Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#61

Post by rndmind »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #55
rndmind wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SELinux is open source, is there any validity to a claim that SELinux performs anything other than securing the local operating system?

There are no claims that SELinux does anything other than secure the system, but if you're going to distrust things based solely on who sponsored them (Chinese government for this Linux distribution) then it makes sense to ask if this logic is applied consistently. To make it crystal clear: I'm not saying SELinux is untrustworthy. I am just asking the poster if they would trust SELinux knowing that it came from the N…

I understand what you are saying now.

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#62

Post by saurik »

livatlantis wrote: post #44
canjobear wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the aside: You are right that the sentence is ungrammatical if you take the object of "want" to be "replace Windows" and the subject of "replace" to be "the Chinese government". But it is grammatical if you analyze it as an instance of the construction "X wants Y to Z", where Y is (semantically) the subject of the infinitive Z. To a first approximation, relative clauses in English are formed by taking a sentence a…

Ah, I see it now. I wasn't reading it the way the author intended. The Chinese governments wants the OS. With the goal of replacing Windows. Excellent explanation, thank you canjobear! (And jameshart).

That is still not how I read it. I think it is reasonable to say "Ogg Vorbis is trying to replace MP3". I thereby feel it reasonable to say "I want Ogg Vorbis to replace MP3". If we now want to refer to this thing, we can replace "Ogg Vorbis" with "a file format". However, we care which file format among many, so we qualify it as "the file format saurik wants to replace MP3". I think the difference here is that I am quite happy using the name of these software products as a way to refer to their projects, which I then am more than happy to treat as actors capable of trying to accomplish abstract tasks. "Uber wants to disrupt the taxi industry." "Uber wants to replace taxis." "Random people on Hacker News want Uber to replace taxis." "A first look at the new service random users on Hacker News want to replace taxis." (I also think this is more what canjobear meant, as Y has become the subject. It isn't that X wants Y with a goal of Z, it is that X wants Y to accomplish its goal of Z.)

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#63

Post by open-source-ux »

I wonder if there any copyright issues over the look-and-feel? Windows XP is obviously old and out-of-date, so Microsoft are unlikely to pursue China Standard Software over the visual design.

I am against the idea that interface ideas (visual design and interaction design) can be patented or copyrighted. However, I'm also against someone slavishly copying someone else's design to the point that it's practically an identical copy.

Or do folks consider this to be an acceptable practice? After all, someone can take an open source project and make minor (or major) tweaks to the code and re-release the software. Is such an approach considered acceptable in the case of UI design? Or only if that design is attached to an open source project?

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#65

Post by uremog »

open-source-ux wrote: post #63

I wonder if there any copyright issues over the look-and-feel? Windows XP is obviously old and out-of-date, so Microsoft are unlikely to pursue China Standard Software over the visual design. I am against the idea that interface ideas (visual design and interaction design) can be patented or copyrighted. However, I'm also against someone slavishly copying someone else's design to the point that it's practically an id…

Likely a moot point. Even if MS did anything, China would say, "nah it's just a coincidence" or, "doesn't look similar to me!"

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#66

Post by chaostheory »

rwmj wrote: post #4
snogglethorpe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the biggest fear I have of this sort of thing is that they'll end up with standalone unshared forks of stuff, which won't benefit from newer developments and bug fixes in other forks, and vice-versa.

Another problem is they may violate licenses by not distributing source. We may end up with forked versions of the kernel and other major components, with useful new features implemented and no corresponding source. (Note: I have no evidence that this is happening).

Didn't Redhat complain that the company behind RedFlag didn't distribute source?

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#67

Post by tracker1 »

open-source-ux wrote: post #63

I wonder if there any copyright issues over the look-and-feel? Windows XP is obviously old and out-of-date, so Microsoft are unlikely to pursue China Standard Software over the visual design. I am against the idea that interface ideas (visual design and interaction design) can be patented or copyrighted. However, I'm also against someone slavishly copying someone else's design to the point that it's practically an id…

I'm somewhere in the middle... I would really like to see skinning become more common/popular... I was a pretty big fan of lightstep on Win2k (not ME), as it allowed me to run the UI/UX that I wanted... It was not as easy or seamless as it could have been but was very cool.

I can't help but feel that most of the differences between say Unity and Gnome3 should have been a matter of skinning instead of more ingrained as they are... That should include certain filters against notification tools/icons and the dock/taskbar in order to get app icons to appear more inline with the skin/feel.

I know we moved away from the likes of litestep and winamp skinning, art and distro groups, but it would be nice to see some of that return.

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#68

Post by scholia »

sounds wrote: post #45
scholia wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That’s pretty ironic, given how similar it feels to a product made by Microsoft, long the enemy of open-source Linux evangelists." You're a few years behind the times ;-)

I'm a Free Software evangelist. Microsoft has been my enemy for a long time. Please be specific: what has Microsoft ever done that has significantly improved end users' ability to run Free Software?

First, almost all open source software runs on Microsoft Windows. As such, it provides and curates the biggest market for open source PC software, and I'd guess that Windows generates the majority of the money earned by the developers of open source applications (ie not the OS).

You can see that in action at Steam, which is fuelled by Windows users (over 90% of the user base), and from which Linux gamers (less than 1%) derive huge benefits.

Second, Microsoft created a compatible x86-based PC market, which created high volume sales, which drove down prices. This is exactly the market on which and for which Linux was originally developed. The people who run free software have saved far more money through Microsoft-driven economies of scale than they would ever have paid for Windows.

Third, Microsoft is a major contributor to open source, including the Linux kernel, and it has a large number of projects on both Github and Codeplex. Sure, it's self-interested, but it's no more self-interested than IBM, Google, Red Hat, and dozens of other companies that make money from software.

Why do you think Microsoft is the enemy? (I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft was a spunky young bunch of freedom fighters, pioneering desktop Unix, among other things.)

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#69

Post by vinceyuan »

leni536 wrote: post #48
vinceyuan wrote: post #9

Nobody uses it in China. Dell installs it on computers just because a computer without an OS is not allowed to sell in China.

Why don't they just install any other distro or free OS?

Though NeoKylin is not a free OS, I guess Dell may get paid for preinstalling NeoKylin from China Standard Software. According to this source (in Chinese) [1], China Standard Software got 0.5 billions RMB funding ($800M) from the gov. The gov measures its performance by some methods including the shipping number of NeoKylin. It's natural for Dell and China Standard Software to have such a contract. One preinstalls NeoKylin for money. The other has the number to get funding from the gov. Though nobody uses it, two companies get money.

[1] http://baike.baidu.com/view/4920982.htm

Re: A first look at the OS the Chinese government wants to replace Windows

#70

Post by sounds »

scholia wrote: post #68
sounds wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Free Software evangelist. Microsoft has been my enemy for a long time. Please be specific: what has Microsoft ever done that has significantly improved end users' ability to run Free Software?

First, almost all open source software runs on Microsoft Windows. As such, it provides and curates the biggest market for open source PC software, and I'd guess that Windows generates the majority of the money earned by the developers of open source applications (ie not the OS). You can see that in action at Steam, which is fuelled by Windows users (over 90% of the user base), and from which Linux gamers (less than 1…

Thanks for specific answers. I think we've both "proven our point."
Post reply on HN