Ubuntu tapped by China for national operating system
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
If I understand correctly, this means a flavor of Ubuntu (and Unity, according to the press release) will be used by hundreds of millions of people within the next decade, far surpassing the worldwide market share of Mac OS X, Chrome OS, etc.
In all likelihood, Microsoft now views Ubuntu with Unity as a main competitor on the desktop.
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[1] http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-stand...
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Edits: changed "few years" to "decade," in response to hydrology's comment (thanks hydrology!); and added a reference to Chrome OS and Microsoft.
Maybe the governments will require the use of this brand of Ubuntu, but that's it.
If even the brightest and more malleable of the people don't want to use anything except Windows, I don't see the average person switching to Ubuntu at all.
The biggest problem is all the websites that serve ActiveX plugins. Web apps are supposed to be platform-independent, that's one of their biggest advantages, but Microsoft sabotaged that with ActiveX. Microsoft did a tremendous amount of harm to internet users by producing so much platform-dependent web software.
a) fix the websites that have ActiveX dependencies
b) modify a single web-browser to support ActiveX like IE6 used to
The number of Chinese websites out there with ActiveX dependencies is probably much greater, and you can't really "port" a website. Good luck getting all those Chinese web developers to fix their sites.
If Canonical bundled a web browser that supported ActiveX, that would temporarily resolve the problem (while enabling it to perpetuate), but I'm not sure if Microsoft's licenses even allow a non-IE browser to re-implement ActiveX.
So, I think that not being able to browse many Chinese websites on other platforms is the main thing that keeps Chinese users locked into IE/Windows right now.
Perhaps, though, my knowledge is outdated and ActiveX plugins aren't as ubiquitous in China as they used to be.
Is Chinese support in Windows dramatically better than in OS X? I found the level of stylus support in Windows to be head and shoulders higher in quality than Apple's. Perhaps it is the same with languages.
Around 2001~2002, NUDT, Lenovo Group, and a few other organizations took a government grant of 70 million RMB and claimed to independently created a new operating system with their own copyright/IP for defense use called Galaxy Kylin.
In 2006, an analysis [1] of the “new” OS revealed that Kylin was most likely a fork of FreeBSD, which voided the previous independent creation and copyright/IP claims. Worse, they did not follow FreeBSD license when distributing the software.
When the scandal was published and went crazy in the media the same year, another interesting incident happened: access to www.freebsd.org was blocked from mainland China. In fact, the term “FreeBSD” became a sensitive keyword that if you mention it anywhere on any page, your connection will be cut-off and subsequently blocked, not just www.freebsd.org [2]. Of course there was no official statement regarding the connection between the two (what do you expect anyway…), given the deep involvement of NUDT and the Great Firewall, one has to wonder…
Looks like they learned something from that scandal and this time they acknowledged the adoption of Ubuntu/Linux upfront. Let's see what will happen next.
[1]: http://www.dancefire.org/article/Kernel_Similarity_Analysis.... (in Simplified Chinese)
[2]: http://www.williamlong.info/archives/406.html (in Simplified Chinese)
Depending on the level of involvement China actually has, I don't think they would have any qualms with distributing binaries with backdoors, but keeping their changes secret.
IP networks are not involved.
East Germany is probably the most obvious example in recent times - and the fear mostly came from knowing someone could inform on you. If you thought a person was going to inform on you, one would avoid them naturally.
So, if you think a computer will inform on you, you would naturally avoid it.
It seems to me that the chinese state is in a bind similar to that faced by Deng xiaoping - this thing the West does (Capitalism or Internet) is enabling them to charge so economically ahead it is an existential threat not to follow. But if we do follow the party risks losing control.
Deng did take the risk and the loss of control seemed to be offset - however this time the rifts in the party are deeper, the gulf between rich and poor wider.
I would not like to be making those choices.
I think you vastly underestimate the rule of law in china. This doesn't happen. Nor are general people afraid of it happening. Where are you getting this impression from?
> It seems to me that the chinese state is in a bind similar to that faced by Deng xiaoping - this thing the West does (Capitalism or Internet) is enabling them to charge so economically ahead it is an existential threat not to follow. But if we do follow the party risks losing control.
