood that other 99% you mention (we had actually done some slick things with it). We determined there was no feature in the "upgrade" that would be of any use at all. I was able to avoid upgrading for quite a while, simply because there was absolutely no need for it. But it turned out there were idiots at the company headquarters who had upgraded (with no good reason) and were too damn stupid to save their documents in a format that our office could read. I wanted to fight it, but the order came from senior management (who didn't even use computers) that we had to upgrade all of our systems so we could exchange files with the HQ systems.
Do you start to understand how pervasive the MS monopoly and their closed file formats are?
Re:While you despise the communist government, (Score:5, Interesting)