New open source blogger onboard ZDNet Asia

Hello, everybody, I was lucky to establish a connection with ZDNet Asia and host its open source blog, opening a door for me to explore new opportunities and discuss issues on open source in Asia.

I'm Peter Cheng, an open source community strategist and evangelist from China, who is enjoying the atmosphere of the upcoming Olympic Games (opening on Aug. 8) in Beijing.

Seven years ago, some of my friends and I co-founded an enterprise open source community Huihoo.org, which is mainly focused on enterprise-class open source infrastructure that supports services and application, such as Corba Middleware, J2EE App Server, WebServices Stack implementation, and so on. During that time, I was also involved in two open source projects: JFox, Open Source J2EE Application Server, and JFoxSOAF, Open Source SOA Application Framework.

In 2003, I found that open source software was not popular at universities in China, especially among students, who weren't aware that there are already lots of good open source software for them to use. So, I initiated a program called Open Source University, which aims to share and spread open source technology and culture in universities. I invited more than 50 open source developers, experts and influencers to join the program, and give lectures in different universities during their spare time. To date, this team of lecturers has already visited around 20 universities. For more information, do visit the Open Source University group on Facebook.

Community is the core of open source, if there is no community, there is no open source. Sometimes, you will find that there are different kinds of open source communities, such as python, ruby, java and php.

But in China, it is an interesting phenomenon where there is rarely any communication between the different communities. They just focus on what they are interested in, and talk to people who speak the same language. Why do these people who share the similar interest in a technology not come together and exchange ideas? I think there must be something in common, and that's the original idea of the Open Source Camp. It was established with the intention of bringing together open source developer, geeks, entrepreneurs, academics, venture capitalists, technology influencers and the tech media, for an intense user-created conference about open source, Web 2.0 and other emerging technology topics. The Open Source Camp is currently running in five cities across China: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Since 2004, I've tried to establish different kinds of business models based on open source, but I failed twice. In early 2008, I founded a new company called TargetSource Tech, which is an open source services provider that ties up with global open source partners to deliver enterprise-ready open source software to customers. This time, we are on a new road to explore a successful open source business model in China. The future will show us the truth.

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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.