Why China is Giving Away Its Tech For Free 21
An anonymous reader shares a report: [...] the rise in China of open technology, which relies on transparency and decentralisation, is awkward for an authoritarian state. If the party's patience with open-source fades, and it decides to exert control, that could hinder both the course of innovation at home, and developers' ability to export their technology abroad.
China's open-source movement first gained traction in the mid-2010s. Richard Lin, co-founder of Kaiyuanshe, a local open-source advocacy group, recalls that most of the early adopters were developers who simply wanted free software. That changed when they realised that contributing to open-source projects could improve their job prospects. Big firms soon followed, with companies like Huawei backing open-source work to attract talent and cut costs by sharing technology.
Momentum gathered in 2019 when Huawei was, in effect, barred by America from using Android. That gave new urgency to efforts to cut reliance on Western technology. Open-source offered a faster way for Chinese tech firms to take existing code and build their own programs with help from the country's vast community of developers. In 2020 Huawei launched OpenHarmony, a family of open-source operating systems for smartphones and other devices. It also joined others, including Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, to establish the OpenAtom Foundation, a body dedicated to open-source development. China quickly became not just a big contributor to open-source programs, but also an early adopter of software. JD.com, an e-commerce firm, was among the first to deploy Kubernetes.
AI has lately given China's open-source movement a further boost. Chinese companies, and the government, see open models as the quickest way to narrow the gap with America. DeepSeek's models have generated the most interest, but Qwen, developed by Alibaba, is also highly rated, and Baidu has said it will soon open up the model behind its Ernie chatbot.
China's open-source movement first gained traction in the mid-2010s. Richard Lin, co-founder of Kaiyuanshe, a local open-source advocacy group, recalls that most of the early adopters were developers who simply wanted free software. That changed when they realised that contributing to open-source projects could improve their job prospects. Big firms soon followed, with companies like Huawei backing open-source work to attract talent and cut costs by sharing technology.
Momentum gathered in 2019 when Huawei was, in effect, barred by America from using Android. That gave new urgency to efforts to cut reliance on Western technology. Open-source offered a faster way for Chinese tech firms to take existing code and build their own programs with help from the country's vast community of developers. In 2020 Huawei launched OpenHarmony, a family of open-source operating systems for smartphones and other devices. It also joined others, including Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, to establish the OpenAtom Foundation, a body dedicated to open-source development. China quickly became not just a big contributor to open-source programs, but also an early adopter of software. JD.com, an e-commerce firm, was among the first to deploy Kubernetes.
AI has lately given China's open-source movement a further boost. Chinese companies, and the government, see open models as the quickest way to narrow the gap with America. DeepSeek's models have generated the most interest, but Qwen, developed by Alibaba, is also highly rated, and Baidu has said it will soon open up the model behind its Ernie chatbot.
Now (Score:2, Insightful)
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You're so wrong that it's difficult to say where to start. This fellow lives in China and writes extensively on its business environment, he's very knowledgeable and quite interesting (doesn't hurt that he has an exceptionally clear writing style). This is his article titled: 'DeepSeek exposes a fundamental advantage of China's system: their whole economy is open source'. He provides voluminous documentation at the end of each article.
https://kdwalmsley.substack.co... [substack.com]
Economists and governments have known
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Why?
Logical outcome of a tech diaspora (Score:4, Insightful)
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They made open source work like how it was supposed to in the West. Corporations not only contributing, but actively promoting the open aspect as a major business advantage. Transparency, a rapidly growing ecosystem, trust from developers who are wary of closed source rug-pulls.
It will be interesting to see if they stick with it. Usually Western companies end up deciding they could make a bit more short term profit by not being open anymore, enshittify their product, crash and burn. Occasionally you get one
They are not giving it away (Score:1)
Re: They are not giving it away (Score:2)
giving away their technology (Score:1)
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"Open source" means that everything is there and available to examine. If there are backdoors in DeepSeek or any of the other Chinese tech products they would be found and exposed and the MSM would be trumpeting the news to high heaven. Instead they're mysteriously quiet.
They're communists lol (Score:4, Insightful)
Not speaking of freedom (Score:1)
The real issue is that they are speaking of "open source" and not about freedom for people.
The communist party likes the utilitaristic approach of "open source" and do NOT like to speak about freedom for people.
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The Chinese society is more "free" today than any time in its history. Is it libertine Hollywood-style hookers-and-blow "freedom"? No, of course not, but it's more than any other time in the last 5,000 years.
Early 2000s was freer than now. (Score:2)
Yes, I talk to my relatives there.
Re: Not speaking of freedom (Score:2)