Red Flag Linux, a counterattack against MS Window?

This article reveals that Chinese government forces its Internet cafés to use Red Flag Linux system.

I checked the government document about the policy of internet café. There is only one province out of 32, which has a document mentioned Linux system. And it says that “…we recommend Red Flag Linux and Microsoft Server…” Moreover, Red Flag Linux can be downloaded from official site freely. So I don’t think the government “is forcing its internet cafés”.

However, I agree that there is no guarantee of freedom by using licensed open source. Open source-based software is not free beer but more likely to be free speech. Like free softwares, they are not free of charge but free of use. As I know, most internet cafés in china are using MS Windows system. Under such circumstances, Red Flag Linux as an open source-based system is now cooperating with a provincial government to some extent. I suppose the aim is trying to break the monopoly of MS Windows in China, more or less. Regardless of the effect, this can be seen as a counterattack from the open source community to Microsoft.

The author in this article points out several factors to make the software “truly free” such as “Free markets, open standards, and open data”. Nevertheless, I believe the real obstacle for the development of open source-based system is not the marketing, licensing or standardizing, but the development of application softwares. MS Windows is now having many software companies to develop softwares, but operating systems like Linux lack this competitive ability. Therefore, although Red Flag Linux is taking its action, there, unfortunately, can’t be any threat to MS Windows.


Sources:

Article, Open-source freedom lost on Chinese government, retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10113243-16.html

Red Flag Linux official site: http://www.redflag-linux.com/d/iso/

Open source, a necessity for Microsoft?

Few days ago, I read an article on Yu Cheng’s blog titled Microsoft vs Linux? It says Microsoft “starts a fight with open source community” and is against TomTom.

Now, in the article, Microsoft returned to open source starting to take on Google, but using different strategy which support open source. Last year, it bought Powerset for the natural language search technology and kept it open source-based in order to compete with Google.

In my opinion, this is not only aiming to Google but also to its competitors, especially Linux. Although Microsoft claimed it would make the source code of its systems public, Windows is still not an open source-based operating system due to its restriction on source code which is “you can see but not edit”. Users are still hard to access the core of the system. But open source is the competitive advantage for Linux. Thus, after few years, Linux can be the most dangerous rival for Microsoft so that Microsoft needs to search for a way to prevent this.

Furthermore, because Windows is not open source-based, governments, for example, Chinese government, are concerning about its security. That will directly affect Microsoft’s market in government system. So a necessity of open source strategy is required. We can assume from these cases, open source may become a mainstream in software industry in the future, who knows?


Article from http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/techscoop/17019/microsoft-returns-to-open-source-to-take-on-google

Mentioned Yu Cheng’s blog: Microsoft vs Linux, see http://yuchengbob.multiply.com/journal/item/1