quote:
The State Council's move, aimed at breaking the dominance of Microsoft on desktop computers, will eliminate Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office productivity suite from hundreds of thousands of Chinese government computers over the next few years. [...] At a special congress held to encourage ministries to upgrade to WPS Office 2003, a China-made office productivity suite, Gao said the government will purchase only hardware preinstalled with domestic operating systems and applications. Those seeking exceptions will need to submit a special request. China Blocks Foreign Software
His Gatesness once said that he didn't care if the Chinese "pirated" M$ soft since he'd make them pay up later. Looks like "later" has arrived and they've told him to fuck off. Gotta love that!
Yet
another customer relations success for the Redmondites.
quote:
In addition to commercial reasons for protecting local software, there are security issues. China is placing official support behind the Red Flag Linux operating system, which they trust, because the open-source code allows officials to see that there are no data spyholes installed by foreign powers.
Even though M$ has promised to show them the code, they still place their trust in Linux and Open Source. 'Nuff said.
A further positive development is that this pretty much cancels all His Gatesness' plans to 'jack the 'Net. The US does considerable business with China, and the business community isn't going to tolerate being shut out of one of the world's largest markets by Palladium and Longhorn.
It's a Linux world, after all.
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Live Free or Die: Linux
"There: now you'll never have to look at those dirty Windows anymore"
--Daffy Duck
