Comment China's Hedging its bets (Score 1) 648
In the face of the harsh tone of the Cox Report, which slammed Chinese espionage (both nuclear and industrial). It may be that China is trying to insulate itself from possible technology and trade restrictions, if Sino/US regulations remain fractous.
Some of the toughest U.S. trade regulations surround the export of High Performance Computers. With the recent advancements in clustering and other HPC technology in Linux Kernel development, the Chinese have made an important policy choice to adopt Linux, in that it allows them to make an end-run around export regulations.
It is an interesting reflection on the new nature of intellectual property and open source. How do you regulate an important technology with respect to national security when it's open source? (Remember those Apple G4 commercials about the Pentagon...Computers are majorly important to the modern state)
Additionally, making the official move to an Open Source operating system allows China to benefit from the millions of man hours of development to attempt to build a modern technology industry.
All in all, it poses interesting questions about the other result of open source. when you open the code, you foster cooperation, but you also can't control if it will be used to simulate nuclear detonations!
Then again maybe it's just me!
Some of the toughest U.S. trade regulations surround the export of High Performance Computers. With the recent advancements in clustering and other HPC technology in Linux Kernel development, the Chinese have made an important policy choice to adopt Linux, in that it allows them to make an end-run around export regulations.
It is an interesting reflection on the new nature of intellectual property and open source. How do you regulate an important technology with respect to national security when it's open source? (Remember those Apple G4 commercials about the Pentagon...Computers are majorly important to the modern state)
Additionally, making the official move to an Open Source operating system allows China to benefit from the millions of man hours of development to attempt to build a modern technology industry.
All in all, it poses interesting questions about the other result of open source. when you open the code, you foster cooperation, but you also can't control if it will be used to simulate nuclear detonations!
Then again maybe it's just me!
