[HN Gopher] China wants to build an open source ecosystem to riv...
___________________________________________________________________
China wants to build an open source ecosystem to rival GitHub
Author : donohoe
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-01-19 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| I think that until China views the West as safe, it will continue
| to do these things. Chinese tend to view Westerners
| (Anglo/American in particular) as dodgy, yet charismatic, which
| is the reason for these trust issues.
|
| Rooting this attitude is an observance of the events of the last
| fifty years. In others' minds, Japan was competing pretty fairly,
| and beating the U.S. until the Paris accords. Russia was freed
| from communism, only to enter a 2nd-world decline in which it was
| mocked in major papers like the New York Times. The Iraq
| occupation, and the Arab Spring reinforced the distrust that the
| American goal of spreading its style of governance was more about
| itself than the rest of the world. It made for a good story, but
| it did not follow through. There is, above all, the inability of
| the third world to modernize under the American-supported
| capitalist framework.
|
| The attitude given in the article is problematic because it
| doesn't quite capture how Chinese engineers feel about this
| dynamic. It feels more like the narrative that Western Americans
| want to hear. I've gotten the impression that many feel that
| their government is overbearing. But I don't get the sense that
| they trust what America says more. That's a real legitimacy and
| credibility issue, and as we should know, politics is rooted in
| legitimacy. More one-sided criticism of China's strategy is not
| going to help America's case. It feels dodgy, too good to be
| true.
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| Yes, I would definitely trust the CCP to host my source code /s
| pelasaco wrote:
| why not? Private repositories, probably not, but open source
| libs/gems definitely.
| Sprbdg wrote:
| Why would you support such a regime?
| wolco5 wrote:
| It would be a great place for pirate open source.
| boringg wrote:
| The simple reason - you don't trust the host to keep your
| content up if it infringe's on anything deem it to infringe
| upon. 100% would never host anything up there.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is because China is afraid of what just happened to Iran.
|
| The U.S. could force MS to suddenly ban all China IP addresses.
| This would hamper software development for a month or so there.
| pupdogg wrote:
| I've heard the phrase that "Competition is good for business" but
| never in the context "Competition is good for open source"
| bluGill wrote:
| You haven't followed the llvm/gcc saga then.
| wolco5 wrote:
| Linux vs FreeBsd?
|
| Open vs Star Office?
|
| kde vs gnome
|
| python 2 vs 3?
| monadic3 wrote:
| The second phrase is far more accurate than the first!
| RandomWorker wrote:
| I mean, they could start here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
| org/gitlab
|
| gitlab has been open-source for a while.
| IncRnd wrote:
| gitee.com has been around since 2009 with Alibaba as the
| registrar. I think that the intent is to use a Chinese owned
| service located inside China.
| riq_ wrote:
| perhaps just cloning gitlab?
| kaliali wrote:
| Open source my ass, more like a CCP controlled shit stain
| vgchh wrote:
| Thing is that in the big picture, it's not just that China is
| building a replacement for GitHub. China is building a
| replacement for everything that matters and accelerates their
| transition to be the Super Power. And they have been doing so for
| last 30 years, just that now it's hitting a critical mass and
| world is waking up to it.
|
| And I think, we, The West, have been getting it wrong. We are
| looking at China like a jealous neighbor, pushing back
| politically, through regulations and sanctions. Unfortunately
| that can only go so far. Thing is China is obsessed (and
| determined) about progressing and West is obsessed about
| protecting what it already has.
|
| America needs to be obsessed about creating and innovating. Hard
| creation and innovation on a scale never seen before - like 1000x
| the man-on-the-moon scale.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| This is weird, considering Mongo changed their licensing because
| of Chinese cloud providers if I remember correctly. I don't know
| if people will merely blindly trust a GitHub rival ran by a
| foreign government as opposed to an organic startup, the only
| upside is for people in countries that are not allowed on GitHub.
| stanrivers wrote:
| And then you have to question why a foreign country would allow
| the new solution and not GitHub... it seems like it might be
| used by people used to a certain set of restrictions on them
| online, while others used to more liberal information flows
| would not.
| meiraleal wrote:
| The problem is that this organic startup is now a enterprise
| behemoth that can be trusted as much as CCP: Microsoft.
| seneca wrote:
| > The problem is that this organic startup is now a
| enterprise behemoth that can be trusted as much as CCP:
| Microsoft.
|
| Remind me again when MS killed millions of people and
| committed genocide? I mean, Windows is horrible, but this is
| a bit much.
|
| I apologize for the snark (I really don't think it's a good
| way to communicate) but this is a shockingly bad opinion.
| Comparing a bad company to a totalitarian regime that
| routinely abuses human rights cheapens real suffering and
| numbs people to real tragedy.
| wolco5 wrote:
| That blue screen of death wasn't just for show.
| goldforever wrote:
| Correct!
