Open Source Globalization and Local Community
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Transcript of Open Source Globalization and Local Community
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Open Source Globalization and Local Community
Li YangFreescale Semiconductor
for Linux.conf.au, Mel8ourne January 2008
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Agenda
Why is globalization important What obstacles are we facing What can we do about it How can local community help What are we doing in China
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Agenda
Why is globalization important?
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Brief introduction of FOSS FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) Emerged from 1970s Represented by
Unix Gnu Linux
Through 30 years of experience, development model has been proved viable
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Growth of FOSS
50+ open source licenses (OSI) GPL BSD Mozilla …
Thousands of open source projects
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How to define a successful project Popularity
The number of users.Commercial software usually use profit here
ParticipationThe number of developers.More work can be done. More ideas can be
implemented. The two factors affect each other
More users -> more developers More developers -> better quality -> more users
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Where to recruit new developers?
Internet users are potential FOSS users
FOSS users are potential developers Internet users are potential
developers
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US18%
EU26%
AU1%
Other55%
US
EU
AU
Other
Internet Users regional distribution
Other regions (Brazil, China, India, Russia) are growing even faster than US and EU
Data from ITU for 2006
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Kernel contribution
US, 41, 51%
Europe, 25, 32%
Australia, 7, 9%
Other, 6, 8%
Linux Kernel Summit 2007 attendees
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Regional sourceforge developers
US36%
EU40%
AU3%
Other21%
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Comparison
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
US EU AU Other
KernelSourceforgeInternet users
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Findings US and EU are the main base of open
source developers Australia has the highest participation rate US and AU are more active in kernel, EU is
more active in other FOSS Other regions are the largest potential user
base and developer base GO GLOBAL
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Agenda
What obstacles are we facing?
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Why this happens?
There are obstacles for these regions to participate Use China as example to analyze some
obstacles Other countries should be similar
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Language Different official languages
English is official for FOSS projects English is not official for most people in other
regions The situation won’t change
The world is growing to be more diverse, tradition is more valued.
English is not likely to be much more popular in the future.
Community should live with it, and try to address this problem
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Language (cont.) Language family
People from some countries may find English not so hard to learn
Their native language is also in Indo-European family East Asia, middle east, north Africa may find English harder
to learn than others
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Language (China)
English is being taught Reading is ok for most educated Written and spoken English is relatively
poor Language can not be learnt well
without language environment to practice often
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Language (China) cont.
Most people can’t use English freely Read/write tends to be much slower Easier to misapprehend Can’t express idea clearly
People are being afraid to communicate in English
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Cultural Any other country could be different, even
different parts of one country could be different
List a few differences between China and FOSS community (not all) Communication: apprehension towards criticism
Chinese are used to tactful remarks, likely to treat direct criticism as insult. While direct criticism are quite common in patch review process.
Management style: Organizational behaviorsChinese are used to and are more effective in
close-knit team. Community likes loosely-knit team.
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Geographical Time difference
8~12 hours from China to US and EU IRC
Hard to use. Uneasy to find common time. Email
The most effective way, but normally takes a day for each round of a discussion
Australia and China, better match to cooperate
Face to faceNot possible generally
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Economical
Developing countries Less education Without good IT industry Spend more time and energy to work for
a living, less time and energy for hobbies
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Political
Government support Financial Policy
Censorship (China) Sourceforge.net (ok now) Freebsd.org (ok now) Wikipedia.org
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Summary of problems Language, culture and geographic
problems make communication much difficult, which is the biggest challenge
Political problems can be addressed but not easyNeed to negotiate as strong organization
Geographical and economical problems can’t be addressed. We should make up by other means
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Agenda
What can we do?
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What can we do?
Is this a new problem? Look at multi-national enterprises
Local marketing and sales Local R&D centers to attract talents Local PR department to deal with
government relationship Establish aligned local communities to
provide localized help
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Unaligned local community
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Unaligned local community
Good for users (LUGs) Not enough for developers
Interactive Shared goals
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Aligned local developer community
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Mission
Recruit and sustain local developers Align local developers with global
community
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The way it works
Global Communitydevelopers
Localdevelopers
Localdevelopers
Localdevelopers
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Benefit Developer overlap between global
and local community, form strong connection
Share the same goal and standard Can help other local developers to
communicate with the global community
Bridge obstacles for normal local developers
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Agenda
How can local community help?
