转发: RedHat副总裁批评中国Linux厂商拒绝开放源代码

标题   RedHat副总裁批评中国Linux厂商拒绝开放源代码   
作者 pengchengzou (old hand)
时间 07/06/01 09:45 PM





RedHat副总裁Mark White上星期说:“中国一直有拿别人的东西改头换面据为己有的传统，
这违背了开源精神。据我们观察，中国的红旗，蓝点，turbolinux等公司很愿意从别人
那里获得源代码，而从不愿贡献什么。”

Mark White认为中国Linux厂商的做法在长远看来将是有害无益的，这将使他们脱离开源社区，
失去创造的源泉和动力。他们的软件将无法和众多的商业Linux软件（如
IBM DB, Oracle）整和。

Sun Wah Linux 市场主管Albert Chung (同时是红旗Linux的股东)认为
White的职责有些偏激。他说红旗Linux是开放自己的源代码的 （指kernel部分）
。他认为在Linux上开发的应用程序是可以不开源的。

他同时说一些小的本地化定制化工作是无须开源的。而且这也不是中国独有的问题。

White还指出：“中国的开发人员对开源社区的贡献不大，我们鼓励他们加入公开的
review工作，使他们更为聪明和有经验。”

thanks zealousness for the information. here is the English original.



Linux Makers in China Allegedly Violating Terms
By Computerworld
Jul 03 2001 10:13 AM PDT

A Red Hat VP says developers in the country are not sharing their modified source code.




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HONG KONG - Linux software developers in mainland China are acting against the spirit of open-source programming by not sharing their modified source code, Red Hat VP and Managing Director Mark White said last week.
"China has a history of being able to take U.S.- or European-developed software or technology products and then try and take control of [them] by wrapping a Chinese applications layer around it and saying it is now their technology," White said. He added that this defeats the purpose of open source and does nothing to encourage Linux business.

"The challenge that we've seen with companies like Redflag Software, Bluepoint, and to a lesser extent TurboLinux, particularly in the [China], is that they've been very welcoming to take this [open] source code and do something with it, but are less welcoming to distribute their changes," White said.

White explained that Red Hat makes a point of creating completely new projects with its source code open, as it did with its clustering software for Intel's IA-64 architecture. "The reason we've done that is because we believe that's what our customers want," he said. "The benefit our customers get from choosing Red Hat Linux as a Internet infrastructure platform is that the source code is open and the customer is in control, not the vendor."

Although Chinese Linux developers have won lots of awards and press coverage for their Linux development, according to White, the market still tends to buy Sun Microsystems Solaris and Microsoft Windows NT, because customers believe that is where the real innovation curve is.

White noted that Linux developers in China risk losing out if they continue to keep source code confined to their development teams and decide not to share it with the international software community. He said this hinders the open exchange of ideas and innovation.

"Chinese software developers should be able to work on the Linux kernel project, as a peer, with somebody in Finland, the U.S. or Australia, but they are not doing that," he said. "They are keeping the source code, [which] means that their product becomes wrapped in it and encapsulated, and in a sense [this is] going against the ideals and benefits of what made Linux useful to them in the first place."

Chinese Linux developers might face a few problems sustaining their development efforts with this attitude, White said. Corporate customers of closed-coded modified Linux products would have difficulty integrating these products with standard Oracle or IBM databases.

"With different kernels, different extensions, and modifications made, which have not been passed back to the greater Linux community, it won't qualify on the Linux platform and becomes useless as a commercial vehicle," White noted.

Albert Chung, chief marketing evangelist of Sun Wah Linux, a shareholder and distributor of Red Flag Linux products in Hong Kong and Taiwan, agreed some source code for enterprise applications is withheld by Chinese developers, but said this is a worldwide phenomenon and was not isolated to China.

"eople build applications on top of open-source platforms like Linux, but the applications can be closed source," Chung said. "It would be ideal if every source code is open - it's good for integration ... but from the trend now, people may start on open source, but [subsequent building] might not continue to be 100 percent open."

However, Chung disagreed that Chinese developers are not opening their modified kernels as a general rule. "It is actually available," he said. "When you buy a box of Red Flag Linux, it comes with a binary, and a code-based CD ... so it is open."

Chung acknowledged that some smaller distributors might not attach their source code, and therefore he couldn't disagree completely with White's comments. however, he added Red Flag Linux can be taken as an example of one Chinese firm that does include its source code with purchased packages.

Industry analysts pointed out that many Chinese Linux developers do not have commercially packaged applications yet, and all work being done now is customization work on top of open-source Linux, said Dorothy Yang, software research manager for IDC China. "In some sense, it's not necessary to share [customization work] because they do it on a case-to-case basis."

Yang added that few commercial Linux applications are available in China at the moment and that it would probably be a year or two before Linux-enabled applications have solid marketing channels open to them in China.

However, Yang said that Linux fever is definitely present and growing in China. Traditional software applications vendors are trying to get their products Linux-enabled, Yang said.

For Red Hat's White, getting more cooperation from the developers is an ongoing promotional campaign, he said, and he added there are tremendous opportunities for companies in China that want to develop value-adds on top of Linux. He conceded that before this happens a lot of work still has to be done to bring developers into the fold.

"Not as many Chinese developers are contributing to the open-source market as we would like," he said. "[But] we encourage them to join the open review process that allows them to be smarter, and more experienced, and that's why we're tying to promote guys to join the community."

Copyright 2001 Computerworld Hong Kong, International Data Group Inc. All rights reserved.