Open Source Participation Gains Support In China

eldavojohn writes "ZDNet blogger Fred Muller notes that a Chinese company called Taobao has become one of the first in the country to participate in open source. After years of Chinese companies using Linux, Taobao has announced they are open sourcing TAIR, and they revealed what is believed by Muller to be the first open source repository hosted by a Chinese corporation. Muller tracked down the originator of this information and was also informed that the Linux kernel can expect contributions soon from Taobao. Several people involved with bringing open source to China have expressed concerns over a cultural divide (PDF) in regards to opening your corporation's source code to potential competition. Some people speculated that the culture created by an open source movement was irreversibly foreign to Chinese culture. Taobao is exhibiting cracks in that assumption — exciting times for open source advocates as code contributions to open source become even more multicultural."

Great news

[franki.macha]

I, for one, welcome this news, I've read a lot about Chinese companies using open source software, for example I would love to get my hands on a Debian-running Loongson, but this is the first time I've heard about them giving back to the community.

I wonder if they're hiring native English speakers who can't speak Chinese to help them with community relations? :>
That's a job I'd love to have.

Re:There goes US support...

[franki.macha]

And those of us in Unamerica think it's great news...

Re:Considering Chinas track record,

[theheadlessrabbit]

how can anyone even begin to think about committing code from a Chinese company into the mainstream linux kernel?

Because it's open and can be read by anyone to make sure nothing sneaky is in there?

Re:Considering Chinas track record,

[bieber]

The same way they would begin to think about committing code from an American company into the mainstream Linux kernel? The fact that the Chinese government carries out some nefarious business doesn't mean that each and every one of the billion-plus Chinese citizens is out to get us. Besides, it's not like we're just accepting arbitrary binary blobs here: contributions to the kernel are human-readable source code that the tinfoil hat crowd is perfectly welcome to pore over in detail...

Re:Considering Chinas track record,

[by (1706743)]

Because it's pretty hard to embed lead in code? [nytimes.com]

Re:Considering Chinas track record,

[WillAffleckUW]

When setting up multi-country dev for open source, consider having people from different countries do review, test and check. In this way the final code is usually very good.

Re:Verify, then trust

[dragisha]

Yes is not always an answer, even in West. It's more like ACK packet. Acknowledgement and request for more of it.

Re:Considering Chinas track record,

[fly1ngtux]

Makes me think.... India has restrictions on Huwei's products. However, how will we tackle the issue of these guys contaminating almost all our devices by infesting Linux? :)