- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
They’ll likely have a better chance of pulling it off than America’s push to “delete China”.
Apparently offshoring basically all of your manufacturing while not giving a shit about the loss of engineering capability and institutional knowledge has significant downsides. Who knew? Who could possibly have seen this coming?? I’m serious. I would ask the people in engineering but they all got fired like twenty years ago.
having basic competence helps with that
In which case… they’re both screwed.
China’s got plenty demonstrated competence across the board. From lifting people out of poverty, to making large scale infrastructure projects, and now leading the way in green energy transition.
lifting people out of poverty
AKA creating even higher levels of inequality than usa.
wake me up when things like this start happening in usa https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
Microsoft, the world’s biggest software provider, historically dominated computer operating systems in China. A Morgan Stanley poll of 135 chief information officers in China found that many expected the share of computers powered by Microsoft’s Windows operating system installed in their companies to fall over the next three years. They expected Linux-based UOS, or Unity Operating System, an effort co-led by a state-owned company, to gain in the shift.
China has been pushing for this since 2013 or so, maybe even earlier. It’s about time Linux became dominant there. It’s also time Linux and open source became dominant in Europe. It needs its own “Delete A” policy.
This doesn’t mean the government forces ordinary Chinese consumers to not use Windows; it mostly happens in departments directly funded by the government. When purchasing new computers, the government may require domestically produced components and operating systems as much as possible. Although the performance may not be top-notch, they are still sufficient for basic office work.
The goal is to overhaul and replace everything by 2027. It’s crazy to think how much technological progress will be gained and lost in that short span of time.
I expect that much more will be gained than lost in the process. China has been doing huge investments into open source because that makes more sense than starting from scratch. So, what we’re going to see is a lot of proprietary software being replaced with open alternatives.
China’s use of opensource isn’t exactly in the spirit of open-source though, is it?
As an example, most companies in China don’t even release the linux kernel source code after they modify it, as they are required by GPL.
So they’re building mega-corps on the back of opensource, just like the western counterparts. That’s capitalism 101.
Chinese companies release plenty of open source in practice. Meanwhile, cooperatively owned companies like Huawei are nothing like western capitalism.
Yes it is not in alignment with the spirit of open source. In the “industrial districts” there is no validity for copyrights. Means if one company developed something, any other can adapt it without any restriction, even without a license. This is very counter intuitive to our capitalistic rules. But this policy essentially forces you to make progress as quick as possible, else someone else will adapt it and make a product out of it. Then you lose all the market.
China is forcing companies to make money out of capitalistic economies, but restricts the “knowledge” or “technology” accumulation into a few mega corporations.
At least this is the theory. But as everywhere else corruption and hunger for power screws up things in China also.