Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Why should the masses bother with free software when stealing from Microsoft is practically patriotic?
Aug 9, 2000 | When a police jeep pulled up behind the street merchant who was trying to sell me a pirated CD-ROM version of Windows 98, my first reaction was to signal to my solicitor that he was putting himself in legal danger. Without so much as a flinch, the man stepped aside, let the officer pass and quickly resumed pushing his goods on me. As I watched in amazement, the car continued into an adjacent parking lot -- a virtual snake pit of black market software vendors -- and got a reaction out of none of them. It was then that I realized China's software market is in total chaos.
Today, like almost everywhere else, more and more Chinese people are buying PCs at continually dropping prices. But in China, all too often they can't afford the extra $200 for the Windows software necessary to make that computer work. The result: rampant piracy of foreign software in China. Buying pirated versions of Windows 98 and Windows 2000 is not only common among young computer users in China, but it is socially acceptable.
A more legally defensible solution to the country's economic handicap would be the widespread adoption of free or open-source software, such as Linux-based operating systems. Linux-based systems, which are essentially free, have been brought to China via Internet and through the marketing efforts of a handful of Linux vendors, such as Red Hat and TurboLinux. Many Linux advocates in the West see Linux-based operating systems as the most economical way to introduce advanced, Internet-capable computer systems to Third World countries that cannot afford proprietary software.
A backlash against Microsoft in the Chinese media has given strength to the open-source community in China, and certain agencies of the Chinese government are embracing Linux with a kind of nationalistic spirit. Open-source software is being touted as the white knight that can save China from a vendor lock-in with Microsoft, a scenario some in China refer to as an "opium dependency," conjuring up images of the unjust British colonialists of two centuries ago.
China may already have 2 million Linux users, if one is to believe CCIDNet.com, a popular Web site in China that provides news and information about technology. That's not a bad number when compared to the more than 20 million Windows users.
But those Linux users are an elite. This summer I met many of the organizers of the open-source community in China, including some of the earliest adopters of Linux. But contrary to the gung-ho kind of attitude I had expected, the Linux movement in China remains largely limited to small groups of bespectacled systems administrators and highly gifted computer users. Linux advocates do organize in regular club gatherings all over the country and in Internet chat rooms, and you will encounter occasional tirades about Microsoft's business practices in such places. But nobody expects Microsoft to get replaced in the household software market anytime soon. Very few Linux fans even seem to believe that it's their mission to promote open-source software among the mainstream computer users.
Widespread patriotic sentiment and the relative poverty of the Chinese people have led many to believe that Linux and open-source software will win the embrace of computer users all over China. But Chinese-language Linux-based operating systems, as currently offered by Chinese and foreign distributions, are far from matching Windows' ability to cater to the average computer user in China. Windows OS and Microsoft's localized software remain the most widespread, user-friendly and available software in the Chinese PC market, and most users are likely to stick with whatever is most convenient. Especially when they can get it from their neighborhood street merchant for next to nothing.
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