> o/s is where you share your designs freely, not just rip others off.
It's effectively the same thing. It's just connotations. In fact China has a lot of bad connotations associated with everything they do so it's hard to talk about the country in an unbiased way. There's so much pride and patriotism that gets introduced into the equation especially given the fact that it's on track to overtake the US in terms of economic size.
On the other hand, open source has too much good connotations associated with the term. If the core philosophy was exploited to the maximum extent you essentially get China.. where the incentive to innovate is much less than the incentive to copy someone else's innovation.
>China copies everything and everyone else, but then still tries to keep it's own secrets.
Doesn't everybody do this? The US full of closed source and open source code/products? The thing with China is that stopping illegal copying is unlikely to be enforced so the only defense against intellectual property in China is secrecy.
In the US both secrecy and law are used for protection and many companies and people exploit both of these tools.
The use of "rip off" when referring to a copy, typically means copies done illicitly or of poor quality. Being permitted to do so is antithetical to this.
> Further investigation taught me that the Chinese have a parallel system of traditions and ethics around sharing IP, which lead me to coin the term “gongkai”. This is deliberately not the Chinese word for “Open Source”, because that word (kaiyuan) refers to openness in a Western-style IP framework, which this not. Gongkai is more a reference to the fact that copyrighted documents, sometimes labeled “confidential” and “proprietary”, are made known to the public and shared overtly, but not necessarily according to the letter of the law. However, this copying isn’t a one-way flow of value, as it would be in the case of copied movies or music. Rather, these documents are the knowledge base needed to build a phone using the copyright owner’s chips, and as such, this sharing of documents helps to promote the sales of their chips. There is ultimately, if you will, a quid-pro-quo between the copyright holders and the copiers.
Let's be real. 7 dollars (inc tax & shipping probably more) for a coat hanger? 0.5 dollars and i'm in, maybe. Cool idea, not for everyone, not life changing thing like a lot of people here are saying.
>All of China/Asia/Africa are free manufacturing for the West…
Not free. But extremely cheap.
>Of course, the view that they don’t innovate and only knockoff the West is also hilariously false.
Of course not. I never made this claim. But in China, the incentive to innovate is much lower due to lack of enforcement of intellectual property rights. So of course in terms of cost/benefit ratio every individual in China is more incentivized to copy someone else's innovation rather than innovate themselves. It's the most logical move.
It's sort of a strange parasitic symbiosis between the US and China that in theory should never work. When China steals ideas and manufacturing from the US and tries to sell it back to the US, one would think there's trade imbalance that would cause the whole thing to break down.
The thing that keeps it afloat is marketing at quality control. China can rip off a product but issues with marketing and QC prevent them from effectively selling it. So what happens is the US uses China to manufacture and then they sell the products at a huge margin above the manufacturing cost to everyone in the world including China.
Everybody gets fucked in this scenario except for US corporations. But at the same time everybody makes enough money such that the whole economic cycle doesn't fall apart.
I’m aware you left yourself a bit of wriggle room versus the absolute claim. Doesn’t change how it sounds.
> When China steals ideas
You know how they say the execution matters, not just the idea?
> and manufacturing from the US
US companies bring the plan, but the Chinese factories have unparalleled skills in actually manufacturing the product into reality.
Not sure how you are claiming that they both can and can’t deliver the required quality? Almost everything, high and low quality, can be manufactured in China. Spend the full $$$ value and you’ll get unbeatable quality. But pay peanuts, get cheap things.
> marketing at quality control. China can rip off a product
To continue my point above, they take that product and manufacture it with the best cost-value ratio for the mass consumer. You can always get various levels of quality in knockoffs.
> sell the products at a huge margin above the manufacturing cost
This is actually connected to my previous post. The West is able to do this solely due to economic and currency disparities, which are further perpetuated by the West. Hence, you get:
> Not free. But extremely cheap.
The West is completely dependent on the non-West for labor. It’s such a massive point of failure that the Western lifestyle would fall apart otherwise.
>I’m aware you left yourself a bit of wriggle room versus the absolute claim. Doesn’t change how it sounds.
No. What happened here is you interpreted it as a insult to your pride. That did not occur. What occurred was a statement of a fact. It was you're own pride and bias that changed how it sounded.
>You know how they say the execution matters, not just the idea?
So. What's your point? Everybody knows this. Why are you stating something obvious? I think you were so clouded by your pride that you can't see that I'm neutral. I really don't care. Your tone only became neutral when you realized I was a neutral party. You were blinded by your own pride when you thought you were communicating with an "enemy" and when you realized I'm neutral that cleared your mind. Now you're talking some sense.
>Not sure how you are claiming that they both can and can’t deliver the required quality? Almost everything, high and low quality, can be manufactured in China. Spend the full $$$ value and you’ll get unbeatable quality. But pay peanuts, get cheap things.
I said marketing AND QC. There's a ton of low quality shit coming out of China. A ton. There's a ton of high quality stuff too that's behind a wall of bad marketing. You just need to compare TEMU and Amazon.
You say you're not sure how I made a claim that they can and cant' deliver the required quality then RIGHT after that statement you say almost everything high and low quality comes out China. So you aren't sure how I can make such a "claim" then you make the SAME claim right after that sentence. That makes no sense.
>To continue my point above, they take that product and manufacture it with the best cost-value ratio for the mass consumer. You can always get various levels of quality in knockoffs.
Quality is inconsistent enough that Chinese products are associated with poor quality. Additionally the marketing is just bad, your products may be made in China but the brand is rarely ever Chinese.
>This is actually connected to my previous post. The West is able to do this solely due to economic and currency disparities, which are further perpetuated by the West. Hence, you get:
Good we're in agreement.
>The West is completely dependent on the non-West for labor. It’s such a massive point of failure that the Western lifestyle would fall apart otherwise.
Not completely dependent. And not permanently dependent. Advanced manufacturing is still very much US exclusive. For example, boeing air liners. China does not know how to manufacture those things yet. And given the fact the US knows advanced manufacturing they can implement basic manufacturing again if the need arises. BUT, and this is a huge but, as more and more time passes with America not reinvigorating manufacturing they will slip deeper and deeper into permanent dependence.
But overall we're in agreement here. Next time be more careful before you charge in with your guns armed. It's better to be neutral as you see the world with clearer eyes.
> No. What happened here is you interpreted it as an insult to your pride.
You see, the thing is, I’m not even incidentally or partially Chinese. I just really despise the Western pride and xenophobic judgement people like you cast! I don’t know how you claim to be neutral, but I’m definitely not attempting to be neutral.
Anyways, I’m also gonna end my argument here. I see no value.
I'm Chinese by race. A US citizen by birth. As such I hold no pride for either country.
How can I be xenophobic against my own race? Additionally how can I be xenophobic against people in my own country who I grew up with?
You don't realize the extent of true neutrality. I see what is now. You're not all about patriotism or pride. You're on the side of idealized fairness. Where all things are unrealistically equal.
China is the apex of the open source philosophy taken to the maximum extent.