Why China is giving away its tech for free
Its newfound fondness for open-source is awkward for an authoritarian state
Underpinning the digital economy is a deep foundation of open-source software, freely available for anyone to use. The majority of the world’s websites are run using Apache and Nginx, two open-source programs. Most computer servers are powered by Linux, another such program, which is also the basis of Google’s Android operating system. Kubernetes, a program widely used to manage cloud-computing workloads, is likewise open-source. The software is maintained and improved upon by a global community of developers.
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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “People’s code”
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