China set to embrace open source in new software push
New five-year plan plan places importance on homegrown open source software
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Hailing software as the “foundation of digital economic development,” China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has reportedly called for pushing the growth of homegrownopen sourcesoftware.
The Registergleaned these details from a machine-translated version of MIIT’s 14th Five-Year Plan for theDevelopment of Software and Information Technology Services.
The plan argues that despite the strides made by China’s software industry thanks to the 13th five-year plan, China’s software industry is still underperforming internationally.
Open Source FTW
In order to help improve the “international competitiveness” of the country as far as software is concerned, MIIT suggests facilitating deeper international exchange programs and open cooperation schemes, which it argues will help the country match up to its global peers.
As part of the strategy, the plan seeks not just to improve the state of homegrown software, but also build “two or three open source communities with international influence.”
According toThe Register, MIIT cites a lack of open source foundations, insufficient control of the underlying technology, a weak open source culture, and inadequate policy support as impediments that have constrained China’s leadership in the open source ecosystem.
MIIT offloads some of the blame for its lack of software leadership to a weak software supply chain which doesn’t look at software and intellectual property with the respect it commends globally.
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One project that does find mention in the document isHuawei’s Euler OS, which the company has recently donated to the Open Atom Open Source Foundation, whichThe Registersays works on open source hardware, silicon, and content.
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With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.
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