Microsoft Fights Piracy In China, Linux Wins (InformationWeek) [LWN.net]

Microsoft Fights Piracy In China, Linux Wins (InformationWeek)

Posted Sep 8, 2005 0:53 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Much of the free software produced in China so far has been
Chinese-language support, or is documented only in Chinese
so the rest of us haven't heard about it yet. The sheer
number of developers and potential new developers in a
rapidly-growing economy will mean that we do start to see
some more of their work coming to the English-speaking world
eventually.

Anything exported (eg. in consumer electronics) which actually
violates the copyright of developers who are looking out for it
would quickly be slapped down in the West.

As for whether end-users are violating copyright or not, I don't
think it matters much to them individually. If Linux distributors
aren't joining the Business Software Alliance and carrying out
licence audits while proprietary vendors are, it's good for
free software adoption.

The GPL and "piracy" in China

Posted Sep 9, 2005 14:47 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Certainly in the case of CE (consumer
electronics) being exported, you are
absolutely right, and there's already a certain level of industry
awareness of the fact. A good example would have to be that of
Cisco/Linksys, which while they were apparently unaware of the ultimate
origin of their firmware originally, are now /very/ aware of the Linux
origin in some cases, and having eventually made the sources
public, /should/ now be quite aware that many in the community purchase
their hardware specifically /because/ it runs Linux, and they can run
modified versions on it.

As for end-users, don't forget that the GPL doesn't impose any
restrictions on use, only requiring that source be made available upon
distribution. Of course, that also means that individuals (and company
end-users as well, for that matter) can modify to their heart's content
without having to provide sources, as long as they continue to only be
users, not distributors themselves. Thus, they aren't violating
copyright, so the question of whether it matters or not doesn't come up.

For those low-level distributors and providers (such as the CE firmware
providers as mentioned above) that are technically violating copyright now
and "getting away with it", and I guess this was the point you originally
applied to the "end users", in some sense, it /doesn't/ matter that much
at this point. They probably aren't contributing much in terms of code,
that would be subject to the GPL restrictions, anyway, for distribution in
China only, and where it's distributed worldwide, as noted above,
enforcement is already available. Locally, what they are contributing is
more a practical matter of documentation, localization (l10n), and local
evangelism, than GPL subject code (other than l10n code). That'll have a
way of taking care of itself, over the medium to long term, as the users
become more educated and skillful and start demanding the code changes.
In the mean time, what they're already providing as a practical matter is
of more importance than would be getting the currently relatively small
level of code changes back into the mainline code. They'll get there soon
enough, because educated users will eventually demand the code, and the
distributors being business people and realizing the low cost of providing
it, since it's as available as the binaries to them to provide, will do
so.

If that makes any sense...

Duncan

Microsoft Fights Piracy In China, Linux Wins (InformationWeek)

Posted Sep 8, 2005 7:28 UTC (Thu) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link]

The Chinese are no worse than anybody else when it comes to copyrights. where you see the difference is in enforcement - the Chinese government rightly feels that it is more important to spend resources on more pressing problems; China is, despite its incredible economic growth, not rich enough. Going after those who earn money on ignoring copyright costs the Chinese public money, whereas 'piracy' mostly costs American companies money.

You already know who the American government would choose to prioritize if they were in a similar situation, don't you?

Microsoft Fights Piracy In China, Linux Wins (InformationWeek)

Posted Sep 8, 2005 8:36 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

This is a good point, and it's not only hypotetical;

We know for a *fact* that the US government did not recognize or enforce foreign copyrigth very rigidly (basically not at all) at the time when USA was importing most of it's copyrigthed work from Europe.

China is a souvereign nation. It's probably a correct analysis, from their point of view, that copyrigth hurts them more than it gains them. So there's no reason they'd need to have a concept of copyrigth at all, other than international (read: US) pressure. When they do have it, it goes without saying that enforcement is unenthusiastic. Why would they spend a lot of resources making China poorer and the US richer ?

Microsoft Fights Piracy In China, Linux Wins (InformationWeek)

Posted Sep 7, 2005 20:59 UTC (Wed) by ironhacker (guest, #11389) [Link]

In case anyone is wondering, illegal copies of Microsoft products are commonly sold in China for the equivalent of a few dollars per CD. As you might expect, the copies outsell the real thing by a wide margin.