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| I'm as skeptical of corporations as the next person, but I'm
| not sure Microsoft is comparable to a literal authoritarian
| regime.
| [deleted]
| Sprbdg wrote:
| It would be stupid to use it.
| Sprbdg wrote:
| It doesn't want to more with github, it wants control over it.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| In China all source is open.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| They want to block Github entirely because Github allows for the
| free flow of information (politically sensitive information, not
| just code) and they don't have a way of doing currently without
| just blocking all of Github... Which would be bad for business,
| and China also seems to be entering the software business in a
| bigger way.
|
| Actually, if you want to send large amounts of text information
| to users in China right now, Github is probably one of the better
| ways. Unfortunately probably not for long!
| beerandt wrote:
| I assume it also has just as much to do with Microsoft buying
| it.
|
| See also: skype.
|
| Not just because they don't want Chinese code stored on foreign
| servers, but because they want it on servers they have easy
| access to.
|
| Even if this is far-fetched, it's not about what we think, but
| the risk China perceives.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Microsoft / Bing is allowed in China.
| zizee wrote:
| Honest question: are you suggesting that microsoft buying
| github makes it _harder_ for the Chinese government to access
| the servers?
| cbozeman wrote:
| The idea of China wanting an open source platform like GitHub
| is akin to Adolf Hitler starting The Nazi Center for Jewish
| Appreciation & Cultural Enrichment.
| ausbah wrote:
| this is a very distasteful analogy
| stunt wrote:
| No, I don't think it's about blocking Github. Many of their
| tech companies are using open source.
|
| For China it's safer to have a Chinese Github ecosystem. Just
| imagine if Github suddenly decide to block Chinese users like
| they did for Iranian users.
|
| It's also strategic for their government and some critical
| private sector to not put their source code on an American
| platform. So there are enough incentives especially after
| everything that happened to Huawei.
| worker767424 wrote:
| How long before this strategy backfires? When does the CCP hurt
| itself because it stifled innovation? When does it have
| political problems because it suppressed the wrong thing? I
| can't tell if this style of governing is super robust or a
| house of cards.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Hard to say because they seem to be letting others do the
| innovating and then they just copy what works.
| mywittyname wrote:
| They seem to be doing pretty well, economically-speaking.
|
| I suspect, so long as they can continue to provide good lives
| for their professional class, the country will continue to
| grow in world influence. The professionals that drive growth
| and innovation probably desire to live in a less
| authoritarian society, but life is generally good enough for
| them to remain complacent, and turn a blind-eye to injustice.
| adventured wrote:
| China is through the period of easy gains in their economic
| expansion from the days of early developing nation status.
| The next 10-20 years will answer your question (including,
| critically, what Xi does from here forward and what comes
| after Xi). If their model stifles - and or to the extent that
| it does - it'll become apparent as economic gains get
| increasingly difficult going forward and the segments they
| begin to compete in are much more challenging (the US in
| software, Germany in high-value manufacturing, going after
| semiconductors, aerospace, building quality automobiles, et
| al.). There have been potent signs all across their economy
| for numerous years now that growth has become far harder and
| more expensive to acquire, how innovation maps to that
| context will be interesting to watch.
|
| Their style of governing is very clearly not super robust. If
| it were they wouldn't need to so extremely tightly control
| their people in every possible manner. They regularly reveal
| how fragile the system is in their behavior, including how
| very easily their party ego is injured (which partially
| reveals how fragile they view their own position, that
| they're so obsessed with maintaining the facade of
| omnipotence; they fear any cracks). That also doesn't mean
| it's a house of cards, the CCP has proven they have staying
| power, even if it's expensive ground to hold.
| temporalparts wrote:
| I'm sure it's hurting CCP right now. Being closed off from
| the rest of the world does have its consequences.
|
| It probably just doesn't hurt CCP enough to matter in the
| short term. It'll probably take closer to half a century
| before we can truly understand if the cumulative effects of
| the pain will amount to anything significant.
| dheera wrote:
| Well yes and no. If they are open to the rest of the world
| a lot of money would end up in Silicon Valley.
