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New *China Preps National Linux Distro* !!!ONE11 234
http://www.wired.com.../03/ubuntu-china/


People’s Republic of Open Source: China Preps National Linux Distro
BY KLINT FINLEY03.22.133:41 PM

The British Linux company Canonical is teaming with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to create Ubuntu Kylin, a Linux distribution specifically for China.

Kylin will include support for Chinese characters and input methods, and it will integrate with Chinese web services, including music services, online banking tools, and the mapping service operated by local web giant Baidu. The plan is to release the distribution next month.

The reference architecture is being defined by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s The China Software and Integrated Chip Promotions Centre, or CSIP. Canonical and CSIP will also be working with the CCN Open Source Innovation Joint Lab in Beijing. The project is part of China’s most recent Five Year Plan, which includes strengthening the country’s information technology industry.

Tim Yeaton — CEO of the open source management and research company Black Duck Software — says he’s been working with Chinese companies to promote open source since 1997. But things got more serious in 2004 when the China Open Source Software Promotion Union (COPU) — a non-government organization — was founded. Yeaton is now an adviser to the group, along with Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, GNOME Foundation chairman Dave Neary, and many others.

Dell and Canonical have been selling Ubuntu notebooks in China since 2011. But China already had its own distribution of Linux: Red Flag Linux, which was backed by the government-owned ShangHai NewMargin Venture Capital and the Ministry of Information Industry’s venture capital arm CCIDNET Investment, according to a 2007 paper titled The Emergence of Open-Source Software in China. Many government agencies have promoted the operating system as an alternative to Windows. Red Flag held 30 percent of the desktop market in China, the paper says.

Meanwhile, developers are slowly starting to get into open source. Ronan Berder — a French developer living in Shanghai — wrote last month that open source community building among developers has been slow going, comparing it to the early days of open source in the west. But Lupaworld provides a Chinese language source for open source software news, and OS China is a Sourceforge style code hosting service that houses around 24,000 projects, though most of them are forks of English language projects. And Chinese developers are contributing back to common open source projects as well. The latest release of the Linux kernel includes 11,000 contributions from Chinese developers, according to Black Duck’s research.

[. . .]



How many stakes in Ballmer's heart does it take? (before he stops dancing..)

Bon appetít
New From another group, on this development
Author has been explaining to frustrated Doze users, in clear concise manner re current LInux status, why various printers (of a certain age) were 'Doze only'
--as these omitted a μP for PS calcs-- and similar; is ept in IT as well as general electronics (likely an EE.)
Can't vouch for source of first ¶ anecdote, but he is amongst the best symptom-analysts in this group.


China forced microsoft to give it the source code for Windows XP,
ostensibly to audit the code before buying licenses for its internal
government use. They audited the code, decided it was garbage, and
canceled the order, opting to do something with Linux, or one of
the BSD's instead.

It has to be a good thing for Linux.

DOD is using Linux for many of its functions now, as are many cash
strapped municipalities worldwide. Android phones and tablets are,
of course, linux. I can't think of a microprocessor manufacturer
that doesn't provide a porting of the GCC compiler (under linux)
for their part.

Even IBM has a major business group that is dedicated to Linux.

We will win!


New Heh
It's transparently obvious that the reason China wants control of the source code for their People's Revolutionary Operating System is because it's a totalitarian regime with a vested interest in maintaining the ideological purity of the information sent and received by its comrade citizens.

Without a primary source for the "Chinese audited XP's source code and deemed it crap" quote, I call shenanigans (aka wishful thinking on the part of a Linux advocate).

If true (which I doubt), I think it's more likely they tried and failed to get the source code, but saving face is very important to the Chinese, so there you go.

ETA: Well, fuck me dead. MS actually did grant the Chinese gubmint (and others) some access to Windows source code:

http://www.microsoft...28gspchinapr.aspx

...back in '03.

OTOH, I'm not sure what's exciting about Kylin, as it's just a heavily localised version of Ubuntu. Baidu instead of Google! Chinese input methods! Comprehensive support for The Great Firewall! Automatic reporting of Ideologically Incompatible Material! Etc.
Expand Edited by pwhysall Jan. 30, 2014, 08:29:23 AM EST
New Yup.
Source code access isn't worth much if you can't legally do anything with it (and MS could certainly break things with an update if they found that you did).

I agree with your take on this. Why wouldn't China want their own Ubuntu fork? They've had RedFlag for years.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Re: Source code access isn't worth much
Unless you're scanning the code for vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
Alex

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

-- Isaac Asimov
New With a state-controlled codebase ...
The line between "vulnerability" and "feature" gets murky(er).
--

Drew
New Good points, both.
New Goes-sans-saying: State Control über alles
Only significant LInux [+] evident to moi was (also obvious.) Each OS on a User's hdwre is a [-] for Beastware and all who double-deal within Her.

We may presume that the Source-code for whatever China-Official-Linux will NOT be a download anywhere; if that is the case:
Gonna be hell closing all those back- side- inverted doors without such, amirite?
What actual 'Power' could any US/Int'l Agency have, to prohibit this violation of Copy-Left and Linux gospel?
(Hey! aren't the Commyunists already Lefties?)

BTW--there may be provenance for the '03 M$ revelations.. doesn't mean (after all those Fix-Packs) they didn't also tacitly receive the updated versions later. (We just don't know.)



Sure glad I'm not the Dictator/Commander-for-Liff of ANY 21st Century collection of surly, soggy and-hard-to-light Tribes.
Ya can't really play with your Veyron when there are ... apparatchiks with ricin-coated pellet ammo, just about anywhere. Platinum-prison that Generalissimo spot.
New It brings Unity
Shirley you can see how important that is to the Party?
New rofl!
     *China Preps National Linux Distro* !!!ONE11 234 - (Ashton) - (9)
         From another group, on this development - (Ashton) - (8)
             Heh - (pwhysall) - (7)
                 Yup. - (Another Scott) - (3)
                     Re: Source code access isn't worth much - (a6l6e6x) - (2)
                         With a state-controlled codebase ... - (drook) - (1)
                             Good points, both. -NT - (Another Scott)
                 Goes-sans-saying: State Control über alles - (Ashton)
                 It brings Unity - (scoenye) - (1)
                     rofl! -NT - (Another Scott)

What was that "kneejerk" emoticon again?
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