China's Biggest Startups Ditch Oracle and IBM for Home-Made Tech (bloomberg.com) 132
For years, companies like Oracle and IBM invested heavily to build new markets in China for their industry-leading databases. Now, boosted in part by escalating U.S. tensions, one Chinese upstart is stepping in, winning over tech giants, startups and financial institutions to its enterprise software. From a report: Beijing-based PingCAP already counts more than 300 Chinese customers. Many, including food delivery giant Meituan, its bike-sharing service Mobike, video streaming site iQIYI and smartphone maker Xiaomi are migrating away from Oracle and IBM's services toward PingCAP's, encapsulating a nation's resurgent desire to Buy China. PingCAP's ascendancy comes as the U.S. cuts Huawei off from key technology, sending chills through the country's largest entities while raising questions about the security of foreign-made products. That's a key concern as Chinese companies modernize systems in every industry from finance and manufacturing to healthcare by connecting them to the internet.
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Why is this news?
Not so much news - just evidence of what the US claims China as doing: stealing IP from companies that do business in China (collaboratively by coercion and then the Chinese partner stealing their technology later). I dunno whether PingCAP was in a partnership w/ either IBM or Oracle, but business software is pretty mature these days so that other potential players can have a shot. However, the amusing thing about this is that companies like IBM or Oracle that thought they could increase the top line big
Re:Anyone smart would (Score:4, Informative)
While the part about China stealing IP is true in other cases, it seems not what is happening here:
The Bloomberg article says "The startup [PingCap] is one of the newest members of a cohort of open-source database providers such as PostgreSQL and SQLite that are upending the market."
Despite the broken vocabulary of the sentence (PostgreSQL and SQLite are not database providers, they are database management systems), the meaning is clear:
Chinese companies are switching to cheaper Open Source solutions. Which is not IP theft, these databases are legally available for free.
Also, with the new US sanctions Chinese companies have a justified worry that they may be cut off from support or new versions of the software they use. So there is a double incentive here to switch. Cost savings and getting rid of a dangerous dependency.
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Maybe. It's not clear what the license is, so it's not clear that it would qualify as an open source license. Reporters aren't to be trusted to know what they're talking about.
That said, there's no particular reason it shouldn't be a fork of PostgreSQL. They'd probably need to customize it to handle Chinese characters better, redo a bunch of the documentation, etc.
Were I a Chinese company, I wouldn't trust anything hosted on a US server, and I'd be dubious about British and Canadian ones. And if it's Op
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It's not clear what the license is, so it's not clear that it would qualify as an open source license. Reporters aren't to be trusted to know what they're talking about.
Wikipedia says PostgreSQL has its own FOSS License, and SQLite is in the public domain. The article does not note any other RDBMS by name.
Otherwise I agree that it is probably a local fork. Easier than develop the software from scratch.
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Yes, I think it's a local fork of a FOSS database, but done under Chinese laws I don't know what that means for licensing. It could be the same license, they might have rolled their own...and the one they rolled might or might not qualify as FOSS.
Copyrights, after all, are national laws. Different countries have different rules. I don't even know how serious they are about the Berne Convention. And if that's for domestic use, anyone who wanted to challenge it would need to do so in a Chinese court.
N.B.:
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Yes, but there are all sorts of "cover cases" in what are derivative works. Those are not the same from nation to nation. I'd be willing to bet that in some countries it's illegal to link a proprietary library to an open source work (under some particular license) and in others it's quite legal...just to take an example.
Double standard (Score:1)
The US bans IT products (hardware and software) from its own markets, then complains bitterly about limited access for its corporations in China.
Re:Double standard (Score:5, Insightful)
my bet is that its not the US complaining. this is Bloomberg. The only companies being 'harmed' are Oracle and IBM, allegedly. Does any of us even find them relevant? When was the last time you thought 'wow that Oracle stack is the Cadillac database'. None of the top tech companies are even using these databases.
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my bet is that its not the US complaining. this is Bloomberg.
Quite. What the fuck kind of startup anywhere uses Oracle and IBM?
