> "I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software - whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI - and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed," Warner said in a statement to Reuters.
This is clearly an attack on open source. Seems incredibly odd that they use the word "export" to refer to information (that is to say: speech)
I really wonder which corporations are lobbying for this stupidity, I'd like to hear some fucking names so I can boycott them
> After four years and one regulatory change, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.
FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China.
> FWIW, I imagine in 4-5 years this “battle” will pretty much already be decided wrt chipmaking in China.
If I'm understanding you correctly...
It's not that easy for China (or the US) to spin up their own fabs, particularly ones that compete to those in Taiwan. Even with some expertise and fat pockets, you might not get the same results. It's a lot of trial and error and improving yield for small processes to the point where it's economical.
On top of that, the cutting edge is already developing in Taiwan (i.e. next gen fabs).
That's why Taiwan is such a coveted area for the PRC (and the US) -- besides the traditional political issues regarding their exodus from mainland China.
Why is it not easy for China to spin up their own fabs? They have a strategic plan / industrial policy[1]. They have the industrial base[2][3]. They have pumping out engineering graduates[3]. †
[4] “China awarded 1.38 million engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2020. The comparable American number is 197,000 (144,000 in engineering and 54,000 in computer science), or just one-seventh of China’s total.”
† You know the way we have this mental model in our heads for the size of the US economy post WWII versus the rest of the world?, we're going to have to update our mental model of the size of China's economy today versus the rest of the world.
Yeah but quantity has always been chinas strength. Where they have historically struggled is quality. If they can bring the quality up to acceptable levels then those numbers would be truly impressive. That’s what they are striving for
The US is also not great at quality (but good at innovating at speed at the expense of all else). Think Detroit and the waste of engineering talent at FAANGs.
Some companies can make quality items but I agree not universal or guaranteed. It’s just that historically fraud has been low but every year it gets worse and is more common.
Comac is the opposite of quality and the iPhone quality is so high because Apple is able to set and hold their high western qa standards. A domestic industry would have to struggle with the supply can taking shortcuts at every level and that’s much harder of a task. That’s why Chinese concrete is often poor quality, it could be higher quality they know how to make it at high quality levels but it isn’t due to rampant cheating.
the quote sounds like it came from someone who didn't really fully grasp the phrase and the implications of what 'export control' might look like in reference to open-source.
it's rich too listening to a senator talking as if the concept of open-source blindsided them given that the attention of Washington has been the very thing the various OSS groups having been working towards since forever.
> the quote sounds like it came from someone who didn't really fully grasp the phrase and the implications of what 'export control' might look like in reference to open-source.
Or didn't study recent history., the export control on strong encryption meant that American contributors would follow the letter of the law, and others outside of the US - eg Canadians for BouncyCastle[1] - would freely provide the missing illegal-to-export functionality to the rest of the world.
1. If memory serves, an American cryptographer once crossed into Canada to perform a 'forbidden commit'. The functionality technically wasn't an export of the US
This is clearly an attack on open source. Seems incredibly odd that they use the word "export" to refer to information (that is to say: speech)
I really wonder which corporations are lobbying for this stupidity, I'd like to hear some fucking names so I can boycott them