CentOS - Feb 2007 - CHINA: Donation Scheme and Quality Community Development

G'Day All,

We have been supporting linux as a side business for a while (because  
we use that skill set in our own value chain internally) and we are  
now going to start targeting the wider local Chinese market and not  
just the foreign companies and joint ventures.

As such we expect to see tremendous growth in this market segment  
this year due to the quickly dwindling support of local support  
outlets due to the poor local skill sets and fundamental  
understanding of computing and Linux practices.  But this growth may  
be short lived as the segment itself disappears (Linux and anything  
not Microsoft off the shelf) as evidenced by less and less exhibitors  
and attendees at Linux World here over the past 4 years.

I am trying to figure out a way to change this.  Of course we can  
donate money back to the project itself - but does anyone have any  
idea on how to help the local Chinese get better as a form of  
donation too?  Maybe offering free support services?

Point is, people should be paying IT professionals money to do UML  
and process design as they do in the west (Accenture, CA, IBM, et al)  
and not to play with technology day in day out.  However in China, IT  
is more dumbed down and is akin to "Computing Services", backup,  
servers, hosting, windows/linux/cisco/et al is what comes to mind.   
While this is all fine and dandy it is hardly IT and it is a very  
price erosive market (China and India combined) and seems to be  
destroying the local demand for real IT and everyones chance to start  
more off-shoring operations here in competition with India.

The concept of technology being a support service to a greater  
operational goal and process (value chain) is quickly shoved to the  
side as people here consider IT to be a "cost" and focus on the  
"lego" aspect of it - computing services,  mutton dressed up as  
lamb.  And Linux is not seen as a fertile bed to develop, create and  
explore, it is often just used to plunder and get something for  
free...cheap, cheap, cheap......

I know that I can't change a country on my own, however, the atrophy  
in Open Source Community development and IT service demand is really  
sad here.  I saw a post before from a chap who said words to the  
effect of:

 > Meanwhile, if there are many companies engage in
 > same product, they will have price competition with each other. That
 > will make companies could not survive after that. So, we hope your
 > company could authorize us as a exclusive distributor to sale and
 > market your product to share our resources and Chinese sales network.

And it is any wonder that open source cooperation here is failing as  
people fail to understand the "knowledge economy" that is central to  
open source?  And IT is not expanding as it continues to be percieved  
as purely bits and bytes and not also opportunity cost and risk.

So I on behalf of the Beijing GNU/Linux Users Group ask for some  
advice, pointers and tips for how in my own small way I can get some  
change happening here before all creative technological thinking and  
successful open source development becomes even more extinct.  And  
before real IT has a chance to take off and operate in harmony with  
all the business analysts and accountants as opposed to with just the  
motherboard and disk driver retailers at the various tech depots.  :-(

Don't get me wrong, there is Linux use here - but nothing new and  
nothing is ever thrown back into the community - just take and  
abuse.   :-(


Cheers,
Richard Ford.
centos.candishosting.com.cn
www.beijinglug.org

Richard Ford wrote:
> G'Day All,
>
> We have been supporting linux as a side business for a while (because  
> we use that skill set in our own value chain internally) and we are  
> now going to start targeting the wider local Chinese market and not  
> just the foreign companies and joint ventures.
>   
I don't know how representative I am of the real world, but I use Linux, 
in general, and CentOS, in particular, in our China operations and for 
development purposes.  I've also seen Linux (which mostly seem to be 
illicit copies of RHEL) in use at a lot of "blue chip" companies in
the
telecom, media, and Internet space.  So it's out there.

I will agree completely that the overall mantra with respect to OSS is 
"take whatever you can get for free and let other people worry about 
giving back."  However, you'll also see that same dynamic with the 
larger state owned enterprises when they interact with 800lb gorilla 
software and hardware vendors.  It's usually a "you'll give us XYZ 
because otherwise we'll do business with your competitor and they'll 
have access to our market.  You'll make it up on sales down the road 
(which sometimes happens, but just as often is just a hollow promise)."  
Welcome to China.  So I think this scheme to "seed the market" would
be
unlikely to succeed.

Shoot me your coordinates offline and I'll give you a buzz next time I'm
in Beijing (approximately bi-monthly).

Cheers,