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Not moving away due to current political tensions (Score:2, Insightful)
But no one in China has even banned anything. These companies are moving away from, let's face it, large bloated expensive solutions... and sure it makes even more sense to move to a Chinese provider if there's going to be political and economic tension between China and the US. I don't even know what the problem is here.
They are not moving away due to current poltical tensions. They are moving away because it is the long term strategic plan of the Chinese government not to use foreign products. What IBM and Oracle is facing is nothing new. This is what has been happening for decades. Lure a western company in with promises of a huge vast untapped market. Establish joint ventures to avoid various business and governmental obstacles. Technology transfers and other techniques are used to train the domestic workforce, which ba
This is the failed logic of trade wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies don't stop working when politicians declare trade wars. People don't stop wanting food and other goods and services and companies don't want to just stop supplying those goods and services.
So, ultimately what happened to is that companies caught up in trade wars start looking for other suppliers. That's a heavy frustration at first, but it eventually works itself out.
This is the failed logic of a trade war. The only thing, THE ONLY THING, businesses value more that cost in procurement is reliability. If you aren't reliable, then we can't do business. The only thing trade wars do is make suppliers unreliable. Companies then just go looking for other suppliers. So, when you declare a trade war with the intention of boosting your nation's companies, you end up causing those companies to lose customers forever.
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Correct - that is the goal - to get off China's tit. It's gonna smart, but it's best for us in the long term. We never should have been on there to begin with, if not for our insatiable greed, which is not something to be proud of.
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Tell that to the American farmers. ... And why haven't we banned coal exports to China yet?
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probably because we dont care if they fuck up their own home? Yes I know co2 is a global gas, I was thinkng more along the lines of the acid rain and other harmful environmental aspects.
Re: This is the failed logic of trade wars (Score:4, Interesting)
Trade wars like econmonic stimulas needs to be short. You can't dig your heels and hold out for a better deal. If you have to double down you have lost the trade wars.(Trump's is on what round 3,4)
You need short bursts, and then to start rebuilding.
Also this trade wars has only begun to hurt companies as they planned ahead and stocked up to cover themselves. When that overstock dries up is when you will find consumers frustrated.
Re: This is the failed logic of trade wars (Score:1)
Excuse me but if we had treated China the way they have treated us in trade for the last few decades they'd still be struggling to grow enough rice to feed their people, not worrying about a few companies going on a high tech black list.
We have been in a trade war with China for many years. The only change is we're now fighting back. If you think there's been fare or free or open or any other kind of not-one-sided trade going on then you're extremely ignorant.
Educate yourself before posting tds inspired n
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"Trade wars like econmonic stimulas needs to be short. You can't dig your heels and hold out for a better deal. If you have to double down you have lost the trade wars.(Trump's is on what round 3,4)"
"Trade wars are easy to win." ~Donald J. Trump
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But you're not looking at the bigger picture.
South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan. The China tariffs have given these countries a huge opportunity to steal Chinese exports.
The longer the US holds out, the more factories will be moved to non-Chinese countries. We might even see some industry returning to the US given enough time.
Chinese exports to the US in 2018 - $539.5 billion
US exports to China in 2018 - $120.3 billion
It's a grotesque imbalance of trade - why get rid of the tariffs? Let's allow
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Those factories were already moving out of China because of higher labor costs. It's true, though, this will speed up the move. It will also speed up the modernization of China.
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I keep buying stuff from China because it's cheap and good (enough) quality.
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to some extent, but i really doubt the trade war played that much of a role. There are plenty of companies that use MongoDB or MariaDB. Considering how much IBM and Oracle charge for their shit, it was only a matter of time before people find cheaper solutions. I think there had been internal debate, but the risk of disrupting services drove a desire for internal testing prior to rollout. A trade war only sped the process up.
Google itself uses BigTable
YouTube uses MySQL so a transition to MariaDB would have
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Sure, the highest net-worth technology companies can make and service their own database, and should. But If you are literally anyone else it makes zero sense to build your own database system.
Everyone else would be smart to procure a service that meets your needs best.
