I am sitting here talking to Bill Xu, founder of ZEUUX, a China-based open source, free software, organization, and quite inspired by his initiative to get Chinese banks to support non-IE, non-Microsoft users in their online banking systems.
The Mozilla Manifesto stated very eloquently that the internet is an increasingly important element in modern life and it is crucial to keep it open, innovative, and accessible. One way towards ensuring openness is to provide users with choice. It is the lack of choice that Bill has issues with some Chinese banks, notably China Merchant Bank (CMB). Like some other Chinese banks, CMB got sold a Microsoft-based online banking solution and is offering its services via only ActiveX, a component that is proprietary and available on Windows but not other systems. As a result, if you are a Linux or Apple user, or even if you use Firefox on Windows, you would not be able to complete login.
So Bill started a campaign earlier this year (see http://www.zeuux.com/) with an open letter to CMB. It has generated a lot of following, with tons of comments on the forum and around 200 similar open letters written by supporters. The US-based Free Software Foundation also issued a letter in support of this initiative (see http://www.fsf.org/news/open-letter-to-cmb).
So far CMB and other ActiveX-only banks are not responding publicly but according to some sources the campaign has instigated a lot of heated debate inside these banks. It is ironic that, although it is well publicized that the Chinese government has officially been backing open source and has spent a lot of fiscal money into efforts to promote Linux and other programs (see Red Flag, Red Office, etc.), right under its nose the banks are locked into proprietary systems such that these government-supported computer systems could not be used to access day-to-day banking services. A side note — it is said that some MII (Ministry of Information Industry) public service sites are locked into proprietary Microsoft features, thus precluding the very people who support MII’s own Linux initiative.
But not all banks are Microsoft-only banks. One shining example is Shanghai Puding Development Bank, whose Firefox friendly website has fans celebrating. See for example http://yx.takeback.net/175/pf-ebank-is-better.html, where the customer was also able to use this platform-neutral feature to complete transactions on the popular Taobao C2C site, which recently officially declared to support only IE, which drew a lot of protests.
Bill and his cohorts keep a close watch on the Chinese banks and maintain a list of “good banks” that support non-IE, non-Microsoft platforms (see http://www.zeuux.com/moin/CampaignBankStatus). Interestingly, most if not all western banks operating in China are on the good-bank list. And many of them are getting RMB licenses in the very near future.
The Mozilla Manifesto prescribes that the simplest way to support Mozilla and its principles is to use Firefox. An extension of this is to put your savings into only banks that support open platforms. Money talks, and the banks will listen.
Li Gong’s Blog