

China And Open Source - hunvreus
http://teddy.fr/2013/02/27/china-and-open-source/

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jhancock
Good assessment. Shanghai is certainly rocking along.

I'm in Chengdu these days at perhaps China's fastest growing software
community...not the biggest yet, but its the up-and-coming place to do
software. Its next to impossible to get Chinese devs to share and collaborate
in ways we're used to in the U.S. Frustrating to see so much held back. The
culture of not willing to informally present/collaborate in front of others,
even small groups of three to five co-workers, is a huge barrier.

There are exceptions. I hosted a start-up weekend last year in Chengdu and was
pleasantly surprised at how well around 60 people collaborated and presented.

Perhaps some enterprising Chinese could come up with a form of "rejection
therapy" that some software devs in the West like to use to get into selling
their wares. I'm not sure what this would look like. Anything that would get
people to practice informal/ad-hoc openness to learn that you won't lose face,
not in a friendly environ, of which there are quite a few these days.

For those not familiar with what most Chinese experienced from the moment they
set foot in grade school and prepped for from birth: You're praised for
getting the answer "right and fast". Not only does nothing else count but is
possibly counted against you. Your classmates laugh at you for being wrong.
Your teacher scolds you for not quickly regurgitating the reams of facts and
quick calculations you are meant to memorize. You're measured by test scores
only. This "institutional" problem is compounded after college where they find
themselves in rigid work environs. Again, measured for getting correct exactly
what you are told to do and only that.

In my recent struggles, I've had to "join the system". My Chengdu employees
are only used to being dictated terms and measured. So I'm trying to hack the
system. I put in this quarter's performance measurement worksheets that they
get negative marks for not participating. Don't speak up and volunteer some
idea when I ask a question, lose points, which equates to losing money. You
don't lose points for being wrong, but for not speaking up at all. Just having
quarterly performance worksheets is foreign to me. But its not to them. So I'm
turning it on its head and measuring behavior I need them to exhibit.

What to do when you're a progressive software shop in China that wants your
bright and good-hearted Chinese developers to accept "Your free, fly as high
as like. Experiment. There is no punishment for getting the answer wrong!
Collaborate! Iterate!"

Its changing. Mostly for the better. From 2000-2002, with my first dev shop in
Shanghai, it took me two years to get my developers to come out of their
shells. 10 years from now, this assessment will hopefully seem foreign to a
20-something Chinese programmer. But until then, it ain't easy.

------
gbog
I work at Douban, in Beijing, and I have the impression this post is only
superficially spot on. Many Chinese developers are very much into open source,
and have all the skills and dedication to participate fully in this movement.

Obviously they are coming later than most developed countries, and many geeks
cannot afford to spend a couple of years on personal projects that are not
guaranteed to yield enough game or revenue, but it is growing and promising,
especially in mobile and hardware.

~~~
hunvreus
It wasn't my intent to doubt the potential of local developers. China has a
lot to offer and I actually strongly believe, as the end of my post implies,
that we'll see a rising participation of Chinese developers in the OSS
community. Heck, most of my teammates are Chinese and they kick asses.

That being said, on the ground it still feel very fragmented and insular. Some
of the fundamentals of a healthy and self sustaining local culture are still
missing.

~~~
log0
The community in Shanghai has grown more vibrant these years. Though, few
people tend to join the community (those recurring faces don't really count)
actively but it's growing, slowly.

------
clippit
Many big Internet companies in China only care about profit and believe OSS is
only a waste of time. Furthermore, large majority of Chinese developers are
suffering from low pay, mandatory overtime, etc. The life sucks, how can I
have a motivation to make contributions? IMHO, the industry even the whole
society need to enhance understanding to local developers, accept their hidden
individualities, make better environment in technology(f __k off GFW). I
believe the OSS or hacker community will be stronger as time goes on.

