People’s Republic of Open Source: China Preps National Linux Distro

Well, why wouldn't they?

If you're the Communist Party of the PRC and your biggest fear is losing control over your populous why wouldn't you mandate an operating system that you can customize to include all the surveillance backdoors you'd like.

There's only so far an Apple or a Microsoft will go towards helping build the tools of oppression (it's a long way but not far enough).

I think that people will focus on the fact that Linux is open source and naively celebrate this as a great thing. But the Chinese government isn't doing this because they believe in freedom. They're doing it to a) stop shipping dollars overseas to US companies and b) so that they can control what goes into it and make it illegal for anyone to use a non-state-mandated operating system.

It also reminds me of the folly of Western governments' policies of allowing the manufacturing base to be shipped to China because somehow we'll still keep the top end IP-based part of the economy. Of course the Chinese government has no interest in supporting that vision of the future.

There are many good reasons for this move: http://bit.ly/chinalinux