what if China went open source?
 

Had some interesting conversations while in Beijing last week. One that came up concerned Microsoft. China is 100% windows, but your guess is as good as mine as to how much of that is pirated. Even still, it is a HUGE market for MS. There was an off-hand comment about the gov switching to Linux. And being a fairly central state-run country...they can actually pull off that sort of thing.

That would be rather interesting...

Already happening...

http://www.redflag-linux.com/eindex.html

http://www.unisoftnet.com/about/imag...Flag-Linux.jpg

Also, China doesn't have to care about IP - they have a unlicensed Disney park.... So I honestly don't think that they'll be sending source out into the world... although the amount of changes they could implement/help with would be incredible - more internationalization, keyboard layouts, etc. Not to mention possible-insider-specs-without-NDAs-for-drivers :)

Even the Mainland Chinese people in the US use pirated copies of Windows. Most of their chatboards here are in Chinese, so it's pretty hard to follow if you're not one of them. But it is rampant here too. Ditto for DVD's and CD's.