China gets into the FOSS groove

Sam Varghese
Sunday, 28 January 2007 20:53

Opinion and Analysis

US tech companies make exceptions when it comes to China, so fearful are they of losing out. Last year a leaked memo from Intel showed that an inexpensive processor developed by the company had been used as the heart of a computer called the farmer PC which was to be sold in rural China. The PC runs GNU/Linux but is not available for sale elsewhere.

And while it is extremely difficult to buy a PC from an OEM without Windows on it, Dell continues a secret love affair with GNU/Linux in China. Six years ago, Dell stopped investing in companies like Red Hat and Eazel when Microsoft expressed its disapproval. But in China, certain brands of Dell notebooks and desktop PCs are available - with GNU/Linux installed!

So much for China. The other country which is also spoken of when economic growth is discussed, India, is lagging behind in this part of the race. While it has more tech graduates than any other country, the FOSS usage isn't anywhere near that in China.

Recently, the governments of two southern Indian states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, have pledged to push the use of FOSS in schools. But when it comes to development, India follows in the wake of the US.

The biggest GNU/Linux migration in India was a business decision - the Canara Bank, one of the top five banks in that country, signed a deal with Red Hat to put its distribution on 10,000 desktops and 1000 servers.

Unlike China, which appears to treat the software and hardware industry as something which is vital to national security, India prefers to do lapdog work for the West. Hence, any increase in the use of FOSS will only be a downstream activity.