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but it makes complete sense to use an already existing and free database. MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB are more than adequate for 90% of businesses. By the time you get big enough to need something else, you should be making enough bank to support that effort.
Re: This is the failed logic of trade wars (Score:3)
Free as in puppy.
Fact: most companies aren't tech companies and have very limited IT experience. Take a going civil engineering company like Jacobs for example. It's a really big company, but they don't have any rational reason to roll their own database systems. It makes far more sense just to pay someone to do it for them so they can focus on designing highways.
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Who out there knows enough sql to do joins, merges, etc; but has no clue how to install it? Heck mysql gives you 3 examples of my.conf depending on how heavily it will get used. Optimizing is rather trivial. Besides why still pay oracle when there are plenty of consutant firms out there happy to manage your db server for you.
Re: This is the failed logic of trade wars (Score:2)
All that was complete gibberish to the Bay majority of people.
If you are a small business, then there are lots of companies that can help you. But the bigger you are the fewer and fewer companies that can provide the service you need.
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Amazon wrote their own NoSQL database or so they claim. its highly hush hush. My guess is they altered someone elses but rather not admit it.
I can assure you, DynamoDB is a fully home-grown Amazon solution. And it probably would have been much better if they started from an OpenSource solution.
What failed logic? Logic sound. (Score:1)
You are confusing tariffs with government spying.
Tarrifs are there are tools to help balance trade, and my be temporary in nature (sometimes never even implemented as we saw in Mexico).
But this story is a case that is very real and very technical in nature, not about trade wars. It is about government spying.
The U.S. was very, very right to be concerned about the Chinese government spying through many products sold by Chinese companies. I don't think many of you really comprehend how much state control th
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I didn't say it wasn't a logical response to the situation. I said the opposite. It's absolutely logical. I would absolutely do the same thing.
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In this case, China has an even bigger incentive... mostly because their economy is already starting to run out of gas. Manufacturing jobs are bleeding off to Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, and lots of other places where cheap labor is way cheaper than the traditionally low wages/low COL found in China's workforce. With quality nearly on-par to China in most of these places, China's got something they haven't really had in decades: competition. They were able to stave off a lot of it for year
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The US couldn't sanction Cuba into submission, thinking China will cave just because Trump huffs and puffs a little... good luck with that. Nations like China don't have leaders that need popular support to stay in power, Xi Jinping could sit through storms that'd oust any US president. You can look to Venezuela, even as the economy lies in ruins Maduro stays in power while Trump could be out of office already next year. You can see it in their business dealings, they offer deals that are great for next qua
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All leaders need public support to stay in power, but not all leaders have complete control of the media, internet access, and what you're allowed to say...
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All leaders need public support to stay in power, but not all leaders have complete control of the media, internet access, and what you're allowed to say...
If you can point to an outside country that is the cause of your ills, it makes it even easier for a leader to stay in power, regardless of what that country is doing.
Nothing rallies the people around a 'strong leader' than anger at foreigners. See: Russia, the entire middle east, maybe even the USA.
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Not quite a neat comparison: Cuba had a solid patron all the way up until 1992, when the USSR failed and Cuba pretty much failed along with it. Cuba then, until Fidel died and his brother had to enact a ton of reforms, lived hand-to-mouth - with occasional tourist trade from Canada, the EU, etc. Even today, Cuba is grossly short on a lot of things (including their vaunted healthcare system), and they still have food ration booklets. Not exactly a condition that I think China ever wants to find itself in.
Sco
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The US couldn't sanction Cuba into submission, thinking China will cave just because Trump huffs and puffs a little... good luck with that. Nations like China don't have leaders that need popular support to stay in power, Xi Jinping could sit through storms that'd oust any US president. You can look to Venezuela, even as the economy lies in ruins Maduro stays in power while Trump could be out of office already next year. You can see it in their business dealings, they offer deals that are great for next quarter or next year but like five, ten years down the road very favorable for China. I doubt it'll be any different in politics.
