Computing and Politics

[Jim W Lai]

There's an issue of national security too.  With a concerted effort, I'd
reckon the USA could grind China's computing infrastructure to a halt.
The more stuff they homebrew, the less likely they'll be buying stuff
with kinks.  Mind you, if they don't have the security expertise among
their own hackers, they'll still be wide open to exploits in their
homegrown offerings.

But, yeah, avoiding having to shell out for foreign IP licensing seems
to be a major policy thrust for China.  Linux is merely a part of that
goal.

I ran across this when searching for stuff on "Red Flag Linux":
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040222/news_mz1b22china.html

They appear to be exhibiting some manufacturing-based protectionism,
pushing proprietary standards on domestic users.  I don't think they
really get Linux and open source, not at the policy echelon.

Jim

On 29 Mar 2004, Zoltan/ZEE4 wrote:
> Precisely!
> 
> Zoltan
> 
> On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 10:54, William Park wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 10:18:37AM -0500, Zoltan/ZEE4 wrote:
> > > Ever wonder why China is going Linux? or building it's own processors
> > > (not that they'll be competitive for maybe another few years)? 
> > 
> > For the same reason US is funding NASA.  It keeps engineers and
> > scientists off the street and from committing crimes.

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