|
| If Facebook and Google ran ads all over China, a nice big
| cut of that revenue goes to the IRS instead of China's
| government.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| Given that China already has its own equivalent of
| Facebook and Google, possibly backed by the government.
| Penetrating that market may prove to be a significant
| challenge.
| majormajor wrote:
| That's the parent comment's point: closing the doors led
| to them being able to build and establish that in-house
| stuff instead of sending money to other countries...
| temporalparts wrote:
| The money would only flow there if the services Silicon
| Valley is producing is worth the money to the purchasers.
|
| None of these transactions are zero-sum and tech isn't
| the only thing in the world that matters.
| dheera wrote:
| Well yes but China has its own replacements that are
| worth _even more_ to the purchasers because they are
| highly localized, to a degree that a multi-language
| global product would never be able to accomplish.
| himujjal wrote:
| I am using a github fork of a chinese woman, dacez to build my
| own markup lang.
|
| I have seen considerable chinese github projects. xmake is one
| of them i use
| golemiprague wrote:
| I thought the opposite, they are afraid github will block some
| Chinese software because of political reasons, the same way
| happened now with Trump supporting companies. I can understand
| the reasoning and I think more and more people will try to find
| alternatives to big tech, especially if their politics is not
| aligned with SV taste du jour.
| 430scuderia wrote:
| This. I can't believe there are people on HN cheering on the
| CCP for strengthening its censorship. I guess those are the
| very people that also support it on American soil.
| onenightnine wrote:
| yeah agreed, i don't think they are connecting the dots. they
| are missing large sections of knowledge that would protect
| them and the lives of those around them. but for some odd
| reason they have mental blocks when trying to help them out
| flawed framework
| 430scuderia wrote:
| I mean look how fast they flagged my comment. I guess they
| wanted to prove my point badly. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| Symbiote wrote:
| This is a flamebait comment. Not one comment on this article
| is supportive.
| 430scuderia wrote:
| at the time I wrote it I've read a few comments that was
| fairly supportive but they've been deleted since. Thank you
| for policing the comments I think its great that you are
| making the best use of your time.
|
| wouldn't be the first time somebody tried to gate keep
| criticisms of CCP on here and won't be the last.
| jxramos wrote:
| flamebait, that is a great word mashup that conveys a lot.
| Clickbait for starting a comment flamewar, never saw that
| one before. Gonna keep an eye out for these things with
| this lens.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the word flamebait predates clickbait.
| hehehaha wrote:
| Can someone point me to a significant open source effort
| spearheaded by China? Is Open Source active and embraced among
| developers in China?
| africanboy wrote:
| Baidu and Alibaba have open source projects (RocketMQ has been
| donated to Apache by Alibaba http://rocketmq.apache.org)
|
| Chinese developers are the second largest group of contributors
| on GitHub
|
| there's also a billion and a half of them, most of them don't
| speak english (edit: not all of the Chinese people are
| developers of course)
|
| Anyway, GitHub itself it's not OSS and it's owned by Microsoft
|
| AFAIK open source contributions are not usually rewarded in
| China by employers, but that's true in general in Europe as
| well
| hehehaha wrote:
| Thanks for that info. I knew about Baidu and Alibaba repos
| but I was more curious how open source was culturally
| perceived.
| africanboy wrote:
| I only know from friends living there, take anything I say
| as speculations, but what I gather is that they see open
| source as a technical advantage over starting from scratch,
| it's not a spontaneous movement.
|
| it makes sense from the point of view of a country that has
| gained a leading position worldwide from accurately
| reproducing something that already existed.
|
| judging from the number of Linux distro they are releasing
| I think they are pretty serious about it.
| nip180 wrote:
| Exactly. Reimplementing GitHub is not building a rival to
| GitHub. Like Wikipedia the value isn't in the platform but the
| content hosted by the platform. Until there is a critical mass
| of open source software hosted Chinese GitHub provides very
| little value.
|
| In the west we had a critical mass of open source software and
| then built GitHub. This is putting the cart before the horse.
| horlux wrote:
| vue.js
| llboston wrote:
| vue.js is not sponsored by China, although its founder Evan
| You is Chinese. He immigrated to the US way before starting
| vue.js.
| curuinor wrote:
| Isn't vue from a hong konger? Seems not too great if the goal
| is PRC dominance
| mschip wrote:
| I'm sure they've always wanted this - but recent events likely
| made it a glaring necessity in their eyes. When Apple and Google
| app stores removed Parler it was a big deal, a bigger deal was
| AWS deplatforming them - a logical step further would be removing
| the hosted source code. I'm in no way commenting on whether it
| would be right or wrong, but its not hard to imagine a scenario
| where company morals begin to come into play here.
