14 DAY TRIAL // After China last month decided to ban Windows 8 on government computers, country officials now asked the authorities of a province to cancel orders for new PCs running this particular operating system.
Jiangsu province in south of Shanghai planned to purchase computers running Windows 8 and upgrade the local hardware infrastructure, but due to a notification received from the central government in February, authorities decided to cancel the acquisition completely.
A report published by Bloomberg and citing the state-run China Central Television also adds that Windows 8 has been referred to by a local computer-science profession as a “big challenge to the national strategy for information security,” so more provinces might ban Windows 8 in the coming months.
Microsoft, of course, defended Windows 8 and said millions of consumers across the world already considered the operating system as one of the most secure versions to date and government officials could always investigate the product for backdoors or any other potential software that could be bundled into the source code and used for spying on users or authorities.
“Our Government Security Program allows governments to review our source code to confirm there are no back doors,” Kathy Roeder, a Microsoft spokeswoman, said. “Customers around the world have evaluated and embraced Windows 8 as our most secure operating system.”
Windows 8 was banned on government computers in China last month, in a move that was considered to be the country's very own method to take revenge against Microsoft after the recent drop of support for Windows XP, but also to respond to the United States over the spying and hacking claims.
The Redmond-based software giant told us in a statement that despite the ban, it's still open to negotiations, so it would continue to discuss with the Chinese government on possible ways to bring Windows 8 on their computers. In the meantime, Windows 7 is still being offered to authorities, the company said.
"This morning, the China Central Government Procurement Center posted a notification titled ‘Bidding Process for Government Purchasing Energy-efficient IT Products.’ The notification indicates that Windows 8 operating system is excluded in the bidding,” a Microsoft spokesperson told us.
“We were surprised to learn about the reference to Windows 8 in this notice. Microsoft has been working proactively with the Central Government Procurement Center and other government agencies through the evaluation process to ensure that our products and services meet all government procurement requirements. We have been and will continue to provide Windows 7 to government customers. At the same time we are working on the Window 8 evaluation with relevant government agencies.”
In the meantime, China is also developing its own Linux-based operating system that would continue the transition from Microsoft software and thus protect the government computers from the backdoors that they claim are part of Windows 8.