] Sell one operating system to every citizen in China and
] you could make some real money. But in China software is
] pirated, not sold legitimately. What's a producer of
] intellectual property to do?

Ahh, this makes me think back to the days when I had a real job. My company's world HQ was located two floors below Forbes's Burlingame, CA outpost, while on the other side of the globe in Taipei, Taiwan, my companys regional office was two floors above Microsoft's Taipei outpost. When I made my first visit to this office, my first trip over to Asia, I thought Microsoft's office appeared to be forgotten.. There only because when you are as big as Microsoft, you have to have a presence everywhere. Clear evidence of this to me was the very large "Windows 95" banner strung across their lobby area, mind you, this was less then two years ago. Months later, durring another visit to this Taipei office, rennovations were under way.. It was clear that someone in Redmond had decided that they needed to get their shit together in the region. This lined up with what I was reading in all the industry rags. The slightly drab appearence of their office, chararistic of Taipei, was being replaced with the earth-tones-sprinkled-with-primary-colors Microsoft style that one becomes very familiar with when they swallow a company you work at.. Ahh, memories of another real job I had once. Anyway, I smoked many cigerettes with the Decius staring at that "Windows 95" banner..

I wouldn't be living up to my reputation unless I spun this little story into an advocacy pitch for Open Source. So here it comes.. I remember a discussion I was having with someone, in some corner in some random club in Hong Kong.. This person, was explaining to me how the average factory in the Guangzhou area in China operated. While just like in the US and most other places, factories only make particular components of final products. The overall process of creating a given mouse or keyboard may be spread across several companies/factories, but there were stark differences in how many of the factories managed their machine infrastructure. It was not only common, but normal, for most companies to actually manafacture the machines themselves that they use to build their products. That is not the norm most places. You don't build a lathe unless lathes are part of your core business, you buy a lathe. Well, apparently thats not the way it works in China I'm told.. Aparently, its likely you build the hardware you use to manafacture your products. At least, thats the way it had been, its changing as their tech and manafacturing industry matures. Taking that into account, these people are going to love Open Source Software. There is a certain degree to which that kind of approach is the one you need to take with (certain) software in the enterprise. When you are talking about things like Operation Support Systems (The other application of the OSS acronym), its rare you find a program suite that fits your needs exactly. There is always a degree to which you wind up inventing your own wheels, abet based off the wheels of others. I think this, along with China's attitude to IP, is going to play into things in the long run.

Forbes.com: Microsoft's Long March (into China)