Two countries, two systems for promoting free software

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Andy Oram
Aug. 10, 2005 10:23 PM
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I had two fascinating interviews today about two initiatives, one in the People's Republic of China and one in the United States, for promoting public-sector computer applications--and thereby the use of open-source software.

Beijing's rural, low-income, and educational initiative

The Beijing municipal government is getting ready to launch version 1.0 of a system aimed at bringing applications to rural areas. They plan to use the same model for low- and middle-income residents of cities, small and medium enterprises, and educational institutions. Linux (through the well-known Red Flag distribution) is a key part of the rural system. What's interesting for me is the role of government.

Years ago, the Chinese government tried to promote computer applications by simply funding ISVs to create applications. As Americans might have guessed, these failed to produce significant results and turned out to be wasteful. The government realized they needed a different path.

The current approach is: "It is better to discover a market for ISVs than just give funding support to ISVs," as summarized for me by Liming Li of Intel China Ltd. Some details of this intriguing philosophy came through in a hastily arranged interview Mr. Li set up between me and Hu Qing Hua, director of an organization called the Beijing Software Industry Productivity Center.

Mr. Li and I met at an O'Reilly party last night (he is a contributor to an upcoming book, Open Sources 2.0) and realized after a brief talk that China's new effort to promote rural and low-income development would make a great subject for an article. He tried to set up a meeting that evening with Mr. Hu, but could not. So I rushed out of another meeting at 9 AM today and sped down to South San Francisco with Mr. Li, guided by the car's navigational system, to hold the interview in a spare hour before Mr. Hu had to take a plane.

Mr. Hu's English was fairly good, but we relied on Mr. Li for translation. I still may have misinterpreted some statements, so I can only report my best understanding of the topics.

The slogan for Mr.Hu's center is, "If you want to do software business in China, go to Beijing through the Beijing Software Industry Productivity Center." In the complex business/government environment in China, the Center manages to hook up multinationals with local companies--but now they're taking a significant next step and representing the needs of ordinary Chinese end-users as well. The project is named Strong Wind (Chang Feng).

In this new model, the Center provides funding and organization for technical experts to meet with users and define detailed requirements for some application to support farming, education, etc. These are turned into applications based on commodity hardware from companies such as Intel and local PC OEMs, running Red Flag Linux. Each project has a coordinating committee that involves the various actors--local and international, hardware and software--responsible for putting together the solution.

The Center aims, therefore, not to request particular pieces of a solution, but to put together have a comprehensive business model covering the whole environment and to keep this in front of the vendors. To save costs, Red Flag Linux is used and applications are doled out to local ISVs. Large vendors such as Intel do integration and support.

The Center keeps s firm hand on the project too, through an organization of 80 people dedicated to testing and validation. Considering that 20 packages may make up a single software solution, this testing is very important. And after two months of testing in the Center, some 500 units are sent to the end-users for field testing. The vendors can then refine the system before its ultimate deployment. Strong Wind is nearly ready for a 1.0 release, and they plan to have 10,000 units deployed among users by the end of this year.

Further funding can be provided for particular applications that the Center recognizes a need for, based on the requirements gathering mentioned earlier.

So far as they know, there is no one inside or outside China using this particular model, but a lot of interest is being shown by governments in South-East Asia, notably Malaysia, Thailand, and Viet Nam.

The government is also working with the telephone company to bring fairly higher bandwidth (such as ADSL) to as many areas as possible.

Because IT and Internet access are often associated with grass-roots communications, I tried to formulate a polite question about whether the system under development could contribute to rural and low-income people communicating with each other. But the concept was too abstract, so I couldn't get a conversation going around it. The system is apparently designed around delivering content.

U.S. government representatives meet at LinuxWorld

The other news I got today was about "Linux in Government Day," held at LinuxWorld in San Francisco for 50 representatives, aides, municipal employees, and others interested in bringing free software into government applications. The event was organized by Leon Shiman, who is an open source developer, the secretary of X.org, and advisor to Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn on bridging government IT and community processes.

It was interesting to find out that government agencies develop support for their software among their own staff, even if the software is commercially provided and comes with support contracts (which often go unused). This makes it much more feasible, in terms of staff readiness, for them to adopt open source.

Government attendees were concerned with spreading code development across government boundaries. They know they need to create and sustain cooperation among agencies and sectors.

Leon's key point is that cost is not the main factor to consider in choosing open source; rather; the license is fundamental. Free software flourishes because it draws out the creativity of many diverse contributors, but he says "You can't develop together if you can't see into the software." He pointed to the license for the X Window System as the most open (a subject of eternal debate, of course), because it allows proprietary usage while protecting the openness of code base. X is also uniquely "non-sectarian" regarding operating systems and platforms--it has been ported just about everywhere.

Highlights reported to me by Leon included:

• An address by law professor and free software supporter Eben Moglen on the legal issues involved in governments using open source.

• Reports by the CIOs of California and Massachusetts on state policies. Quinn closed the session with a detailed summary of the implementation issues that arose in the state when implementing open source policy: staff education, technical transition, etc.

• A talk by an expert on Latin American government usage of open source, explaining its "dramatic adoption" and the roles played by in communities and government.

• A talk by the CEO of Trolltech, about how that company fashioned a bridge between open-source and proprietary development, so their Qt libraries can be the basis for the highly popular KDE while still offering commercial licenses. This is important because governments, like many private institutions, worry about whether they can keep part of their code closed while making use of free software.

• Two talks that demonstrated open source's strength through flexibility: one on Firefox functionality (central to government concerns because so many applications are delivered through the browser) and Linux Terminal Server Project.

In both China and the U.S., systems are bending in response to changing environments. The supporters of open source and open standards take widely varying steps to deal with the current state of each system. I think everyone will be feeling their ways forward as systems and users evolve.

Andy Oram is an editor for O'Reilly Media, specializing in Linux and free software books, and a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. His web site is www.praxagora.com/andyo.

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