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1、Against Intellectual Monopoly: Free Software in ChinaYi ZhouYi Zhou is the author of A Challenge to the Intellectual Property Rights: An Economic Study of the Free Software Movement, (in Chinese), Shanghai: Truth & Wisdom Press, 2010. The author gratefully acknowledges research support from the Nati
2、onal Social Science Foundation of China (No. 05BJL014). Mail address: Yi Zhou, Department of Economics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Email: zhou-.Abstract: The Free Software/Open Source movements have not only challenged the proprietary software, but have also inspired many other movements aga
3、inst intellectual monopoly far beyond the software world, challenging the IPR dogma as a whole. However, these have had less influence in China thus far, though there has been a rapid growth of free/open source software in China. This article argues that China now needs a different voice against the
4、 IPR dogma and should make a contribution to the international effort against intellectual monopoly, and the software industry could be where to start. On one hand, China should take further measures to promote the development of free/open source software. On the other hand, China needs to scrutiniz
5、e and reform relevant economic and legal systems and adjust strategy for international negotiations, strengthening antitrust enforcement against software monopoly and taking a tough stance against software patents in international community.Key words: intellectual property rights; intellectual monop
6、oly; free knowledge; proprietary software; free softwareIntroductionOn April 20, 2007, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, a very popular software hero on Chinese campuses, had just finished a speech at Beijing University and was handing out prizes to students. A protestor in his late thirties rush
7、ed across the stage, flashing a banner with “Free Software, Open Source” written on it. Gates and others appeared shocked at the intrusion. The protestor was then taken away by police for questioning. (Associated Press 2007)This one-minute protest in front of Bill Gates in Beijing, according to a Ch
8、ina Daily report, “attracted nation-wide attention and sparked a frenzied discussion about whether all programming codes should be made freely available or not.” (Li 2007)This event was actually evidence of influence on the software domain in China of what was called the Free Software movement initi
9、ated in the US in the 1980s. Free software, as opposed to proprietary software like Microsofts Windows which is protected by the legal system of intellectual property rights (IPR), has been a countervailing power against that system. Statistics have shown that the development of free software has su
10、ccessfully contained Microsofts ambition to extend its monopoly power in the market of PC operating systems to software markets for the Internet. More importantly, the philosophy of the Free Software movement has inspired many other movements against intellectual monopoly far beyond the software dom
11、ain.The Free Software movement, however, has not gained as much popularity in China as in the US and many other countries, which may explain why the one-minute protest made by the brave man in the above news story could attract nation-wide attention, and it has even much less influence beyond the so
12、ftware domain in China than in those other countries. Hence much less economics literature in China on the Free Software movement in general and its development and influence in China in particular. This article is an attempt to analyze the development of free software and its implications in China.
13、The article is organized as follows. The first section describes the Free Software movement and its challenge to the proprietary software and the intellectual property regime. The next section analyzes the development of free software in China. The following section shows that the Free Software/Open
14、 Source movements have had little influence beyond the software domain in China. Then there follows the argument that China now needs a different voice against the IPR dogma and against the intellectual monopoly. The last section is the conclusion.The Free Software Movement and Its ChallengeSharing
15、of software, as Richard Stallman pointed out, “is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking.” In the 1970s, “whenever people from another university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting pr
16、ogram, you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it, change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program.” Those were the years of real free software. (Stallman 2007b)The logic of free software, however, was broken by increasingly popular proprietary software, and the free software communities began to collapse in the early 1980s. Microsoft, established in July 1975, is just such a proprietary-software publisher, and
