Open Source in 中国

For the last two weeks I’ve been in Beijing researching the state of open source efforts here in China. With the help of some of my fellow members at the Apache Software Foundation I was introduced to the Chinese Open Source Promotion Union ( COPU ). I met with Mr. Lu Shouqun and discussed internals of ASF and how we build open source communities there. We also discussed the state of open source here in China, what success and challenges they’ve faced. Thanks to Wu Jinnan, I had the chance to visit CSIP and talk to those working on Linux and open source there. Other meetings I’ve attended here included a short visit with Intel and the Beijing LUG that I already mentioned.

The case for open source in developing countries is strong; however, the US, Japan and Europe are still home to most open source developers, projects and companies. Within the ASF, we have no Chinese members and only a few Chinese committers. While I’m here in China I’m hoping to change that and help bridge the gap between oss communities in the East and West.

As to what challenges exist, well, I’m still learning. :-) One of my first impressions is that there’s still a lot of misunderstanding about how open source communities work and what motivations drive oss development. I heard a lot of talk about looking for business models. And the Chinese software market certainly does have it’s own peculiarities. For example, in the past there was strong government support for open source projects but the actual local demand was very small. In fact, the entire Chinese IT and software market, while growing, is still pretty immature. I’ve also seen a lot of focus on desktop projects and heard talk about trying to get Windows APIs into Linux (but not with wine ).

Later this week I’ll be in Shanghai and then after that I’ll be visiting several cities in the Pearl River Delta—Guangzhou, Macao, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. While there I’ll be meeting with Scott McNeil who’s been working on the Global Desktop project. I think his approach of working with universities to introduce students to open source may have the most success of any OSS program here in China.

I’ll be sharing what I discover here on Cubicle Muses. I’m also hoping to collect up some of what I learn and present it this year at ApacheCon or OSCON.