I have visited both Hong Kong and China. I met quite a few people who appear to be self-taught with "copy" products. In their business lives, they simply bring the CDs to work and install the stuff. There is simply no way for MS to maintain market share at anywhere near list price. China has relatively low labor costs, which means very few people running around with an extra $150 to spend on a license for XP Pro.

If you take the list prices for commercial software and you divide it by the average hourly wage, you have the cost in hours instead of money. Sorry Bill, but MS Office is simply not worth 150 man-hours of labor for a license. The pirated copy "saves" 149 hours. No wonder piracy is popular.

Back in the early 80's, the same issues existed in the US. Software was too expensive; piracy was commonplace. The problem brought under control by reasonable pricing and to a lesser extent by education. Whenever prices get out of hand, piracy re-emerges as a market force.

As I see it, MS has 3 choices: (1) Find a way to distribute the product at giveaway prices in China, (2) Wage a phony war against piracy, or (3) Concede the market to Linux.

Educating people about piracy is a two-edged sword. Nobody in the developing countries will start paying list price just because they learned that piracy is wrong. The money to do this is simply not there. The next logical step is open source.

Microsoft Fights PiracyIn China, Linux Wins (InformationWeek)

Posted Sep 9, 2005 15:49 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

The plight of MS in China is even worse than you (or the article) mention.
Both you and the article mention that MS has a choice between coming down
on "piracy", at the expense of lost installed share in ordered to possibly
gain a small bit of revenue, on the one hand, or to continue to mostly
ignore "piracy" on the other, with drastically dropping their asking price
and somehow managing to prevent that spreading to other countries a third
choice.

The unmentioned, however, is how China's entry into the WTO plays into all
of this. For China to be a member in good standing in the WTO, it
**MUST** get "piracy" under control, no ifs, no ands, no buts! MS does
*NOT* have the option of continuing to ignore "piracy", because with
China's goal of WTO membership, it's no longer MS' problem but China's
problem. Every pirated copy of an MS program ups the piracy rate in
China, which makes the problem that much bigger in terms of their WTO
membership.

That cuts the choices down for BOTH MS and China substantially. MS
doesn't really have the option of lowering its price to competitive levels
either. A "starter" edition, as MS has offered in a number of places, is
simply too weak to viably compete in the market, either against its
full-featured pirate editions, or against Linux, so that's not a practical
option. Even if MS /were/ to offer it in China, as a sort of half-way
solution, it wouldn't be drastic enough to help China move its piracy rate
enough to make a difference. Thus, such a solution cannot be acceptable
to China, even if it /is/ acceptable to MS.

Offering a drastically reduced price legal full-featured version isn't an
option, either. While it might solve China's piracy problem, reducing
full featured MSWormOS to $10, Word, Excel, etc, again to $10, and the MSO
suite to no more than $30, the rough maximum market acceptable price they
could be and still achieve the piracy reduction China needs, would be
unacceptable for MS, because of the downward pricing pressure that would
put on its products in the rest of the world.

Thus, literally, the only option that makes sense for China, and that MS
will have to live with, hoping for the best, is for China to massively
encourage open source, both by sponsoring l10n (localization) and further
development, and with a massively supported official policy encouraging
FLOSS. That's only looking at the WTO implications, not /even/
considering the economic implications of all those domestic development
jobs possible with FLOSS that are money and jobs exported if it goes MS.

I believe China realized this several years ago, but MS is only now coming
to the realization that there's nothing it can do about it, because it's
no longer calling the shots, the conditions of the WTO, the same
conditions MS supported with their anti-piracy position, are calling the
shots, and it's not looking good for MS at all. There's been little
context, but I'd guess the recent quotes (thru the former MS folks now
going Google) allegedly quoting Bill G as saying China [fscked] them
(source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/07/microsoft_google/ ),
might have something to do with this. OTOH, what else was
China /supposed/ to do, in this case. I imagine MS would have been
happier just running the "starter" edition there and /pretending/ to fight
"piracy", as it's done in some other cases, still hoping to keep Linux at
bay. However, for China, that isn't a viable option, for all sorts of
reasons, and the one that is, well, lets say MS isn't used to being on the
receiving end of that sort of issue.

Here's hoping MS has many more of these sorts of issues in the future!

Duncan