China's Red Flag Sees Desktop as Linux Battlefield (eWeek) [LWN.net]

eWeek has posted an interview with Red Flag VP Zhongyuan Zheng. "And from the end of last year, the central government asked the provincial governments and the city governments to buy legal software to replace all of the previously illegal software. These governments - city and provincial - compared the performance, capabilities and price of desktop Linux and Windows and they considered whether they could migrate all their applications from Windows to Linux. So finally about 30 percent of desktops in China now use Linux. Microsoft has about 60 percent."

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China's Red Flag Sees Desktop as Linux Battlefield (eWeek)

Posted Dec 14, 2005 18:01 UTC (Wed) by diakka (guest, #10310) [Link] (1 responses)

30% of the desktop market? Holy $#!7!... I want so much for this to be true, but something tells me that it's a load of BS. The impression I get from people in China is that Linux adoption lags way behind the US and European Nations. Most likely this is just so they can claim a lower piracy rate of MS products. Kind of like when an alcoholic lies about how much they drink.

"Migration 100% complete, sir!"

Posted Dec 14, 2005 21:32 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

The text seems to suggest, rather, 30% of the government-office desktops, not desktops overall.

I doubt this has anything to do with a license smokescreen. Much more likely is that the provincial offices are doing the same they have always done: telling the central office what they have determined it wants to hear. I gather they've all made marvelous progress on reducing pollution and improving air quality, too.

There's a traditional saying in China: "Yes, the emperor is very powerful; but the emperor is also very far away." Emperors must, as a rule, be too busy to punish bearers of unlikely good news.