That was not the bind Deng Xiaoping faced. He took over china right after the cultural revolution which occurred right after the "Great leap forward". He had a floundering nation that he needed to jump start. State controlled capitalism is the answer to that problem, and fits well with the Socialism narrative (i.e building capital, is the first stage before sharing it).
> Deng did take the risk and the loss of control seemed to be offset - however this time the rifts in the party are deeper, the gulf between rich and poor wider.
This again misrepresents the facts. The gap between the Rich and poor, is wider, yes, but the poor are much richer now. The rifts in the party seem MUCH smaller now. China is no where near a "Cultural Revolution" now... that's how bad the rifts were then.
East Germany is NOTHING like modern China, it might have been similar around the cultural revolution, but the Stasi style informing/kidnapping/interrogating was uniquely east germany.
If you want some of that growth, it seems logical you need to allow freedom. How much? How soon? How to stop it descending into anarchy? With a billion + lives on the line ... well I have a lot of sympathy for Presidents who go to China and then don't jump up and down screaming "become a democracy NOW"
edit: I would be interested in knowing why the down votes. I tend to delete when I reach minus figures but I am interested with what opposing view to the above others have (if it was just random expressions of dislike I will live with it.)
i.e Why is China's growth so far outstripping India's given India has more freedom?
Is this a common practice? If you do this do you avoid the existing karma hit, or is it just to avoid going more negative yet?
Singapore.
So I would still say yes, freedom does bring economic benefits. One assumes the more freedom the more benefits.
We ought to remember that at the polling stations
The polling stations only represent a small part of the problem.
You know what I wish we had? A movement of common-sense intellectually honest discussion groups. Groups that are focused on media distortions and facts. Groups that are predicated on the idea that the media and politics is self-interested in promulgating drama and debate beyond what really makes sense. I would like to be part of a group that likes to look behind those curtains.
I think if one looks hard enough at an acrimonious debate, you eventually get to some kind of hard question. Despite what the media often portrays, we're often all just people trying to get to the bottom of some hard question, and we should expect people to come to different conclusions.
What we have in almost all newspapers and tv outlets is not Journalism and when it occassionally is it is not comprehensive, sustained or penetrative
I suspect that in the uk as we may or may not get so e press regulation, we shall find blogging as the protected speech and slowly find local issues becoming driven from local blogs.
It's going to be fun to watch
Not that they couldn't switch before, but perhaps the official government endorsement of Ubuntu will jump-start the adoption rate in China.
Plus... China's currently only 1.34 billion. They've got a ways to go to get to 1.5B.
WINE has made some big strides. If the Chinese government properly got behind it, a properly outfitted Ubuntu with really well integrated WINE might be a defacto Windows replacement in China.
In order for an OS to get adopted by Chinese users, it has to easily run the applications that Chinese users use. Period.
That is exactly what they are trying to make happen. The article says they are going to bundle versions of popular Chinese applications (think QQ, Weibo clients) with the distro.
This is why OS X doesn't work for China--it doesn't run enough Chinese applications. Canonical is apparently working with some Chinese government ministry to fix that issue ahead of time.
A potential issue, though, will be the thousands of Chinese websites that use ActiveX plugins and therefore cannot run on anything other than IE in Windows.
South Korea has the same problem of browser lock-in, only much worse because they actually passed a law saying that all online monetary transactions in the country have to use a specific ActiveX encryption plugin.
Microsoft already killed ActiveX (and Silverlight) but its legacy is that web developers all over East Asia have an enormous technical debt, and users remain locked in until they settle it.
[1]: http://bosslinux.in/
If Microsoft and Windows stalwarts believe in that strongly enough, they should be in favor of seeing PRC adopt Linux.
2) Boycott Firefox until they get their sandboxing act together. Use Chromium/Webkit2 browsers. Disable Java applets/WS.
Alternatively, go full Stallman[1].
"Other repressive nations that have developed local versions of Linux include North Korea, which built the KDE-based Red Star OS to help wean it as a nation off of an unfortunate dependence on Windows made by the capitalists over at Microsoft."
China is a "repressive nation"? Says who? Britain, the leader in colonialist aggressions, mass slavery and blatant interventions to third nations?
No, Britain is not a "repressive nation." The British government surely takes some repressive actions, but not to such a degree as to be labeled a repressive nation.
Are we talking about the same "CCTV everywhere" nation?
The same "lackeys of the united states --GW Bush etc-- policy and partners in war crimes" nation?
