:Eric S. Raymond -- Communist China adopts Linux? Not so, apparently...
Eric S. Raymond -- Communist China adopts Linux? Not so, apparently... Nov 11, 1999, 04 :07 UTC (145 Talkback[s]) (43301 reads) (Other stories by Eric S. Raymond)
By Eric S. Raymond
In a November 10th Yahoo-UK story
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/991110/22/ax8w.html, the government of
Communist China is alleged to have said that Linux will be adopted by
that country as its official OS and that "There is a strong
identification between communist China and the open-source free OS"
Authority for this statement is traced to a press release by GraphOn
www.graphon.com.
This story appears to be untrue. The only GraphOn press release I can
find that mentions China is
http://www.graphon.com/News/pr-china991102.html from 2 Nov. This is
a routine announcement of a partnership with a private firm in Hainan.
There is no mention of any Chinese government sponsorship or action
to make Linux "official".
In the past, I have avoided presuming to speak for the whole Linux
community. This time, however, I think I may safely say that this
news will come as a vast relief to all of us. Insofar as it has
politics at all, the open-source movement promotes freedom, increased
choice, and *voluntary* cooperation. Any "identification" between the
values of the open-source community and the repressive practices of
Communism is nothing but a a vicious and cynical fraud.
There are a few of us who have a soft spot for the theoretical
Communist ideal of "from each according to his ability, to his each
according to his need"; but I am certain that even that minority would
not care to be associated with the totalitarian and murderous
government of Communist China -- unrepentant perpetrators of numerous
atrocities against its own people.
It may be too much to hope that this statement will head off a flurry
of snide opinion pieces divagating about "open-source communism"; the
clumsy rhetoric of some of our past ambassadors may have made that
outcome inevitable. But the prospect of being "identified" with the
bloody-handed gerontocrats behind the Tianamen Square massacre would
be, I believe, genuinely revolting and insulting to all of us.
No matter that such official Chinese government sponsorship might add
a quarter of the planet's population to our user base; if this is
"world domination", we'll want none of it.
