6 ms·

The discrepancy compared to other countries is because the piracy of XP in China is staggering. Sources: http://bradweikel.com/software-piracy-china-why-ie6-wi

by eksith 14y ago

The discrepancy compared to other countries is because the piracy of XP in China is staggering. Sources: http://bradweikel.com/software-piracy-china-why-ie6-will-not-die-2010 http://bradweikel.com/software-piracy-china-why-ie6-will-not... http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chinese-Pirates-Choose-Windows-XP-Over-Linux-Because-It-s-Free-306542.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chinese-Pirates-Choose-Window...

mtgx 14y ago
Sigh. In this case I actually hope the Chinese government forces everyone to use Ubuntu over the next decade, now that they plan to standardize everything around it.
- eksith 14y ago
  I doubt they'll pick stock Ubuntu if they did. They'll probably hack together their own build (or one based on Mint) with added state-monitoring goodness and force their people to use that instead. But I don't think they'll go to that extreme. New China, while retaining some of the old traits, is somewhat more sensitive to social media than Old China. They know people are not as willing to shut up and accept what's given to them these days. Incidentally, I wonder if someone has put together an upgrade message that we could all use on our sites in the interim to visitors from China (preferably in simplified Chinese). It certainly wouldn't hurt for them to know there are other choices available besides IE or Maxthon.
  - socillion 14y ago
    They're actually working with Canonical to get modifications and application ports. http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-standards-body-announce-ubuntu-collaboration http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-stand... http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Ubuntu-China-Kylin-CISP-Chinese-Ministry,21676.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Ubuntu-China-Kylin-CISP-Chi...
    - eksith 14y ago
      Well, this is new to me. Thanks for sharing this! :) I hope Canonical will stick to just getting language compatibility, streamlining and just plain consistency when they finally release rather than helping with government monitoring and censorship. If the government does take the end product and introduce these, there's nothing much that can be done, except making sure the sources are widely available for study. At least, that would make the officials reluctant to stick blatant examples of monitoring.
- nivla 14y ago
  Sigh. I wish no government forces their citizens into a single OS. We should be able to choose what we want to run. Just because something is open-source doesn't mean it won't carry the dreadful effects of a monopoly.
  - eksith 14y ago
    I think you're reading too much into it. If China does standardize on a Ubuntu derived distro with their own specs and it gets released for public use (and by that, offices both private and government sector will also begin using it with government taking precedence due to the ruling party influence), that by default causes it to be pushed as the standard in homes as well. You wouldn't want to keep disparate OSes around; it's just too much of a hassle for most folks. "Force" in that context means proliferation by standardization at work, trickling down to home, not in terms of "use this or else..." Now I don't know to what degree console adoption fares in China, but if it's high enough, PC gaming won't deter enough users to prevent it actually becoming a viable alternative on par with Windows at some point.
snoonan 14y ago
It would be interesting turn if they just open sourced XP and let the hackers have at it. Deploying a moderned-up Chinese focused XP isn't going to move the needle in either direction regarding the piracy culture there, but might help carry them forward. Retail software just has to be free in some parts of the world, made apparent by the preference for a hacked obselete, decade-old OS.
- jdietrich 14y ago
  The risk for Microsoft is that they lose control of the ecosystem, potentially jeopardising billions in future revenue. Piracy is relatively tolerable for Microsoft, because a pirate can still get locked into your platform; Eventually, you'll probably figure out some way to monetise that, probably by leveraging the size of the install base to secure very big contracts. If the Chinese aren't using Microsoft Windows™ but a specifically Chinese fork, Microsoft might lose the market forever, or be forced to target a platform that they don't control.
- eksith 14y ago
  Some of the architecture is still part of modern Windows so I don't think they would even consider it. Plus that's millions upon millions of lines of code that must be vetted to prevent trade secrets from leaking out. And I imagine there are other vulnerabilities in newer versions of Windows that would be readily found by examining the older cousin's source. Another reason why they use it is because XP came out before WGA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage). This made pirating newer versions a bit more inconvenient (but certainly not enough to stop piracy all the way to Win8, I'm sure). So that leaves the more easily pirated pre-WGA XP
- psionski 14y ago
  I don't think hackers would do that... Even if Windows was open-sourced, many consider it an inferior operating system not worth their time and effort.
be5invis 14y ago
As a Chinese, I saw all people I know does not upgrade their OS unless their computer hardware is broken inreversibly. And even in 2012, there are still some people install priate XP on new computer they bought or assembled. And computers in netcafe or school are UNABLE TO UPDATE ANY SOFTWARE because all disk modifications are reverted after the computer restarts. People install a hardware called "recovery card" and it reverts all modifications on the hard disk. It sounds unbelievable but it is true. Almost all "computer rooms" (called "机房" here but i cannot come up with a good translation) in universities, even in famous universities, is still installed recovery card. The maintainers of those "computer rooms" just fix their computers while they are broken (very rare), and, install XP and old softwares. Besides, compnies here install their own browsers, which is only a "shell" of IE, without user agreement? They put an "install XXX browser" checkbox on the install wizard of other software and make them checked by default. People here think that their browser is "upgraded" but the kernel is still IE6. (Interestingly some of the shell browsers started using webkit recently.)

