There, one of the things they mentioned was that they were hoping that RISC-V in general, and their cores in particular, becomes a platform for academic research. That way, cutting-edge things are shared in the open and the industry benefits globally.
The optimistic view of this is that it's hoping for a better future for all. The cynical view is that open source is much harder to sanction/export control. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
But it’s true that most inventions and innovations in the last 100 years have come from Americans (with work from immigrants, descendants of immigrants, etc). China’s progress economically and technologically has almost entirely been copying those innovations and competing on price due to poor labor and environmental laws and conditions. In many cases it literally involved espionage, and in others it involved unethical stealing from partners or even customers (for example companies that used a manufacturer there).
>> China’s progress economically and technologically has almost entirely been copying those innovations and competing on price due to poor labor and environmental laws and conditions.
That may have been true for a while when they were catching up. They are now leading R&D in a number of areas. They do have more issues (fraud, piling on co-authors) in published research, but there is a lot of legit stuff going on too. There are also cases where China has always been ahead of the US - flat panel displays have never really been manufactured in the U.S. for example. A lot of their innovations are also seen as "just cost reduction" on our end, but that still counts and is part of why they're still competitive even as their labor costs go up.
A large chunk of our western innovations are rooted in "1936" german research. US space program? From Mr Von Braun who was allowed on US land through operation paperclip. Axial jet engine?From Junkers Motoren engine propelling the Me 262. Modern submarines? From u-boats type XXI. Assault rifle? MP43. Highways, synthetic fuel, a lot of modern chemistry... So no, US did not come with most of the last 100s years innovations.
My family comes from a village in Belgium where the 12th panzerdivision SS committed mass murder, I therefore don't glorify these people, thank you. But you have to recognize what your modern comfort has to do with these people, and lower your morale standards accordingly. I'll help you: we are bad persons with low standards and a high, unjustified, self esteem.
Its idiotic to focus on the last 100 years. Those american innovations you mention came on the shoulders of innovations from the arabs, romans, ottomans and many other cultures/societies before them. Where is the praise for them?
Why are we so focused on who is the best. We seriously need a population reset. People can be so idiotic and self absorbed.
Oh yeah sure there are many, but "most" feels like an overreach?
Just off of the top of my head I can think of so many. TV, radar, Penicillin, jet engines, audio cassettes, first programmable computers let alone the ARM CPU you are probably reading this on right now AND the lithium ion battery that is powering it, GSM, DSL, Ariane launchers (not to mention the pioneering German work in WW2), DNA, large hadron collider, MP3, electron microscopes, MRI scanners, the human genome project, TFT screens, IVF and ICSI, the atomic bomb, bagless vacuums - the list is long and varied, and that is just off the top of my head.
Sure the US might have more tech giants than anywhere else, but that isn't where everything happens by a long shot.
> Oh yeah sure there are many, but "most" feels like an overreach?
Definitely, that's what I'm saying btw. Before WWII most invention and discoveries were actually made in Europe, and even though the US took the leadership after that point (in part thanks to immigration of Jewish or East-European scientists), it never was responsible for “most” of them.
Universities always make things open source. I also make everything open source that I make for the university.
It's because you cannot make money with it anyway and the university often allows it, so then it's really good for your CV.
In Europe there is also a lot of stuff open source, and I can honestly say there is no plot by the government to destroy the United States. I don't think Linux is a plan by the Swedish government to destroy the USA.
Most Chinese people in my experience also don't really have any country outside of China on their radar, unless they are in some trading business. China is just so huge compared to for example the US, they really live in their own bubble. It's not something they think about on a monthly let alone daily basis is my personal experience.
And if you want to do a commercial spin-off from your university work, it might be easier to put it all out as MIT/BSD/Apache and then start a completely independent company than to deal with all the paperwork.
This makes life easier for competitors, so it's definitely a tradeoff, but it's the right tradeoff in some circumstances.
I think this is greatly overstated. Generally it's just sheer volume of capital and dedication to building a business that dictates market advantage, not any given persons' knowledge or know-how (though that's obviously worth paying for if you have the capital). I'd argue the primary reason why proprietary ownership of software exists isn't to make life harder for competitors but rather to make it harder for folks to figure out what they're actually paying for and bypassing the fees to actually fix (let alone improve) the software.
Other motive could be to undermine western dominance in chip design. You give away free a good enough thing that is competing with your competitor's moat. If the gap is not that significant this can ruin the business for your competitor.
You can see the same with Apple and all big tech funding OpenStreetMap for example vs Google Maps. Even decreasing income for the competitor is worth it strategically. Or Satya Nadella saying in an interview that if ChatGPT just makes Google's costs higher for search is a big win for Microsoft.
Realistically, it's probably the group inside the Chinese Academy of Sciences wanting for a larger impact factor for their review, similar to all other state sponsored researching institutes.
The strategy is to do PR for China, market for adoption (to break chip duopoly), get contributions (free work), and build momentum to a point where the tech is commoditized (so they can be immune to sanctions).