In my opinion, this style of argument is not helpful. It reminds me of this quote:
"To say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around." -William F. Buckley
250 years? They had colonies all over the world until merely 50 years ago. Doing stuff from direct slavery to mass executions, to fighting natives asking for freedom with submachine guns. And they still interfere in their ex-colonies politics (not to mention being the US lackeys and partners in all kinds of invasions). They even cheered when their "prince" did his first killings of their "enemies" in Afghanistan, like they had any reason for being there in the first place.
China also never killed, directly or indirectly, millions of people in Taiwan. Britain can't say the same thing about India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
But then I probably wouldn't bring up responsibility for the deaths of millions of people to defend a state founded by Mao Tse Tung...
Read about the Opium Wars for some context.
* Tiananmen square. Murders against any form of civil disobedience.
* Secret and non-secret alliances with North Korea.
* Occasional acts of aggression on Japan.
* Great firewall, general suppression of information from citizens.
* Massive amounts of political corruption.
* Human rights violations aplenty.
* Causing an environmental catastrophe. Fucking up the entire planet in the process.
* Tibet, Taiwan, etc etc
Kent state shootings. And lots of similar actions, from the Wounded Knee incident to the Wako siege.
>Secret and non-secret alliances with North Korea.
Secret and non-secret alliances with Pinochet, Videla, Saudi Arabia and pretty much every corrupted government and dictatorship on earth.
>Occasional acts of aggression on Japan.
Constant acts of aggression towards any country that doesn't bend down backwards for their interests, from Vietnam to Iraq etc. The only nation to drop nuclear bombs on civilian towns.
>Great firewall, general suppression of information from citizens.
Patriot Act, data retention, DMCA, general suppression of information from citizens, J.E Hoover, McCarthy
>Massive amounts of political corruption.
Haliburton, Wall Street ties, paid-for senators, gun lobby, etc etc
>Human rights violations aplenty.
Death penalty for teenagers (one of the only 5-6 countries in the world to do that), Guantanamo, waterboarding and other torture, medical experiments on unsuspecting humans (by the US in Guatemala), sponsoring the Death Squads and other favorable dictatorship practices, seggregation (until 1970), disproportionate percentage of the black population in jail, ...
>Causing an environmental catastrophe. Fucking up the entire planet in the process.
The same. Refusing to sign world treaties on the matter. Dumping their waste on poorer third world countries. Leading the "la-la-la-no-global-warming-la-la" paid-experts denial.
>Tibet, Taiwan, etc etc
Vietnam, Korea, (...) Iraq, Afghanistan, (...)
See how it looks from the other side of the looking glass?
Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.
Also, half of your rebuttals are inaccurate and half are not comparable in the slightest.
No, there is no western version of the horrors of "Tank Man". A lot of the Chinese i've spoken to do not even know this happened, and the other half refuse to see it as a problem. You're a textbook example.
The USA isn't the greatest country for a lot of this stuff, I'll admit, but at least it doesn't go as far as to commit the terribly inhumane atrocities of China. There is no suppression of readily available information (blocked search queries, etc).
The enviromental stuff doesn't really hold up either. Yes, the US is a terrible polluter of the world, but in Los Angeles, arguably one of the most polluted cities in NA, you can look outside your window and see further than 100 meters. This is not the case in many Chinese cities.
The wars that have spanned the last five decades (Middle East, Asia, South America) have been brutal, bloody, and in many case unwarranted, but again, this is nothing to the blatant and open genocides caused by the Chinese. Half of the country is in extreme poverty. Examples: Three-Year Famine, Mao's "1000 Flowers Bloom".
Really? I'd like to see how. China is mostly a country that hasn't attacked or bothered anyone. Tibet and Taiwan are disputed areas next to mainland China -- not some remote countries they decided to invade and exploit as colonies. Unlike Britain (and the US, France, Belgium etc) that has soaked large parts of the world in blood, theft, and slavery for centuries.
Heck, a British guy speaking about China re: Tibet and Taiwan? Oh, the irony. Britain stole Honk Kong from China (some 15,000 miles away from "his own business") and attacked China to enforce their trade (of opium among other things).
>No, there is no western version of the horrors of "Tank Man". A lot of the Chinese i've spoken to do not even know this happened, and the other half refuse to see it as a problem.
