China's Love of Linux Has Roots in Ancient Past
By Phil Albert
LinuxInsider
07/06/04 8:24 AM PT
It is a mistake for Microsoft to assume that its toughest competitor is piracy. Maybe it's not even Linux or open source. Microsoft's challenge in China is how to change a mindset that's been ingrained through thousands of years of a great ancient civilization.
Bill Gates was recently quoted as saying, "You know what my toughest competitor is? It's pirated software.... If you really look around, you'll find way more pirated Windows than you'll find open-source software. Way more."
Gates couldn't be more wrong. At least in China, his tough stance against piracy is backfiring. The more the Chinese government cracks down on piracy, the more appealing open source , and in particular, Linux, become.
In a knee-jerk fashion, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) reacts by cutting creative licensing deals and cutting prices, assuming that the open-source movement in Asia is purely driven by cost. It's true that the cost factor is a significant reason behind China's obsession with Linux, but I wonder whether there is something much deeper going on. Perhaps it has less to do with Microsoft and more to do with Chinese history and culture.
Intellectual Property Counterintuitive
In his compelling book, To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense, which examines the development of intellectual property law in Chinese civilization, William P. Alford argues that according to ancient Chinese history and culture, copying is not traditionally seen as a "bad" thing. To copy someone's work is considered a compliment. Therefore, the very idea of copyright is counterintuitive to the Chinese.
According to Alford, even though the Chinese are credited with some of the world's greatest contributions, from paper to ink, they have never been concerned with protecting the ideas that are created by putting ink to paper.
Patents, trademarks and copyrights are Western concepts. He argues that in imperial China, there was no indigenous effort to develop a significant body of intellectual property law, even after they invented printing, until Western influences introduced the concept to China at the turn of the twentieth century. Why? For the answer, we might have to turn to Confucius.
At the core of traditional Chinese culture is the connection to a shared past, and the importance of the family. Relationships between ruler and subject, father and son, and husband and wife are enduring and paramount. Connecting to the past provides insight into moral responsibility in the present.
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