-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [osol-discuss] Re: new community for Chinese users
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 11:30:05 -0700
From: Teresa Giacomini <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Teresa.Giacomini at Sun.COM
To: W. Wayne Liauh <wp at HawaiiLinux.us>
CC: edu-discuss-subscribe at opensolaris.org,
opensolaris-discuss at opensolaris.org
References: <27706977.1121970368942.JavaMail.suncom at oss1>
Hi folks,
Taking the opportunity to cross-post to the edu-discuss list. Might I
suggest that we continue the conversation there? Unless folks feel it
is broader than the edu community....
T
W. Wayne Liauh wrote:
> <propose to set up a community specifically for users in China especially
> those in Chinese universities. As China is a fastest growing market for Sun,
> there should be a lot of opportunites for Sun in general and Opensolaris in
> particular.>
>
> Fedora Core, arguably the most popular Linux distro, was started by a college
> student Warren Togami when he was a sophomore at University of Hawaii. I
> have been following RedHat/Fedora Core for quite a few years, and Fedora Core
> is a prime reason why Redhat can maintain its status as a standout among all
> the Linux distros. (As we all know, the great Billy Joy wrote BSD when he
> was a grad student at Berkeley.)
>
> All things considered, SOS (Solaris/OpenSolaris) provides a computing
> platform that may happen to be most uniquely suited for the huge Chinese
> market. But this message needs to be quickly and effectively promulgated.
> Chinese universities seem to be a perfect battle ground.
>
> We have quite a few clients in Taiwan, mostly in the high-tech area. I
> personally have been very diligent trying to interest them with Linux
> desktops, but nothing happened. Then suddenly, late last year, a major
> Taiwan company, CTS, China Television Station, one of the three major TV
> networks in Taiwan, decided to switch away from Microsoft Windows. But it
> did not choose one of the Linux distros; rather, it went with the JDS/Sunray
> combo.
>
> What attracted CTS to JDS probably has a lot to do with cost relative to
> Windows (& support relative to Linux) . But, IMHO, SOS can be particularly
> appealing to Chinese university students due to two interrelated factors: (1)
> Unlike Windows but similar to Linux, anyone can (supposedly and eventually)
> build, distribute, and sell an SOS-based system; (2) Unlike Linux but similar
> to Windows, SOS has a very resourceful creator/benefactor?most people are not
> aware that at one time Sun was indeed bigger than Microsoft.
>
> A delegation from China?s Ministry of Science and Technology visited us last
> year. They mentioned that if someone can develop a low-cost Linux-based
> system and charge, say, $10 US a year per person, in Shanghai alone this
> would come to in access of $100M per year. Substitute Linux with the more
> probable SOS, and that probably will make Sir Scott very happy. Freeloaders
> like myself will be very happy, too. :-)
>
> Hallucinations aside, SOS also has a strong advantage that I have not seen
> mentioned in this forum. In Windows, you need multiple computers to do
> multiple locales ("languages"). This is a royal pain in the 8th. Many Linux
> distros allow a user to log into various locales, but at least as far as the
> Chinese language is concerned, the JDS version of multilingual capabilitty is
> far more polished than those in Linux. But Linux (especially Fedora Core and
> Debian) is catching up very rapidly.
>
> Anyway, I am very interested in your proposal, please let us know how we can
> participate.
> This message posted from opensolaris.org
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