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Again, Open Solaris is a development project, not a product supported by Sun. China is standardizing on Linux, as they get a full production level operating system that is completely open and free, unlike Open Solaris. There are quite a few differences, as any Linux zealot will be happy to tell you, as if you didn't already know.

Again, Open Solaris is a development project, not a product supported by Sun.

You just don't get open source, do you? I know it's a strange model for someone so firmly entrenched in commercial-only, proprietary software thought.

Let me draw a parallel. Linux is a development project, not commercially supported by Linus Torvalds. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a product based on Linux with commercial support given by Red Hat. Same for SuSE, Mandriva, Red Flag and all the other commercial distributions. Sun's supported commercial product based on Open Solaris is currently Solaris. And as with Linux others are allowed, even encouraged by Sun, to sell their own products and support based on Open Solaris.

You still miss the basic fact: If you had your wish and Linux disappeared from China, Open Solaris could quickly take its place. Sun hopes that would be by the Chinese buying Solaris, but it could just as easily be by a Chinese-branded and supported version of Open Solaris.

China is standardizing on Linux

Linux was first. Sun has a lot of time and marketshare to make up.

So, China won't deploy Sun, because of patent infringement? But, they'll freely pirate Microsoft and use that? Amazing. By the way, scroll down in this article and read the part where it says Microsoft is "committed to the Chinese market and to supporting the Chinese government's efforts to develop the Chinese software industry..."