Red Hat bullish on market of open source

US firm to offer digital solutions, help Chinese partners become IT self-reliant

China has become not only one of the world's most vibrant open-source communities but an important contributor to the global open-source ecosystem, said Victor Tsao, president of Red Hat, a US-based open-source solutions provider.

"To help China's open-source development, we will offer local companies with digital solutions that can help them achieve self-reliance in information technology and ensure the safety of related industrial chains," Tsao said.

Open source, which anyone can inspect, modify and share, creates sharing and openness in software development. It is considered a driver of software technology and industrial innovation worldwide.

"No company can ignore the Chinese market. It's not only an important open-source market but a critical contributor to an innovative open-source ecosystem," Tsao said.

"The market is home to a large number of open-source professionals who have been increasingly contributing software and industrial innovations for global technological advancement."

The US company earlier said it plans to build a new data center in China this year, to gather data for Chinese language courses. It will also invest to support the country's open-source ecosystem as well as the booming digital transformation market.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of Chinese developers of open-source software exceeded 8 million as of April, ranking only behind the United States.

Data from CSDN, a leading developer community in China, showed the number of Chinese developers registered last year was 35 million. Up to 94 percent of them use open source and 42 percent have participated in open-source projects.

"The Chinese market is full of opportunities," Tsao said. "More Chinese companies have gradually realized the value and openness of open source and only when they embrace it can they give birth to more technological innovations."

Red Hat, whose business includes hybrid cloud infrastructure, middle-ware and cloud-native application and covers 40 countries and regions, has supported Chinese companies in a variety of industries, such as manufacturing and finance.

"More opportunities will arise as the country has striven to build an open-source ecosystem and is beefing up efforts in driving the digital economy," he said.

Wang Huaimin, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a note that China has developed rapidly in the global open-source ecosystem and has transformed from a participator to a leader in terms of global open-source development.

The country has highlighted the role of open source in driving the software industry and the construction of a digital China in its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for the software and information technology services sector.

By 2025, China aims to build two to three open-source communities with international influence and cultivate more than 10 high-quality open-source projects, the plan said.