Open Source and Censorship Controls
“Will Information Technology Reshape the North-South Asyemmetry of Power in the Global Economy?”, by Weber and Bussell, interesting addressed the growth of open source software in China.
It notes that Linux sales there grew 20 percent in 2004 with high growth expected to continue. The Chinese government “declared Linux the ‘operating system of choice’ for new installations” in 2003. In 2002 half of Chinese programmers surveyed reported having written Linux applications, and 15 percent more expected to. The growth in use of Linux and other open source software by US information technology companies - MySQL, Apache, Google, Yahoo - is also cited.
It thus stands to reason that at least some, if not much, of the infrastructure used by the Chinese government to control and censor the Internet operates on Linux or other open source software.
Coupling this with the reference to China’s bureaucratic patent invalidation process and the prevalence of software piracy there, the ability of the US government to embargo ICT from the Chinese government could likely be subverted. Software, or perhaps even services, that may otherwise have been procured from or provided by US suppliers might instead be developed locally, obtained through open source third-party developers, or copied from licensed technology (the legality of which will likely depend on national perspective).
If it becomes the policy of the US government to restrict the transfer of ICT that would support Chinese government Internet censorship, it would thus seem that open source development would enable a certain amount of evasion from such efforts.