by eksith 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago

Sigh. In this case I actually hope the Chinese government forces everyone to use Ubuntu over the next decade, now that they plan to standardize everything around it.

eksith 14y ago
I doubt they'll pick stock Ubuntu if they did. They'll probably hack together their own build (or one based on Mint) with added state-monitoring goodness and force their people to use that instead. But I don't think they'll go to that extreme. New China, while retaining some of the old traits, is somewhat more sensitive to social media than Old China. They know people are not as willing to shut up and accept what's given to them these days. Incidentally, I wonder if someone has put together an upgrade message that we could all use on our sites in the interim to visitors from China (preferably in simplified Chinese). It certainly wouldn't hurt for them to know there are other choices available besides IE or Maxthon.
- socillion 14y ago
  They're actually working with Canonical to get modifications and application ports. http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-standards-body-announce-ubuntu-collaboration http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-stand... http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Ubuntu-China-Kylin-CISP-Chinese-Ministry,21676.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Ubuntu-China-Kylin-CISP-Chi...
  - eksith 14y ago
    Well, this is new to me. Thanks for sharing this! :) I hope Canonical will stick to just getting language compatibility, streamlining and just plain consistency when they finally release rather than helping with government monitoring and censorship. If the government does take the end product and introduce these, there's nothing much that can be done, except making sure the sources are widely available for study. At least, that would make the officials reluctant to stick blatant examples of monitoring.
nivla 14y ago
Sigh. I wish no government forces their citizens into a single OS. We should be able to choose what we want to run. Just because something is open-source doesn't mean it won't carry the dreadful effects of a monopoly.
- eksith 14y ago
  I think you're reading too much into it. If China does standardize on a Ubuntu derived distro with their own specs and it gets released for public use (and by that, offices both private and government sector will also begin using it with government taking precedence due to the ruling party influence), that by default causes it to be pushed as the standard in homes as well. You wouldn't want to keep disparate OSes around; it's just too much of a hassle for most folks. "Force" in that context means proliferation by standardization at work, trickling down to home, not in terms of "use this or else..." Now I don't know to what degree console adoption fares in China, but if it's high enough, PC gaming won't deter enough users to prevent it actually becoming a viable alternative on par with Windows at some point.

snoonan 14y ago

It would be interesting turn if they just open sourced XP and let the hackers have at it. Deploying a moderned-up Chinese focused XP isn't going to move the needle in either direction regarding the piracy culture there, but might help carry them forward. Retail software just has to be free in some parts of the world, made apparent by the preference for a hacked obselete, decade-old OS.

jdietrich 14y ago
The risk for Microsoft is that they lose control of the ecosystem, potentially jeopardising billions in future revenue. Piracy is relatively tolerable for Microsoft, because a pirate can still get locked into your platform; Eventually, you'll probably figure out some way to monetise that, probably by leveraging the size of the install base to secure very big contracts. If the Chinese aren't using Microsoft Windows™ but a specifically Chinese fork, Microsoft might lose the market forever, or be forced to target a platform that they don't control.
eksith 14y ago
Some of the architecture is still part of modern Windows so I don't think they would even consider it. Plus that's millions upon millions of lines of code that must be vetted to prevent trade secrets from leaking out. And I imagine there are other vulnerabilities in newer versions of Windows that would be readily found by examining the older cousin's source. Another reason why they use it is because XP came out before WGA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage). This made pirating newer versions a bit more inconvenient (but certainly not enough to stop piracy all the way to Win8, I'm sure). So that leaves the more easily pirated pre-WGA XP
psionski 14y ago
I don't think hackers would do that... Even if Windows was open-sourced, many consider it an inferior operating system not worth their time and effort.

be5invis 14y ago

As a Chinese, I saw all people I know does not upgrade their OS unless their computer hardware is broken inreversibly. And even in 2012, there are still some people install priate XP on new computer they bought or assembled. And computers in netcafe or school are UNABLE TO UPDATE ANY SOFTWARE because all disk modifications are reverted after the computer restarts. People install a hardware called "recovery card" and it reverts all modifications on the hard disk. It sounds unbelievable but it is true. Almost all "computer rooms" (called "机房" here but i cannot come up with a good translation) in universities, even in famous universities, is still installed recovery card. The maintainers of those "computer rooms" just fix their computers while they are broken (very rare), and, install XP and old softwares. Besides, compnies here install their own browsers, which is only a "shell" of IE, without user agreement? They put an "install XXX browser" checkbox on the install wizard of other software and make them checked by default. People here think that their browser is "upgraded" but the kernel is still IE6. (Interestingly some of the shell browsers started using webkit recently.)