Open Source

By Peter Cheng

A look at China's Linux and open source movement

Linux World China 2007 and Software Freedom Day preview

Posted in Open Source by Peter Junge on Thursday, September 13 2007 11:06 AM

Last Friday, I attended the Linux World China 2007 conference and exhibition held in the luxury Beijing International Hotel. Instead of giving you a chronological report of the event, I'd just like to share some interesting observations.

First of all, on the sponsors' list was a big surprise: Microsoft. I asked myself what could be their intention? But that's a difficult question to answer, and looking at their booth in the exhibition hall did not help much. Their exhibits hardly had any relation to Linux, not even to open source in general, only showing a selection of well-known business software such as SQL Server. It seems like they wanted to reach customers wherever they could get them, obviously ignoring the purpose of the event.

The second platinum sponsor was Novell, whose main focus was on SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop featuring quite a number of Dell notebooks. The first ones I spotted were running 3D games. That confused me a bit, because I thought, they were targeting serious enterprise customers. But, Novell's booth had another side, were they presented some of their a innovative products. Among those were virtualization and high-availability solutions. Another interesting product was the openSUSE Build Service, which enables developers to build their software both as RPM and DEB packages on a single platform. Last but not least, there was a little stage were some of their developers offered expertise insight to Novell's Linux products.

By the way, I did not find any booth of IBM, the third platinum sponsor. Strange? Well, may be I simply missed it.

Intel had a very small both, and I would even say it had a somewhat unprofessional appearance. Four guys were sitting around a folding table with only one object on it. It was a bit of a shame, since the exhibit deserved a much better presentation. I was really impressed: They had a Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC running Linux. I have been longing for such a machine for quite a while; I even Googled a thousand times to see if somebody has successfully installed Linux on the Q1, but the results drew no clear picture of it. But I finally had one in my hand, and everything seemed to function, even the GPS receiver. So, now I am looking to see where I can buy such a cool device. I hope I'll find out soon.

The keynote was the only session I attended, and it was the speech of Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. I did also try to follow the Chinese speakers, using the interpretation broadcast. Unfortunately, the sound quality was not too good and the acoustic gain of the speakers was very loud, making it hard to follow. However, I enjoyed the speech of Jim Zemlin very much. I think open source evangelists should always use his slide of the Linux Foundation's members, to promote Linux. Their culminating business power makes even Microsoft look like a drop in the ocean. One thing I found irritating was that during his speech, Jim asked the audience who was using Linux every day on his desktop, and surprisingly only about 30 people out of 400 raised their hands. I still wonder if they did not understand the question, or if they really did not use Linux. This would be a sad result for an event focused on Linux.

Last but not least, let's thank the organizers IDG World Expo and China Unix. It's not their fault that some of the exhibitors failed to make the best out of this year's Linux World. I hope they do better next year.

Okay, let's look ahead of this industry event to the biggest community event of the year. It's called Software Freedom Day and it is driven by the volunteer open source communities all over the world. In Beijing, the main event will be held on Sep. 15 at the FIT building of Tsinghua University. The program starts at 1 p.m., and is organized by Beijing Linux User Group, China OSS Promotion Union, CSIP, Ubuntu-cn LoCoTeam and the Tsinghua University.

The main person who is driving all the effort is BLUG President Frederic Muller. He managed to get a bunch of sponsors capable of putting on as good a show as Linux World. For example, Google, REDFLAG 2000, Redhat, Openmoko and Red Flag Linux. You can refer to the list of speakers here. Of course, Beijing will not be the only place in China celebrating the SFD. Have a look at the team directory of the SFD Web site.

Disclaimer:
Views and opinions expressed in this blog are the author's, and do not necessarily represent those of ZDNet Asia.

