OStatic

Slowly but surely, Apple has been trying to crack the Chinese market with the iPhone. There have been many obstructions, and China Mobile has already expressed its desire to push Android-based phones, such as Dell's, throughout the country. As MacNewsWorld reported late last week, though, the iPhone's slow boat to China has finally arrived. China Unicom, the second largest wireless provider in China, announced on Friday that it will start carrying iPhones in this year's third quarter. Is there likely to be a smackdown between Android-based phones and the iPhone in China, and how free and open will China's government allow cutting-edge smartphones to be?

It's no secret that certain parts of the world favor open source more than others do. Today, Actuate, which specializes in open source business intelligence applications, is out with its fourth annual open source survey results. The results are based on responses from global business and I.T. professionals from the financial services sector, public sector and the manufacturing industry. This year the survey also included Chinese respondents. Here are some of the highlights from the results.

It's not breaking news that software piracy is a colossal problem, especially in China. ComputerWorld reports on how the piracy issue is prompting Nanchang, the capital of China's Jiangxi province, to require internet cafe operators to replace pirated Windows versions with Red Flag Linux. And there's the rub: they must replace pirated software with Red Flag Linux for 5,000 yuan ($725). The price includes two years of support, and the license lasts a lifetime. It is unclear whether this license is per seat, or per business location, or whether system and security updates fall into the support area. There is some confusion on whether purchasing a legal Windows server license is an option. There is no confusion, it seems, on this front -- Red Flag Linux is the Linux cafe owners must use.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols surmises this has got to be the worst way to market Linux. I'd hazard a guess it's not marketing going on in Nanchang, but his worries are spot on.