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Open-Source May Help China Curb Software Piracy

Posted by tadelste on · 2 comments
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"Free" might not really mean free, but an operating system that doesn't require user licenses makes it a lot easier to avoid piracy, in accordance with a four-year-old government push to get Chinese companies to respect intellectual property.

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Comments (2)

sbergman27 ·
OSS would certainly reduce "piracy". But if Chinese companies are not respecting copyright, then why would they respect the GPL any more than proprietary licenses?

Interestingly enough, Andrew Morton was asked, not long ago, if the huge surge of interest in open source in China threatened to upset the geographic balance of power with respect to control of the kernel. (I'm paraphrasing the questioner.)

Andrew responded that as far as he was aware, China was "a big black hole". And that the only Chinese developer he has ever received patches from lives in Palo Alto.

Well, I suppose that if they are going to violate copyright, it may as well be our copyright. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect patches sometime in the next decade.

(Just kidding about the last part. ;-)

tadelste Story submitter ·
Steve Gates. What a story ;)

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