| muricula wrote:
| I don't think the CCP cares about an obscure American social
| network. They know they have a dependency on American software
| & software distribution mechanisms, & have known far longer
| than Parler has been around.
| impalallama wrote:
| That's a good point. They probably want their own Github as
| much to control it but also so they won't suffer consequences
| from embargos like when Iran was blocked just recently
| mschip wrote:
| The obscure American social network is not the interesting
| bit of information. It's that the infrastructure and delivery
| corporations decided overnight not to support a customer for
| not aligning with their values.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Git and other resources are subject to US sanctions just like
| anyone else. They are the logical next step since the started
| making a fuss over mobile phone makers, networks providers, chip
| makers etc.
| Iolaum wrote:
| IANAL, but my understanding is that this is not true. Free
| software is not sanctioned. Commercial contracts that revolve
| around it are however. For example I think Huawei can still use
| AOSP, but cannot licence play services because they require a
| commercial agreement.
| SllX wrote:
| NIH syndrome as a political ideology.
|
| I guess that's any form of nationalism though.
| boringg wrote:
| Can we just for a moment appreciate the oxymoron nature of the
| title of this article. That's all.
| korethr wrote:
| I can't help but wonder if such an attempt would even work.
|
| Unless I am misunderstanding the culture that makes an open
| source ecosystem work, a free and open exchange of information
| and ideas is one of those fundamental things. When a thing is
| broken, sometimes you have to tell an authority the horribly
| embarrassing fact that the thing is broken. With the CCP
| controlling all information flows and what is or is not fact,
| then ISTM that pointing out that The Peoples' Authentication
| Protocol is fundamentally flawed and insecure could get one
| disappeared just as likely as it would get the protocol fixed.
| BlackjackCF wrote:
| I think this is just following the chain of what's just been
| happening in China with software.
|
| Americas/Europe has Google? We'll make our own that the CCP can
| control Americas/Europe has Uber? We'll make our own that the
| CCP can control. Americas/Europe has GitHub? ...You see where
| this is going.
| badjeans wrote:
| Those are all US companies. What does Europe have to do with
| them?
|
| And like it's been noted many times before here, had Europe
| banned US companies like China had, maybe they would have a
| stronger software development culture, and they could control
| their own data instead of handing over everything to the US.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are a lot of people in China, and most don't speak good
| English. Free exchange is thus already limited before we even
| get into censorship. The large number of people in China means
| they have the potential to create a new ecosystem. They just
| need to get a few of their own people to start it, and then let
| things grow. I don't know if they can pull it off, but they
| have enough people to at least make a good try at it.
|
| Of course they can then censor it as desired.
| nr2x wrote:
| If you go back to the rhetoric of the Clinton-era the belief
| was that the Internet and Capitalism would "free" China from
| authoritarian rule. Instead, the authoritarians managed to co-
| opt both and gain further leverage abroad. They can't do
| everything, but don't bet against the Chinese accomplishing a
| lot of what the West thinks is based on "free and open
| exchange" via responsive authoritarianism.
| duxup wrote:
| I fear it can work. I think despite our distaste for some of
| the censorship that will occur when it comes to social control
| and etc, ultimately the meat of github and open source would be
| entirely functional within a CCP run context.
|
| Bug reports about a particular project? Provide a particular
| leader isn't embarrassed I don't expect anyone to care. I
| suspect they'd let the engineers fight it out and only care
| about the output.
|
| If anything social media faces bigger censorship concerns in
| China... but social media does just fine...
| tharne wrote:
| I think you're right. There's been this long held belief that
| you can't create the level of prosperity seen in the U.S. and
| Europe without having a free(ish) and open society. China is
| showing everyone that there's another way to do it. I don't
| know why people keep underestimating China and the CCP.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm not convinced China is anywhere near showing what you
| describe. I do think some systems like github can still be
| productive.
| zepto wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that almost everything China has
| accomplished during this period of growth has been about
| aggressively adopting practices and technologies that were
| developed in Europe and the US.
|
| What happens now that they have succeeded at this, remains
| to be seen.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Honestly, I do wonder if there is an alternative community out
| there. I know nothing about the Chinese Internet. One of my
| friends had 20k followers on his Twitter-equivalent and he seemed
| like an unassuming fellow. That's a large number.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-19 23:02 UTC)