Honestly I’m a bit surprised they didn’t do this much sooner. They’ve had a big push to decouple themselves from products and services from outside China. Good in the sense of self reliance but also much easier to prevent foreign backdoors while implementing local data collection and control.
Honestly I’m a bit surprised they didn’t do this much sooner.
Me too. China wants to control as much as possible. And with the entire operating system being Open Source, they can do whatever they want. One can say whatever they want, China relying on Linux can only mean good thing. Because that means they need to develop and invest on that front. And we are not forced to use their system, but will probably benefit anyway.
I have doubts anything they add will be merged. Most likely made closed source for security and control purposes. A FOSS system designed to monitor and control a populace doesn’t really work because then said populace could just revert those changes. There’s also no benefit to them in sharing anything they dumped their money into.
There’s also no benefit to them in sharing anything they dumped their money into.
They do, in the sense that anyone could work and help. Also Chinese companies share even LLMs (ai models) where they spent ton of money, without any user giving them money or working on it. One reason to do so is, to prevent monopoly situation from the Americans.
I mean that is literally just to stave off financial investments into US AI labs and give some leeway to catch up. Couple this with extensive evidence of them distilling US AI models and you’ll see this is much more to do about the race to AI supremacy than about their humanitarian love for open source software.
I don’t even mean direct benefits like coding and merging in Linux. I mean the overall boost in the eco system of Linux systems. This will bring more people in China with Linux in contact and encourage to support software, build and work on various Open Source projects. I don’t mean the government, but the citizens. Besides that, China could financially support Linux like Microsoft does, as they benefit a lot from the Kernel. Or they support a library or project in the FOSS world, that they depend on in Linux, such as core libraries and applications. Or they start their own applications to have them as an alternative.
I get what you’re saying but I only see red flags ahead since their goals don’t align with the goals of Linux or FOSS. It’s like Microsoft’s push to embrace Linux, similarly their goals don’t align. There’s also been more than one attack by devs (who may have been sponsored by a nation state) trying to implement backdoors into the kernel. It’ll truly be a test of the ideology of Linux and FOSS if a large organization moves from the embrace and extend stage into the extinguish phase. Trust that China has no alignment with FOSS. Their goal is self sufficiency and control, also likely espionage. The same can really be said for almost all governments
Yes, but what you say is infiltrating into the Kernel. That can always happen and they surely try and tried it before too. But in this topic here, we are talking about distributions that anyone create without being involved in Linux. And its not only a thing with China, I expect in the future more distributions from governments all around the world. And to me, that’s a good thing, for them and for us, just not for Microsoft and the US government (because they have access to everything Microsoft saves).
I’m not sure if you’ve ever been in factories or down anything B2B but verified, tested, and universally supported is much much more valuable than one may initially expect. Absolutely no one wants to use a product or service whose existence or support may disappear in a fear years or is equally unknown or untested. A government could decide to switch and then get backlash for having a new system that isn’t fully or perfectly identical shoved down constituents throats and them decide in just a few year that the adoption cost isn’t worthwhile. The global economy.is still running on code written in Fortran and B because it’s so vital no one wants to risk changing something that’s working.
Honestly I’m a bit surprised they didn’t do this much sooner. They’ve had a big push to decouple themselves from products and services from outside China. Good in the sense of self reliance but also much easier to prevent foreign backdoors while implementing local data collection and control.
Me too. China wants to control as much as possible. And with the entire operating system being Open Source, they can do whatever they want. One can say whatever they want, China relying on Linux can only mean good thing. Because that means they need to develop and invest on that front. And we are not forced to use their system, but will probably benefit anyway.
I have doubts anything they add will be merged. Most likely made closed source for security and control purposes. A FOSS system designed to monitor and control a populace doesn’t really work because then said populace could just revert those changes. There’s also no benefit to them in sharing anything they dumped their money into.
They do, in the sense that anyone could work and help. Also Chinese companies share even LLMs (ai models) where they spent ton of money, without any user giving them money or working on it. One reason to do so is, to prevent monopoly situation from the Americans.
I mean that is literally just to stave off financial investments into US AI labs and give some leeway to catch up. Couple this with extensive evidence of them distilling US AI models and you’ll see this is much more to do about the race to AI supremacy than about their humanitarian love for open source software.
I don’t even mean direct benefits like coding and merging in Linux. I mean the overall boost in the eco system of Linux systems. This will bring more people in China with Linux in contact and encourage to support software, build and work on various Open Source projects. I don’t mean the government, but the citizens. Besides that, China could financially support Linux like Microsoft does, as they benefit a lot from the Kernel. Or they support a library or project in the FOSS world, that they depend on in Linux, such as core libraries and applications. Or they start their own applications to have them as an alternative.
Maybe I’m just too hopeful.
I get what you’re saying but I only see red flags ahead since their goals don’t align with the goals of Linux or FOSS. It’s like Microsoft’s push to embrace Linux, similarly their goals don’t align. There’s also been more than one attack by devs (who may have been sponsored by a nation state) trying to implement backdoors into the kernel. It’ll truly be a test of the ideology of Linux and FOSS if a large organization moves from the embrace and extend stage into the extinguish phase. Trust that China has no alignment with FOSS. Their goal is self sufficiency and control, also likely espionage. The same can really be said for almost all governments
Yes, but what you say is infiltrating into the Kernel. That can always happen and they surely try and tried it before too. But in this topic here, we are talking about distributions that anyone create without being involved in Linux. And its not only a thing with China, I expect in the future more distributions from governments all around the world. And to me, that’s a good thing, for them and for us, just not for Microsoft and the US government (because they have access to everything Microsoft saves).
surprised some other country in general hasn’t funded an alternative operating system to windows.
is it REALLY that hard when you have infinite resources behind you idea?
i’d love some real competition in the digital space regardless.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever been in factories or down anything B2B but verified, tested, and universally supported is much much more valuable than one may initially expect. Absolutely no one wants to use a product or service whose existence or support may disappear in a fear years or is equally unknown or untested. A government could decide to switch and then get backlash for having a new system that isn’t fully or perfectly identical shoved down constituents throats and them decide in just a few year that the adoption cost isn’t worthwhile. The global economy.is still running on code written in Fortran and B because it’s so vital no one wants to risk changing something that’s working.