The problem with totalitarian leaders is that holding onto power requires submission of the masses. That submission can arise from economic benefits (higher income, infrastructure), nationalism (Tibet, Taiwan, Falun Gong, South China Sea), or policing (Tiananmen tanks, firewall, press control, social credit). Submission that relies solely on policing only works when suppressing a minimal part of the population. At some point, the size of the masses overwhelms the ability to police. That's why China is b
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The problem with totalitarian leaders is that holding onto power requires submission of the masses.
Not really, not on an individual level. Lots of people have been very miserable about their leaders, but the system is so big and they're so small. What we see in successful revolutions is a very big ketchup effect, like trying to start a fire but it's all sparks and fizzles until suddenly it catches fire and you can just pile on the firewood. China has invested a lot in putting out those fires before they become threatening, yes Tiananmen Square but that was 30 years ago. Today they'll cut you off at the k
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We absolutely should be trying to shift our imports away from China. This is clear and there are almost no rational arguments to be made against this.
The "rational argument" against this is that it will increase the cost of imports, that lower-cost imports have resulted in formerly 'luxurity' items being commonplace even in low-income households. The folks who normally hate or simply don't give a shit about the poor will suddenly become the poors' biggest defenders as they argue that cheaper foreign goods are better for those with limited means.
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I don't disagree with of what you said, I'm not sure this is entirely what's going on here.
Oracle is a very powerful sophisticated relational database system. If you were to put a gun to my head and say, "You must develop a large web app using a commercial and proprietary relational database in the persistence tier," Oracle would surely be on my short list. However, if you didn't make me do that, I'd do what everybody else in the world does: use some kind of open source nosql database. Or perhaps depend
Nothing to do with a US trade war (Score:3, Interesting)
Companies don't stop working when politicians declare trade wars.
They are not moving away due to recent US actions. What is happening is the execution of long term strategic planning of the Chinese government not to use foreign products. What IBM and Oracle is facing is nothing new. This is what has been happening for decades. Lure a western company in with promises of a huge vast untapped market. Establish joint ventures to avoid various business and governmental obstacles. Technology transfers and other techniques are used to train and equip the domestic workforce, whi
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If Oracle had to fight, for real, it would make the world a bit more tolerable.
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If everyone can just ditch Oracle, it will make the world a better place.
Why? Do you think Larry would end up shitting on the sidewalk in SF?
Are you saying he doesn't do that already?
It is a must with social credit scores (Score:1)
In China, your purchases are tracked, and your social credit score is moved up or down if you buy Chinese versus other places.
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In the US, Google, Facebook, etc. track you and sell you to advertisers based on your "sucker score".
How is this any different?
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The socialist tyrants in China will stop their people from doing this based on their score.
Please try not to equivocate as it gives cover to the bad guys.
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It sounds like you are confused. "The Bad Guys" are governments and corporations and they work together. In the US, corporations tend to have more power and they run the government. In China, the government has more power and runs the corporations. Either way, they are not working for you.
I don't trust the US or China and I don't think either of them are "Good Guys".
(And yes, Google can keep you from getting on an airplane... just one example... remember the people who bought a pressure cooker after the Bos
PingCAP Source (Score:3, Insightful)
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Love FOSS!
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I have no doubt. My bet is that its some NoSQL fork like MongoDB. It doesnt specifically have to be an RDBMS. Yahoo uses a modified version of PostgreSQL which is well within their rights to do so.
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My bet is that it (https://github.com/pingcap/tidb) is a mostly MySQL compatible open source database using https://rocksdb.org/ [rocksdb.org] as backend
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what would be the point? they could just use the OSS DB's as they are.
Question (Score:2)
So what pirated/stolen technologies is PinCAP running on?
You can't ditch Oracle. (Score:1)
You will be talking to their high pressure salespeople. And if that doesn't work you will be facing the BSA audits.
Because no one would ditch Oracle!
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In Communist China Customer audits Oracle
competition (Score:2)
My employer is a victim of vendor lock-in with Oracle. Even a little bit of competition could make them at least pretend to make good products, rather than bullying their customers into accepting amateur grade software. Oracle has become another Microsoft, riding the success of something they made in the 90s, and then making deliberately broken software on top of it just to show off the fact they have the power to force people to buy whatever they tell them to buy.
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