"2021 China Open Source Development Blue Book" released-China's open source approaching the world's advanced level

"Ten years ago, the Chinese were only users of international open source resources. Since then, the Chinese have begun to become contributors to international open source resources."

-Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation

May 10, 2021, initiated by the China Open Source Software Promotion Alliance, in conjunction with China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute, China Developer Network CSDN, China Cyberspace Research Institute, China Electronics Standardization Institute, Kaiyuan Society, Open Source China, Beijing Universities, National University of Defense Technology, East China Normal University, and dozens of scientific research institutes and technology companies have jointly released the "2021 China Open Source Development Blue Book" (hereinafter referred to as the "Blue Book"), aiming to comprehensively sort out and show the current development of China’s open source Real map.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, made an initial evaluation of China's open source in the opening congratulatory speech of the "Blue Book". He also commented on the status quo of China's open source. "China's open source is developing rapidly and is now approaching or reaching the world's advanced level. Some companies have begun to enter the ranks of the world’s front-runners, and outstanding open source leaders have emerged." At the same time, they put forward the following expectations: "We expect China to develop open source education, standardization, legislation, intellectual property protection, and open source communities, foundations, and venture capital. On the one hand, we have made great progress to a higher level!"

The report is divided into nine chapters, including overview of China's open source development, development status of developers, development status of open source projects, development status of open source communities, development status of open source foundations and open source organizations, development status of open source education, open source business models, and open source Opportunities and challenges and open source contribution, comprehensively expounded the overall status of China's open source and development suggestions, and carried out a multi-dimensional description and interpretation of the open source status, opportunities and challenges, and my country's contribution.

Here are some important conclusions:

- 2020年中国开源的发展速度已成为全球最快，中国开源已经接近或部分达到世界先进水平。
- 中国开源面临巨大挑战：安全漏洞、信息泄露、知识产权等存在风险；开源运营治理和标准化工作尚未成体系。
- 知名科技公司成为国内主要开源贡献者。
- 云服务是最受欢迎的开源商业模式。

China enters the open source acceleration stage

Since 2019, China Open Source has entered a new era of acceleration. The contribution of developers from China has ranked first in the world. China's open source development has entered the deep water zone. The integrity of the open source ecosystem, the maturity of the open source community, and the diversity and complexity of open source business models are all undergoing tremendous changes.

Today, China's open source technology and industry are generally approaching the first-class level compared with other countries in the world, but there is still a gap, and they are still catching up. A small number of Chinese companies have begun to enter the global open source front-runner team, and a few outstanding open source leaders have emerged. China's open source international cooperation has become increasingly close. In recent years, the development of China's open source has been accelerating, and the contribution of China's open source has gradually been recognized globally.

But at the same time, we must also be soberly aware that there are still many weak links in China’s open source communities, open source hosting platforms, open source projects, open source education systems, open source foundation operations, corporate open source governance, and open source risk prevention systems. Improve and solve.

China is about to become the largest developer market

China is entering the era of developer dividends from a demographic dividend, and will soon become the world's largest developer market. In GitHub, 16 million new developer users will be added in 2020 compared to the previous year. It is estimated that the number of developer users will reach 100 million in 2025. Among them, the number of Chinese developers on GitHub and the growth of open source contribution have become the fastest in the world. GitHub predicts that by 2030, Chinese developers will become the world's largest open source group.

At the beginning of 2021, CSDN deduplication users reached 32 million and maintained a rapid growth trend. Among them, developers under the age of 30 accounted for 81% and students accounted for 13%, providing a contributor group foundation for the open source ecosystem. On the CSDN platform, the number of open source project articles has been increasing year by year, and since 2017, it has been rising sharply for two consecutive years. Open source has attracted more and more attention among the Chinese developer community.

Thirty percent of developers have participated in open source projects, moving from users to contributors, and their understanding of open source software has become more mature.

Opportunities and challenges of open source

In China, open source today has become the mainstream of software development in the Internet field, information technology field, and mobile terminal (mobile phone) field. On the Internet, open source web servers accounted for 70%, in deep information technology based on open source accounted for 90%, and open source mobile terminals (smart phones) accounted for 84%. It can be seen from these data that open source has become the basis for my country to promote the development of in-depth information technology innovation almost in sync with the international community.

The world’s well-known open source communities and open source foundations are gradually increasing their overall cooperation with China’s open source ecosystem, and are increasingly actively assisting the development of local Chinese companies and open source organizations, accelerating the promotion of technical exchanges between Chinese developers and global developers, and are forming a comprehensive Cooperation, symbiosis and win-win close allies, with their support and help, China's open source industry is rapidly integrating into the global open source ecosystem, and has played an irreplaceable core role in certain areas.

But at the same time, China Open Source also faces three challenges: technical risks, legal risks, and supply chain risks. Technical risks are mainly manifested in the existence of security vulnerabilities in a large number of open source projects and open source components, and the number of vulnerabilities has increased year by year in recent years; system information leakage, password management, and malicious code implantation are the main technical risks faced by open source. The legal risks of open source mainly involve technical/commercial disclosure risk, contract breach risk, open source license risk (unclear license or license conflict risk) and intellectual property risk (copyright risk, patent risk, trademark risk). The security risks of the open source supply chain include the "stuck neck" risks in all aspects of the distribution, use, and redevelopment of open source technologies, including heavy reliance, low maintenance, and export control.

The "Blue Book" is written and released at the right time, which will help relevant departments to formulate open source policies and provide reference for the layout of open source strategies, and provide more theoretical references and data support for scientific research institutes, technology companies and open source practitioners.

Click to download the report: https://codechina.csdn.net/COPU/copu/-/blob/master/static/images/%E5%BC%80%E6%BA%90%E8%93%9D%E7% 9A%AE%E4%B9%A6.pdf