Canonical and China

[Dragonbite]

Would be awesome if all countries migrated to linux.

Unless that only creates a "monopoly" which is subsequently leveraged and abused for the commercial distributions' profit and gain. In which case we're back in the position we are in now with Microsoft and Windows dominance in the desktop (although yet, mobile is slowly eroding this).

[deadflowr]

Unless that only creates a "monopoly" which is subsequently leveraged and abused for the commercial distributions' profit and gain. In which case we're back in the position we are in now with Microsoft and Windows dominance in the desktop (although yet, mobile is slowly eroding this).

Interesting.
Would an open-source monopoly even be possible?

[doja]

I don't think Canonical thinks of this as anything beyond a market opportunity, and even if they had planned to use this partnership in order to propagate the western ideas of information freedom, they would still be a small company with a very limited sphere of influence.

There is no arguing that Canonical is interested in the market. They are no human rights activists (at least not by the primary interest of distribution their product). The ones who influences the political system are the users. There are two reasons speaking for Ubuntu that immediately come to my mind.

First, open source is no black box. That means well suitable for modifying and surveillance.
Second, Ubuntu develops one system for the whole world. It would be much easier for censorship or any kind of restriction if totalitary systems would develop or buy something that is completly different then the rest of the world use.

But as long as Canonicals product is open source I agree. I will disagree if Canonical would develop some software or including some for spying on the people.

In your moral any trade with countries different to ours should be forbiden, because anything can be used against the people. But the people are the one who suffer at the end. You know one can question everything and in this case I would start even by the western information freedom itself. One should be realist not idealist.
How many people are proud on their iPhone? And how many people are intersted in the living condition of the people who makes them?

But of course I respect your (and all others) opinion and understand your point.

[tartalo]

I will disagree if Canonical would develop some software or including some for spying on the people.

Like the US government apparently included in Windows? http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html

Taking in account the amount of Ubuntu derivatives available it doesn't seem too difficult to fork it when necessary, and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of competent Chinese hackers either.

[monkeybrain2012]

I am not sure how one would implement surveillance backdoors to spy on people with open source software,--at least that doesn't sound like a sensible choice. The Chinese has long had developed a version of Linux based on RedHat(Red Flag) and it has a "community version" called qomo (sort of like Fedora to Redhat), I have not heard of surveillance building into these. I think the Chinese' motivation is probably more simple,namely to wean itself off technological dependencies on Western Companies like MS. Linux, while "Western" in some historical sense it doesn't really have a nationality because it is open and free, it is "western' only in the same way that 'Western mathematics" is 'western',--which is really not.

Incidentally, the Taiwanese government is also quite active in promoting Linux (they have government bureau to bench mark linux compatibility for hardware) and it is motivated by mostly the same considerations.

[Dry Lips]

The Chinese has long had developed a version of Linux based on RedHat(Red Flag) and it has a "community version" called qomo (sort of like Fedora to Redhat), I have not heard of surveillance building into these..

As far as I know, Red Flag is mostly used in corporate settings. And at the moment, Linux isn't more widespread among regular users than in the western world. In other words, as long as the use of linux remains marginal, there is no point in adding proprietary blobs of code to such systems.

However, this might quickly change if Ubuntu Kylin becomes a success and managed to capture large parts of the marked that Microsoft until now has dominated. I'm sure many of you know about the Chinese version of Skype? It has 96 million users and features a keylogger that scans for certain phrases.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...esearcher.html

Now, the fact that Skype (owned by Microsoft) wasn't permitted to enter the Chinese marked without adding spyware to the program, is definitively bad news for Canonical!

Some of you question if an open source system could have features such as keyloggers, etc. What they would do if they were to do this, was to add bits of code that remained closed source. Once the code is compiled you cannot read it unless you have the source. Thus even an "open source" OS can contain code that is proprietary. (Though this would probably mean that they broke the GPL licence.)

[Dragonbite]

Like the US government apparently included in Windows? http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html

Taking in account the amount of Ubuntu derivatives available it doesn't seem too difficult to fork it when necessary, and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of competent Chinese hackers either.

Have any articles more recent than 1999? That's even before Windows XP came out (heck, before the Y2k issue).

That was, like, sooooo last century!

The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:\Windows\system directory of your computer.

I didn't find it there, and I have hidden files visible.

Who is going to be the ultimate project controller and image producer? Canonical can supply a fully-functioning operating system that the project owners add something to before imaging it out and distributing it. Canonical would not be involved at all.

Paranoia is a slipper slope.

[tartalo]

Have any articles more recent than 1999?

Sure, http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...r_in_Windows_7

[Dragonbite]

Sure, http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...r_in_Windows_7

Interesting read, but it doesn't say they found one in there. It's about questioning whether the NSA should be involved with the development of an OS, and Microsoft denying their "Security Compliance Management Toolkit" is a backdoor.

Something to keep in mind that the NSA also helped previous OS developers a while ago, including Apple. One product that came out of this cooperation with Red Hat is SELinux, which is included by default on Red Hat and Fedora installations. SUSE (or was it Novell or openSUSE? I dunno) developed a variation of it that was not tied into the kernel called AppArmor. AppArmor is available for Ubuntu, but I don't know if it is installed by default or not (sorry, I'm sitting in front of a Windows XP machine, wishing it was any Linux).

There are 2 branches to NSA; one hacks into things, the other takes that knowledge and works to prevent it from working.

[monkeybrain2012]

Now, the fact that Skype (owned by Microsoft) wasn't permitted to enter the Chinese marked without adding spyware to the program, is definitively bad news for Canonical!

Some of you question if an open source system could have features such as keyloggers, etc. What they would do if they were to do this, was to add bits of code that remained closed source. Once the code is compiled you cannot read it unless you have the source. Thus even an "open source" OS can contain code that is proprietary. (Though this would probably mean that they broke the GPL licence.)

Well Skype is not a free software. As for your second scenario they could do that even without involving Canonical if they want to, Ubuntu's source codes are openly available and there is nothing to stop them if they want to create some closed source variant by modifying it that would include spying mechanism (not that they are particularly worried about being sued for licensing issues anyway)