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FOSS involvers
MaintainerProject Leader
Developers
Users
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How to attract local user
Advertisement, PR Localized promotion
Features meet expectation Address local requirementsChina: QQ (local IM which is massively
used), dictionary, more fonts
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How to attract local user (cont.)
Easy to use Localized UI Localized user manuals/HOWTOs
Fashionable Local community and User Groups
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Local communities
Distro’s are doing well as they have local offices
The same thing can also be done with local community
Distro’s are also making use of local community
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How about Developers
FLOSS project EU sponsored research project Survey and study about FOSS
development http://flossproject.org/report/index.htm
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Motivation for developers
Career (more important for developing countries) Learn and develop new skills Get better job opportunity
Fun (social) Share knowledge and skills Participate in a new form of cooperation Participate in OS/FS scene
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Local developer community helps
Learn and develop new skills Easier to get help from local community
without communication obstacles. Especially for beginners.
Get better job opportunity Share local job opportunities Help more companies to use Linux,
increase Linux job.
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Local developer community helps
Without any communication problem and culture differences in the local community to Share knowledge and skills Participate in a new form of cooperation Participate in OS/FS scene
More local social activities will make it more fun to be a developer
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De-motivating factors
Too hard to get started Localized introduction documents Local mentor
Too hard to interact with the community Not a problem within local community
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FOSS development process
Use
Report Bug Request Feature
Fix Bug Add Feature
IntegrateMaintainer
Project Leader
Developers
Users
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Process problem
Project grows larger, process becomes more complex (Linux kernel)
Each steps in the process are deactivated by the obstacles
Makes it harder for developer to involve
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Problem in global situation
Use
Report Bug Request Feature
Fix Bug Add Feature
Integrate
obstacles
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How to help
Localize documentation on process and policy
Provide help about the process in local community
Help to negotiate by experienced developer
Do translation or relay if really needed
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With help of Local community
Use
Report Bug Request Feature
Fix Bug Add Feature
Integrate
Loca
l Com
munity
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Agenda
What are we doing in China?
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Zh-kernel.org community
A Chinese language and culture oriented Linux kernel development community
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General goals Promote contribution to Linux and make Linux
better to use Reduce the negative effect of the language and
culture differences for Chinese kernel developers to participate
Encourage Chinese developers to help each other Attract and sustain more kernel developers in China Improve overall technical skills on Linux related
development in China
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Characteristic
Focus more on development and contribution
Improve communication and tighten connection with English community rather than being isolated
Provide help to address obstacles in every stage of the development process
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Mailing List
Address: [email protected]
Subscribe: http://zh-kernel.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-kernel
Subscribers: More than 700 Chinese kernel developers and
enthusiasts. Including most of active Chinese kernel developers
like: Herbert Xu, Bryan Wu…
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Mailing List Encourage to use Chinese language in
discussion between Chinese developers to be more focus on the problem itself.
Support to use English when discuss with non-Chinese people or mailing list. Can be cc’ed when English community need to get the attention of Chinese developers.
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Mailing List Main communication approach for local
communities It provides:
Help on technical issues Help on process issues Help on communication issues with English
community Local kernel related job opportunities
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Local projects
Host local projects which are only participated by Chinese
Linux kernel documentation localization Finished most policy and process
documents Linux kernel Kconfig localization
In planning
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Foreign project helper
Introduce and promote English project/subsystem in Chinese.
Provide Chinese technical reviews and documentation
Name local champions to be mentor of local new developers
Help to integrate the result back into global community
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Wiki pages in Chinese http://zh-kernel.org A platform to publish and share kernel
development information, including: Translated documents, Chinese books
and articles Local development activities Host local projects/sub-projects Introduction to non-local projects
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Achievement More people from zh-kernel community are
contributing to Linux kernel Starting from easy tasks like code cleanup, and
bug fix Good beginning
More patches from Chinese developers are submitted during 2.6.24 development.
Many local developers got technical help on Linux projects
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Problems
Still in the process of experiment, need to revise according to feedbacks
Need more support and encouragement from English community
Need more participation from Chinese developers
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Agenda
Summary
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Summary
Real global participation is very important to FOSS
We FOSS community should initiatively do things to attract people from the other regions rather than waiting for them to join
Establishing local communities is a good way to try
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