It is now government policy in China to use
the Linux operating system across all
government ministries, according to Jon
"Maddog" Hall, the executive director of
Linux International, a non-profit group that
distributes information about the
open-source operating system.
At the opening of the LinuxWorld Asia
conference here today, Hall said he was told
this by China's Minister of Information
Industry, Wu Jichuan, during a visit Hall
made to Beijing in July.
Hall received a strong signal of support from
the Chinese authorities for the open-source
Linux OS, he said.
"I believe China is at least very strongly
going to follow with Linux, and at least use
it as one of their premier OSes," Hall said.
The Chinese minister did not specificially say
that there was a government ban on using
Microsoft Windows 2000, as has been
reported recently in the media, Hall said. Hall
conceded, however, that he did not directly
ask Wu Jichuan about such a ban, but
assumed that the story is a rumor.
In comments following his address opening
the conference here, Hall said Linux is a
good choice for China, both for local control
of the OS and for security reasons.
"I would like to see companies in the Asian
market develop their own implementation of
an OS rather than depend on companies
outside their region for their OS," Hall said.
He estimated that fewer than 25,000 people
in China are familiar with Windows source
code, whereas developers all throughout
China can have access to Linux's open code
to develop their own versions and
applications.
As for security, he said military and
intelligence agencies around the world have
adopted Linux for sensitive systems.
"The fact that they don't have to tell some
U.S. company what they're doing is reason
enough for them to use Linux," Hall said.
Hall opened the conference by giving a
history of Linux and evangelizing its use in
the Asia-Pacific market, while acknowledging
its shortcomings for the region.
"No good model for internationalization and
localization exists," Hall said. Likewise, today
most implementations of Linux are not
equipped to handle Chinese double-byte
characters, he said. Three different
internationalization projects are under way,
Hall said.
More broadly, he said, Linux is not yet an
enterprise-quality OS equipped to run
life-or-death systems such as pacemakers.
However, the potential of the free, upstart
OS in developing countries is phenomenal,
according to Hall. Users of all OSes
combined number only 400 million worldwide,
he said.
"That means 4 billion, 600 million people
have not chosen their operating system
yet," Hall said. "That's who we are
attempting to reach with Linux." |