The horrors of the "tank man", have an estimated 250 to 2500 dead.
No "western equivalent"?
For one, the Britain, in the Opium Wars, killed around 40.000 Chinese. That's from 200 to 20 times more.
And here's another: "the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died".
Mind you, this is just one example of tons of British atrocities the world over.
As for not acknowledging the Tien An Men incident (or it's importance), well the Guardian article from where I took this speaks volumes: "Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-...
Or this: "British Colonial War Crimes: Unpunished, Unaccounted and awaiting Apology"
http://www.opinion-maker.org/2012/12/british-colonial-war-cr...
Or this: http://www.monbiot.com/2005/12/27/how-britain-denies-its-hol...
>The wars that have spanned the last five decades (Middle East, Asia, South America) have been brutal, bloody, and in many case unwarranted, but again, this is nothing to the blatant and open genocides caused by the Chinese. Half of the country is in extreme poverty. Examples: Three-Year Famine, Mao's "1000 Flowers Bloom".
Those are internal issues, and they get to do what they please with their own citizens. Political changes (like from a humiliated colony for britain and Japan to a sovereign nation) always have a blood toll -- in China, that has 1 billion population, that toll will be bigger. Sure, a lot of those killings were misguided, but that's their issues to solve.
It's not like Britain didn't have its own internal civil wars in its past (or they didn't repress the Irish and the Scots). Or like it doesn't have people in poverty (heck, tons of people in England are uneducated, piss poor, living on the dole and with petty crimes). Compared to most of the affluent Western Europe, it can be argued that England does the worst in terms of poverty -- in places like Yorkshire, Bradford, et al.
I think you two are comparing two evils. It doesn't matter which empire is the lesser of the two evils - ALL empires should be scorned. Why don't we all agree on this fact? The next thing we should be persuaded on is the democratization and decentralization of these two empires.
I suppose the issue is that most major powers do a lot of shady stuff, and it can be difficult for any of us to think objectively on these matters. With regard to famine and poverty, it wasn't all that long ago that people starved in the islands of Great Britain and Ireland while the smaller island was still a net food exporter.
I don't think that Britain is particularly repressive right now (except for all the CCTV's) while I do think China is, but it takes a complete ignorance of history not to realise that once upon a time, these roles were reversed.
Also, hooray for Ubuntu!
Sounds comparable to me.
> A lot of the Chinese i've spoken to do not even know this happened, and the other half refuse to see it as a problem.
There's a fair bit of obliviousness in the US as well.
> There is no suppression of readily available information (blocked search queries, etc).
Wikileaks? Alteration of Google Earth & Maps.
(Powerful National Government) * (Military Industrial Complex) = (Some Unsavory Stuff Goes On)
It's pretty universal.
Google Earth alterations of military installations != great firewall.
Show me a military that's cool with open aerials of their bases. The U.S. just got lucky that they had a bit of jurisdiction over the first company to do it. Don't act as if it's asymmetric due to other nations having a larger conscious, it's not. It's just a simple lack of power.
Sure, we're bad. They're worse!
What's the scariest thing in such situations is not one tyrant or another. If only that was the case, it wouldn't be too hard to replace him. The scariest part is when a culture forms around that tyrant's ideals. Because that will be very hard to "kill" or replace. It can take generations, depending on how deep that culture goes.
Look even at US. Let's say the TSA was a complete and total mistake, and history will prove that to be right. But how long will it take to kill the TSA? It's already been a decade, and I can easily see it last another decade. So is it just Bush or Obama at fault for keeping TSA? No. It's country's culture right now that TSA and plenty of other "counter-terrorist" measures (including the stamping of the 4th amendment) are "needed".
When you look at it from that point of view, you begin to understand why most Chinese may not necessarily see what their government is doing as a bad thing, because they themselves think their measures are good and necessary.
When you go to prove it on the internet, it still seems like they just do not want to believe. I find that very difficult to deal with.
I'm not going to win friends here, but it's much like talking with an Israeli.
Or an American, for that matter.
Americans still believe they are a "progressive" and model nation for freedom.
