I disagree with the premise that open-source is “Western” philosophy. China is a huge driver of open-source software. Huawei and Alibaba are top Linux kernel contributors and every day I hear about a new RISC-V startup from China. If anything, China is the realm where all knowledge is shared and the West is where knowledge is hidden behind IP laws.
He specifically writes that Free Software is part of the western philosophy and that “open-source” is the corporate spin-off from that, which indeed as also mentioned in the article has also seen some significant uptake in China. Although arguably a bit reluctantly and probably mainly to appease US IP/copyright interests.
Asian countries are very lax about IP in general. It would not suprise me that as China and other Asian countries grow in importance, free and open source software also grows with them.
Free and Open Source Software depends on copyright. Looking at how lax many Chinese ARM development board vendors deal with the Linux Kernel GPL requirements and how many of these boards become early electronic waste just because the vendor can’t be bothered to share the source-code like legally required does not make me very optimistic about this at all :(
