A Beijing trip report

China would seem like an ideal environment for free software. The Chinese have a need for vast amounts of software as their country rapidly industrializes, they have reasons to prefer software which is not controlled by American corporations, and they have been coming under some pressure from those same corporations to do something about their little habit of copying proprietary software without much regard for details like license agreements. Free software offers them the ability to take control of their own software, make sure it lacks unwelcome surprises, and copy it as much as they like. And China has been making a lot of use of Linux and free software, but, as is the case with many Asian countries, China's presence in the development community is relatively small.

Encouraging participation from Asian countries has been a goal of the Linux Foundation for some time; one result of that is the series of symposiums held in Japan over the last few years. Now, for the first time, the Foundation has extended this series to China. On February 19 and 20, the first Linux Developer Symposium China was held in Beijing. This event was organized in cooperation with the China Open Source Promotion Union (COPU). Your editor had the privilege of speaking at this meeting.

This was not the kind of developer-oriented gathering that one might expect to find in many other parts of the world. Far too many suits and ties, for example. Often the focus of the event appeared to be the creation of photo opportunities while people (who were not developers) gave speeches. In general, it was organized in a mode of talking to the participants, rather than talking with them. The agenda makes this clear: 17 speakers on the first day, with only one break (for lunch). The talks were well received by a sellout crowd, but there was not a lot of opportunity for people to talk.

The second day featured a round table discussion and a set of BOF sessions. The round table was interesting, though it focused on issues which are not necessarily development oriented: Linux adoption in mobile devices, competing with pirated copies of Windows, etc. The BOF was, in many ways, the most interesting part of the whole event; this was where participants could find people with similar interests and simply ask questions. Your editor fielded questions on security modules, the kevent interface, community participation in Asia, language issues, and more. Chinese developers, like their Japanese counterparts, seem to be reluctant to ask questions in front of a large group. But, in a closer situation, the floodgates open and all kinds of questions come out.

Unfortunately, the second day was open only to a small subset of the conference attendees, and that subset was heavy on the managerial side. So a lot of people who could have benefited most from the BOF session were not there.

One topic which never came up - until your editor raised it briefly at the round table session - was license compliance. For the most part, it does not seem to be on the radar there. Your editor was told that GPL violations are common with products which are sold in the Chinese market but not exported elsewhere; the people involved can assume, with seemingly good reason, that nobody will take them to court. There is also a fair amount of driver work being done for companies in other countries; once the code is shipped the original developers forget about it and move on to the next project. Quite a bit of that code never makes it into the mainline.

This sort of activity fails to give back to the community which provided Linux in the first place. But it also hurts the developers involved. They do not become part of the community, do not get recognition for their work, and miss the opportunity to learn from others. During the press conference on the first day, it was noted that Chinese companies are having a hard time hiring Linux developers, and that more training opportunities would be a good thing. Your editor felt the need to point out that, of all the people working in free software projects, very few of them are specifically trained to do so. It's more a matter of individual initiative. Training is good, but the training received in Chinese universities should be more than adequate for those looking to get involved with free software.

Andrew Morton took that theme further by pointing out that, rather than complaining about difficulties in hiring, these companies would be better off encouraging community participation and skills development within their existing staff. That would be more productive than chasing the same small set of developers that everybody else is trying to hire. On the second day, Dave Neary made the crucial point that community participation is something that individuals - not companies - do. There are a lot of companies worldwide which have a hard time understanding how free software development works, and China is no exception.

One last note on hiring free software hackers. Your editor ran across this article, which states:

In such a situation (assuming the claim is true - something your editor cannot vouch for), finding developers who are able and willing to learn how to hack on free software should not be that hard.

Meanwhile, your editor was struck by the energy and initiative shown by the Beijing Linux Users Group, which helped with many aspects of the event. BLUG is busily organizing gatherings and creating a local community out of Beijing's hackers. A real spark is glowing there; it will be interesting to see how that group develops in the near future.

All told, the event was a clear success. It was a proper media event which raised the profile of Linux in China and showed that Linux developers care enough about the country to pay a visit. A mixture of local and imported developers were able to present their work to an attentive and interested audience. The discussions brought developers closer and, hopefully, sent them away with interesting things on their "to do" lists. And, importantly, the visiting developers learned something about China that goes beyond the proper technique for eating Peking Duck or the effort required to climb the Great Wall (or to circumvent the rather obnoxious great firewall). With luck, we have a better understanding of what developers are up to in that part of the world and how we can help them to participate fully in our projects. And that can only be a good thing.

(Some pictures from the event have been posted. Unbelievable numbers of photos were taken, so more can be expected to surface at some point. But, under no circumstances should anyone look at the scurrilous photo posted by Andrew Morton.)

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As an aside, the image at the bottom shows our friends in front of a wall, conventionally
identified as a fragment of "The Great Wall".  Amusingly enough, "The Great Wall" itself does
not exist.  China certainly has an abundance of walls, some running over many miles, but no
single project was ever conceived as "The Great Wall" until long after all such wall
construction ceased.  Each wall was an investment against the need to pay tribute to the
nearest raider tribe.  If "The Great Wall" is to be identified as a singular construction, the
product is not of masonry, but of public perception, attributing to Chinese culture an
illusory continuity of effort not actually attempted.  When Nixon famously insisted "This is
truly a great wall", we may recognize it as one more falsehood.

You may now return to your hacking.

>The Great Wall is visible from there. 
I thought the claim was that the wall is visible from earth orbit, not the moon.

"The Chinese have a need for vast amounts of software as their country rapidly industrializes,
they have reasons to prefer software which is not controlled by American corporations, and
they have been coming under some pressure from those same corporations to do something about
their little habit of copying proprietary software without much regard for details like
license agreements."

Yes, but look at the trade numbers -- the US is sending the PRC about an IBM and a half of
wealth each year.  By the time they're paying up on their proprietary software licenses,
they'll own the big proprietary software companies anyway.

A Birds-Of-a-Feather Session.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_a_Feather_(computing)

"A BoF session, an informal meet-up at conferences, where the attendees group together based
on a shared interest and carry out discussions without any pre-planned agenda."

Could you please copy your statement to the wikipedia site? 

little pieces of knowledge like that tend to get lost if not kept in a common place.

Ernest