Segregation was merely 40 years ago. People go to jail for decades for procession of marijuana. They execute teenagers. They execute (period -- almost all western countries have stopped this shit). People still are told (and ...believe!) that Truman dropped nuclear bombs on civilians "to end the war" and that "his hands were tied". The number of incarcerated people is record breaking for any nation on earth -- and the vast majority of them are black. Plus -- people still believe they have the right (or even ...obligation) to intervene, that is invade, other countries, either to "bring democracy" or because they have "strategic interests" there.
Not all Americans. Look at HN or any semi-educated social circle.
A lot of your points just bring up tit-for-tat historical talking points. Yes a lot of countries have done a lot of terrible things throughout history, especially the west, but we're talking about now. 2013.
Today I just read an article describing how the Chinese have just sent 12 escaped North Koreans back to NK to be welcomed by torture and generations the same fate.
2013 China is a disgusting example of a modern and humane country.
Case in point: those escaped North Koreans weren't merely refugees but defecting soldiers who had shot their superior officer. Do you think China liked being in that situation? You can either cause a major international row with a nuclear-equipped rabid dog who for historical reasons is sitting a couple hundred miles away from your capital, or you can send a rebellious military unit back for certain execution.
What would you have done? And let's make this sharper: what would your country's military bureaucracy have done?
Why not let people who have actual local knowledge and care about changing things focus on what local people's actual priorities are and the real pain points for human wellbeing?
This is well illustrated by the media-incited reaction to the recent relaxing of the pocketknife ban. Somehow the squawky news shows could find dozens of people prepared to worry on-camera about getting stabbed with penknives in an airplane, as if that were ever a problem anywhere ever. They even had "experts" talk about the clear and present danger of hijacking-by-threatening-a-baby-with-a-knife. (Because that's such a common method for e.g. robbing banks.) I almost suspect someone at the TSA had coordinated it with the media beforehand, but there will never be a shortage of purse-clutchers ready to affirm the status quo.
For the other points, especially the ones with foreign policies, China is much nicer (or you may even say weaker) than other countries. For me, I just hope despite all the political shows, there will be no war nor region conflicts.
Anyways, I guess he's offended by the word "repressive nation", use "repressive government" would be a little better.
In the meantime, China still has Gulags.
The developed English-speaking countries have far more people imprisoned for those kinds of offenses than does China, despite having a fraction of the population. Does that make English-speaking countries repressive? (My answer would be yes, for the record, for both.)
Or is it the political imprisonment? That's even more disturbing, but the lines about hundreds of thousands of prisoners really don't apply to them: it's closer to the hundreds or the thousands. Far, far too many (too many = >0), but let's not lose perspective, here.
You are right - let's not lose perspective here.
Yes, all true, in the past.
Decolonialisation, itself a problematic process, has occurred, and self-determination achieved to some extent for many groups.
When will the Peoples Republic grant self-determination to Tibet? That would be the action of a self-assured and mature state.
Probably around the same time a certain self-assured and mature state grants self-determination to the indigenous people of Alaska, Hawaii, and large parts of the Southwest. The rest of the country is a lost cause; ethnic cleansing and violent displacement has assured that going back is impossible.
I suspect, though, that many of these initiatives are simply exercises by universities or government IT organizations to understand the technology, rather than to advocate for its use.
[1] http://canaima.softwarelibre.gob.ve [2] http://www.pardus.org.tr [3] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/03/security_fears... [4] http://open.cnews.ru/news/top/index.shtml?2010/12/27/421556
In this case, I think they're trying to make an operating system that uses Indian languages, so that its easier for those in rural areas to operate it
It could be next year I do the same, and only see Ubuntu, with Windows 8 nowhere to be seen. Incredible!
....to ensure that the platform is relevant for the Chinese market...
Exactly which features does the University of Defense Technology consider relevant? Is Canonical enabling repression or military aggression?
Here are the features promised by Canonical to be included in the next two releases or later https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuKylin Basic stuff, like Chinese Input Method, Chinese Calendar, Taobao and Baidu Search on Dash... nothing special.
If the Chinese populous don't like any of the governments additions, then those users can grab the binaries / source code directly and roll their own customisations.
It's a bit like when people blame ISPs when customers use their services for piracy. The difficulty of setting up an ISP (or distro) is completely irrelevant in this discussion.
If the repos are accessible.
And even if they do manage that, then people will just redistribute it offline once one guy has downloaded the content via his proxy / VPN.
I get very concerned anytime any govt entity wants to get involved with a project.
PUT for update and PATCH for partial update.