I'm obviously a Chinese and sorry for my English(language matters, you see? :)

~~~
hunvreus
Not much different from the situation in the Western world a decade or more
ago. This will change in the next decade:

\- The latest generation of Chinese tech companies is already very different
from their established counterpart (Tencent, Baidu...) in almost every aspect,
especially towards their employees.

\- The GFW won't survive another decade in its current form. There is simply
too much internal pressure.

I'm actually convinced that there is an incredible human potential in China,
provided you give them the proper opportunities.

If your job sucks so much, consider joining us : we're recruiting folks to
build stuff with node.js, NoSQL, Elastic Search and a gazillion other Open
Source technologies.

~~~
brador
In what ways are the latest generation of Chinese tech companies different
from established counterparts?

~~~
hunvreus
I'm not sure I have an accurate answer to this but let me try.

I feel like the younger companies have developed more aggressive engineering
cultures. Tudou, Dianping, Douban seem to embrace more their technical side,
when Baidu for example has more of a business and sales spin to it.

In particular, I've noticed this difference through;

\- The involvement of these newer companies in OSS, tech event s...

\- The reaction of local geeks towards these companies: you'll find a lot of
young Chinese programmers who think Taobao is a pretty awesome company when it
comes to tech, Baidu not so much (I think most of them refer to it as a sales
company...).

------
bencrox
Here is (one of) the organizer of BarcampHK ( as mentioned by @wyeunho ).

7+ years ago J.Aaron Farr (ASF) talks about open source in China. I put his
slide online and there are still views/mentions everyday... guess what? People
have the same question, and there are not much good answers.

I do agree a lot with the blogger. Without Taobao and perhaps Douban, business
propelled open source movement in China by Chinese is quite a shame to be
mentioned.

Just try to put my own self as an example, in 2003-2007, I do quite a lot of
breeding edge OSS project digging and delivered hundreds of patches ( mainly
among asterisk, qmail, horde, IMEs, bbs-related stuff... ). Jumping into the
business field, I'm damned to be a pure consumer... shameful. Most of the time
clients stop me from releasing the code. But from my own perspective, its more
like they believe in hasten broken code with cheap labour and obscurity is the
only safe. It was hourlyWTF for me.

But I still do barcamps, still stressing open source is not a biz talk but
hands-on the hack. The damn thing is I, as a foreigner/guest in cities out of
China (Bangkok,Tokyo,SG etc), can freely challenge super facial "open source"
demonstrations, but hardly do the same in HK/GZ, where I am the organizer.
Just can't be the black face too often.

In open source we need open minds. The whole Asia thing is not quite open so
far. People easily feel ashamed/transgressed for technical challenges. It
wastes a lot of time to just be nice and "suggesting" the damn alternatives.
It is not about China, but the whole Chinese culture circle including
JP/KR/SG.

Taobao is good that their engineer are both courageous to show what they can
do ( such as strong urge for node.js security patch. They show how to be
better and keep pushing the U.S. to acknowledge. ), and humble enough to shame
what have done wrong among the community.

But these are rare kind of people. I just hope to foster more open minded
ones, and the spirit of hand-on hacks.

Again, it is not about how much open source projects you know or how is your
level of skill. It is more about how openness jam into the corporate culture
and the civic society at large.

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ghosTM55
Great post, we still have a lot of things to do in China to improve the
opensource environment

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nailer
> I’ve been more than once sitting in events in Shanghai and Beijing expecting
> some “geek porn” (understand “very technical talks”)

A great article, but that sentence really made me cringe.

~~~
hunvreus
Point taken. Fixed.

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sonabinu
This is very interesting. I wonder if other non-English speaking countries
have a hard time with OSS?

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contingencies
The guy that runs VeryCD is in Shanghai. You should get him to come in.

~~~
hunvreus
I have a couple friends working at VeryCD, but I'm not entirely sure what you
suggest: inviting him to the Shanghai Open Source meetups?

~~~
contingencies
Yes. Wow, I didn't know it was a proper company now. Back in 2004 when I was
in touch with him it seemed a one-man operation.

