Open Source Globalization and Local Community

Li YangFreescale Semiconductor

for Linux.conf.au, Mel8ourne January 2008

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

Agenda

Why is globalization important?

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

Growth of FOSS

50+ open source licenses (OSI) GPL BSD Mozilla …

Thousands of open source projects

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

Where to recruit new developers?

Internet users are potential FOSS users

FOSS users are potential developers Internet users are potential

developers

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

Kernel contribution

US, 41, 51%

Europe, 25, 32%

Australia, 7, 9%

Other, 6, 8%

Linux Kernel Summit 2007 attendees

Regional sourceforge developers

US36%

EU40%

AU3%

Other21%

Comparison

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

US EU AU Other

KernelSourceforgeInternet users

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

Agenda

What obstacles are we facing?

Why this happens?

There are obstacles for these regions to participate Use China as example to analyze some

obstacles Other countries should be similar

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Political

Government support Financial Policy

Censorship (China) Sourceforge.net (ok now) Freebsd.org (ok now) Wikipedia.org

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

Agenda

What can we do?

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

Unaligned local community

Unaligned local community

Good for users (LUGs) Not enough for developers

Interactive Shared goals

Aligned local developer community

Mission

Recruit and sustain local developers Align local developers with global

community

The way it works

Global Communitydevelopers

Localdevelopers

Localdevelopers

Localdevelopers

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

Agenda

How can local community help?

FOSS involvers

MaintainerProject Leader

Developers

Users

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

How to attract local user (cont.)

Easy to use Localized UI Localized user manuals/HOWTOs

Fashionable Local community and User Groups

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

How about Developers

FLOSS project EU sponsored research project Survey and study about FOSS

development http://flossproject.org/report/index.htm

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

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.

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

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

FOSS development process

Use

Report Bug Request Feature

Fix Bug Add Feature

IntegrateMaintainer

Project Leader

Developers

Users

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

Problem in global situation

Use

Report Bug Request Feature

Fix Bug Add Feature

Integrate

obstacles

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

With help of Local community

Use

Report Bug Request Feature

Fix Bug Add Feature

Integrate

Loca

l Com

munity

Agenda

What are we doing in China?

Zh-kernel.org community

A Chinese language and culture oriented Linux kernel development community

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

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

Mailing List

Address: linux-kernel@zh-kernel.org

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…

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agenda

Summary

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