China and open source. Am I missing something?
 

https://www.techradar.com/news/china...-software-push

Quote from middle of the article.

Do they not understand how open source works? For better or worse regardless of a political view they can fork anything they want and run with it? And what control? The entire point of open source is no single point of control I thought?

I think what they are saying here is that China does not allow Open Source to really be Open Source. That rather makes sense, that government wants to control EVERYTHING people do. It would not make sense for them to have the kind of surveillance and control of everything else and IGNORE FOSS! I could, of course, be wrong.

What the heck is a '13th five year plan'? If we're talking consecutive, that's almost to the dawn of the computer age.

What's keeping them behind? It's certainly not the global availability of open source software, and collaboration opportunities. I actually have difficulty imagining what laws would prevent such opportunities from taking place.

I kinda doubt China will embrace freedom.

I have a strong feeling that you are right.

The statement from the MIIT seems reasonable to me. Basically they said that the problems were a lack of an open source community in China and the fact that if anyone did develop something the powers that be would probably not take it up.

Of course all you USians are going to put the worst possible interpretation on it. They want to control everything? A bit like some US states.

I cannot disagree about some US states. Okay, I can disagree a LITTLE. No state wants to control anything, a state is only a geographic and political subdivision of land and people that has no desires or thoughts. CONSERVATIVES in some states have power, and are letting it go to their heads. It was not always this way, and seldom this bad, but in every state there are people who believe in the freedoms and rights that the country, the flag, and the documents should and sometimes do stand for. And in every state there are people who believe that they should run things and everyone else should just shut up except to sing their praises.

No nation is totally free of insanity. Few have a national government that believes in total control of every single member of the population the way China's does. FOSS community thrives in a free and democratic society that is not corrupt. It SHOULD thrive in a socialist society that is not corrupt. It cannot thrive in an autocratic society or one so corrupted that basic rights and communications are tightly restricted.

LinuxQuestions is ONE example of a facility that was created and thrives because of freedoms, and is based largely upon FOSS software and community. It is a private project of one man, using free and open communication to leverage the community to make lives better in one small way. Are there any such projects running in China? (NOT a rhetorical question! I cannot get to much of China online, and really wonder!)

I had seen an article somewhere else on the same topic, think it was Yahoo or something. At any rate it said something to the effect that they don't trust most open source because it's controlled by western governments. I'm not sure how they get that but it is what it is.

I guess I just wonder what their plan is. Are they going for 100% self sufficiency? If so then their "open source" initiatives aren't really open source which again ties in with what we do know about how the country operates.

I don't know. Just found it interesting I guess. The irony of claiming that open source is controlled by a government (or any one individual) is funny to me. Once it's out it's out.

That's the gist of it really; FOSS rose with the internet, when global collaboration became possible. It is inherently democratic, multilateral, global.

I guess what they mean is that practically all open source projects have been contributed to by people living in "The West".
From there to automatically assume "Western" government control is a logical step that only a chinese official can make I guess.

It is interesting. If they want to do that, it means they have to re-invent practically everything.
But in the past totalitarian states have simply stolen "Western" designs and claimed them for themselves, thinly veiled. I guess something similar is going to happen here.

That's exactly what they are doing and have been doing for decades, and it is getting worst.
Twenty years ago a friend asked me to buy a knock-off Rolex on one of my trips overseas. For $50US (then) I bought one from a small shop in S.E. Asia. The friend took it to a jeweler he knew in the States (and I went along for the ride) and the jeweler said he could not tell if it was genuine or not without opening the case, but if he did so he would void the warranty as he was not a authorized Rolex dealer.
Almost all of these knock-offs from software to watches, and just about anything else you can think of, are made in China and according to an article in "The Wall Street Journal" 90% of the factories are government owned.
To eastern Europe, Russian is a problem. To the rest of the world, China is the "real" problem and the West, especially the U.S., has funded their aggression by moving their manufacturing to China.

Actually, Open source software and Public Domain software started long before the internet. The government had a site (Simtel) recording and making available (via dialup BBS, later Archie and FTP) over MILNET and BITNET. Uwasa.fi had pascal sources from some of the most prolific and exciting coders in the world for free download, on the internet before WWW. (Yes, the internet came up without HTML or browsers, but that was added soon after.)
I used WWIV BBS software, then migrated to MAXIMUS BBS to get FIDONET and multiple nodes, and wrote FOSS applications to (for example) integrate 4DOS file and directory descriptions with those in the BBS file menu system. Great times!
The collaboration began early, over FIDONET and BBS systems and early education networks. There WERE people in China (professors) who started getting into the groups, but most of the early ones went silent after the government cracked down.
But your exact wording is correct, it EXPLODED when communication became easier and cheaper with the advent of the internet. Yeah, I am THAT old! Thinking about all we did, it still gets me excited! Then I look at the toys we have NOW! ;-)