Hong Kong Opens Open Source Center

The ribbon was cut yesterday for the new Hong Kong Open Source Software Center (HKOSSC) at the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) building. The ceremony was short and to the point, something I’m coming to appreciate at Chinese meetings. Not that awards and recognition were absent (perish the thought!). The center’s sponsors and the participants in the first program of the center, a porting project, all had photo-ops.

The Center itself isn’t very large. It consists mostly of a large open area with a room for a stage, several computer kiosks, and two glass cubicles with room for a few people. The cubicles are intended to be areas for developers and trainers to work on open source software. I didn’t get a good look at which version of Linux was running there, probably Red Hat. The Center also has access to all the other HKPC facilities including larger meeting rooms and classrooms, so the size of the Center is a little misleading.

HKOSSC has already launched one initiative - a program to help local ISVs port their products to open source platforms (ie Linux). They have over a dozen local businesses involved for around 20 products. From what I understand, some other training programs are also in the works.

I’ve got a few photos of the event on Flickr and you can see the event was reasonably well attended. However, most in attendance were managers, directors and leaders of other industry associations or businesses. Conspicuously absent (as far as I could tell), were many actual open source developers, students or, for that matter, most anyone from the Universities. Other than Mr. Dickson, the Government Chief Information Officer, I was also the only expat.

This is the one trend in open source here in China (and I suspect in other areas of Asia) that I’d like to see reversed. No, not more expats. What I’m talking about is the apparent gulf between the government and industry organizations supporting open source and the (few) developers doing open source work. I’ve attended plenty of events, both community ground-up get-togethers by users and developers as well as top-down organized ceremonies and symposiums. What I find are two different groups of people regularly attending these events and little mixing.

We’re lucky to see a good amount of government support, often with industry partnerships, for open source here in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. What’s missing in these events is the connection to the community of hackers and programmers who use and create open source software on the job or on their own time. And visa versa. Why didn’t all the Linux user group show up at yesterday’s event? Where was Outblaze, SunWah, and the web 2.0 crowd that leverages so much open source?

I’ve often seen my role here as one of bridging gaps, gaps between open source communities, between developers of the East and West. More and more I’m hoping to bridge the gaps between the grassroots community and the industry and government associations willing to provide resources. There’s a great partnership waiting to happen there.

edit: fixed line endings in the post