Talkback 7 comments

Hi, I had always heard that the Chinese had a version of Linux called "Red Dragon", or something similar to that. Is it around or is it a myth? JJMacey www.jjmacey.met
Posted by John J. Macey on Friday, September 14 2007 07:08 AM

First of all, no surprise there on the sponsor list that Microsoft is there. Microsoft is there forever, since the first Linuxworld. You must be new to Linux? Where have you been for the past six, seven years? Beside this is a business conference, I don't see why not they can't sell crap that we don't care and TRY to capture Linux user, customers etc. They are ignoring the focus or not, it is still a free world in China, my friend. Secondly, Novell does get Dell two sides in the show, one is for desktop and other is virtualization and HA. On the desktop side, it not only show game, but also business application, stock trading etc to show possible home use and business use of Linux Desktop. And most of the serious enterprise customer in China should not believe a 8 Laptop machines setting up a network can demo any serious solution. BTW, you must have problem with your eyes .... IBM booth is right in the center front of the show room. With a pretty female engineer sitting on top of it, giving out LiveDVD with WorkSpace and SameTime solution on top of SLED10. Enterprise solution no? Yes you miss it... Surprise only 30 out of 400 using Linux in China and you feel sad? Why...? First day in China? Never heard of pirate software? And Beijing LinuxWorld 2007 is actually acceptable.... I have seen worst. See you in the Freedom day.
Posted by anonymous on Friday, September 14 2007 12:49 PM

IBM Booth in LinuxWorld 2007 bbs.chinaunix.net...
Posted by anonymous on Friday, September 14 2007 01:07 PM

John, You're talking about Red Flag Linux, yes. Still around, still popular and very active. For example the Intel MID ships with it. There is also Red Flag Chinese 2000 porting OOo to the Chinese market and solving real problems while creating office documents in Chinese. Hope that helped.
Posted by Frederic Muller on Friday, September 14 2007 09:49 PM

John, China has it's own Linux distribution. As Fred pointed out it's called Red Flag Linux. See: www.redflag-linux.com... There are several Chinese institutions, that are trying to build up a national IT industry based on OSS. Peter
Posted by Peter Jungs on Saturday, September 15 2007 08:41 AM

AvengerMoJo, some remarks. First of all, I really apologize at Novell and their employees, for having mistakenly posted an unfinished paragraph from an early draft, instead of mentioning the second side of the booth as a highlight of the event, which it really was. I just found the gaming area not useful, as Novell has a lot of better things to display. I know, that Microsoft joins FOSS events, especially the LinuxWorld, for several years. My 'surprise' is a rhetorical one, as it really surprises me anew every time I see them coming and it may also apply to a lot of readers. For me this is still like a brewery sponsoring a free beer night at the annual meeting of alcoholics anonymous. I'm over 40, needing a new pair of glasses. I really missed the IBM booth. My fault. Yes, I heard of pirated software. It's a real pity, that such versions are cheaper on the street, than the online fee to download openSUSE. Indeed, LinuxWorld was at least acceptable. I did not wrote this at all. But the spoiled paragraph about Novell surely gave the impression, that I just wanted to complain about everything. Again, sorry. See you on Beijing Software Freedom Day. Probably in two or three hours.
Posted by Peter Junge on Saturday, September 15 2007 11:29 AM

I thought it Microsoft's participate was thoroughly inappropriate. Microsoft has plenty of Open Source products and platforms, and any of these the local representation could have shared with the audience. Instead, Microsoft chose to promote their standard business drivers (SQL Server, Windows Server stations, and so on). Not one bit of open source in sight! Further, Microsoft had the audacity to try to recruit people attending! In my opinion, this is a particularly sick practice. This is an open source event, and the competition tries to remove brain-share from the just-getting-started local movement. I don't agree, Peter, that the organizers shouldn't be held responsible. They should be held directly responsible, because hey, they were organizing the event. Microsoft explicitly ignoring the theme of the event damaged in my eyes Microsoft, as well as IDG, and in fact made my impression of Linux World China much lower than it could have been. I'm looking forward to next year--honestly! I expect that mistakes will be corrected and the event will be bigger and better than before. Here's hoping! Cheers Benjamin
Posted by Benjamin on Monday, September 17 2007 12:34 PM

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About the blogger

Peter Cheng

Peter Cheng is a community strategist and open source evangelist, who is based in Beijing, China. In 2003, he initiated the Open Source University program to gather industry experts and help spread open source technology and culture to over 100 universities. In 2007, he organized the Open Source Camp in five Chinese cities, with the aim to enable the open source community to share and exchange ideas and to promote the technology in China. Peter currently runs TargetSource Tech, a company he founded to provide consulting services on enterprise open source software.