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I do not understand what they are planning. So they do not want to upgrade to win8... are they considering win7 or they just want to keep using xp indefinitely? There was not a plan of Ubuntu to ship a personalized os version in china some time ago? Where it ended?

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Sounds like they're trying to force MS to continue supporting Windows XP. Doesn't MS already do this if you pay them? If so, China is trying to force Microsoft to continue to support XP for free. A bold move.

Microsoft has a yearly increasing price for supporting XP. It wouldn't take very many years of that for it to become silly.

And also microsoft keep supporting xp ONLY IF the client had made a plan with deadlines to upgrade his current configurations.

So what happens if a huge client (like the Chinese govt) says either Microsoft support XP or they drop windows for ubuntu (or something similar)?

I would imagine Microsoft wouldn't much care at this point. They give away Windows 98 for free. If people demanded they support XP for free forever... I don't think they're going to do that.

Nah, they want to grow their own internal software ecology. This is all about weaning Chinese off of foreign software.

I do agree that China might want to do that but how does not upgrading to Windows 8 help grow their internal sw ecology?

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