Computing technology has gone through from the mainframe era, the client server era, the Internet era, to today's powerful digital and artificial intelligence era, both in terms of computing power and application scope, have been greatly improved. During this evolution, the desktop operating system has long been the basis for the development of core productivity.
Operating system, the core of the information industry
From a global perspective, the operating system is regarded as the "soul" of the information industry. The "moat" built by the first-mover advantage in overseas markets has long dominated the global operating system's voice.
At the same time, information security risks are becoming an important topic of global concern. In order to solve the dilemma of "lack of core and less soul" in China's electronic information industry. At the end of November 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the "14th Five-Year" software and information technology service industry development plan, focusing on key software, open source ecology and other key words, repeatedly mentioning "concentrating efforts on basic software", especially pointing out "strengthening the operating system. overall architecture
Planning and technology path planning, promote system integration enterprises, scientific research institutes, and universities to carry out joint research on key operating system technologies, and improve the compatibility of operating systems with underlying hardware and interoperability with upper-layer applications. " It can be seen that in the top-level planning of national policies, basic software, especially operating systems, has been placed the top priority in industrial development .
Software is the foundation of the development of the digital economy, and it is also the key support for the construction of a manufacturing power, a network power, and a digital China. To a certain extent, the development of software is closely related to the progress of open source. In the eyes of Lv Weifeng, Secretary-General of China Software Industry Association, at this stage, although my country's software industry has ushered in a new trend of open source, open and integrated development. A general consensus is that most of the core technologies of the current domestic operating systems come from the open source community, but most of the development and core technologies of the Chinese open source community are also borrowed from or directly derived from the global open source ecosystem, which is also the main problem currently faced in China.
Lv Weifeng, Secretary General of China Software Industry Association
At present, my country's open source communities are mostly based on communication and information exchange platforms. To have more international discourse power, the core is to be able to control the trend of open source technology at the underlying common code level. In recent years, there have been more and more open source projects led by my country, and root communities such as openkylin (Open Kylin) have been born. This has largely changed the situation where there was only a single communication-type community in the past, but no root technical community.
Kylin Software
As the main force of the domestic operating system, Zhu Chen, senior vice president of Kylin Software and chairman of the openkylin (Open Kylin) community, said that last year, the domestic operating system community has formed an open source root covering server OS, mobile terminal/IoT OS Community structure: such as openEuler/openAnolis, openHarmony, etc., but the root community of desktop operating systems in my country is still blank.
Zhu Chen, Senior Vice President of Kylin Software and Chairman of the Openkylin (Open Kylin) Community
In order to overcome the "stuck neck" problem of China's software core technology, Kylin Software called on domestic desktop ecological enterprises to initiate the concept of community building, and quickly won the unanimous support of many domestic partners. To this end, on June 24, Kylin Software took the lead in launching the establishment of China's first desktop operating system root community - openkylin (Open Kylin) open source community.
openkylin (Open Kylin) open source community
When talking about Kylin Software's original intention to initiate community construction as the cornerstone of the domestic desktop ecosystem, Zhu Chen introduced that Kylin Software has been developing open source communities for ten years, including leading the operation and construction of the Ubuntu Kylin community, participating in the openEuler community, and contributing openStack community, etc. "During this period, we have accumulated a lot of operational and technical experience. At the same time, we also know that the development of desktop operating systems is inseparable from a rich application ecosystem. To rapidly expand the application ecosystem, cooperation is an essential part."
In fact, China has been exploring the field of operating systems for more than 30 years, and there are at least 15 "domestic operating systems" that can be found on the market. However, there are very few service providers who can really persist in version iteration for a long time. Kylin Software is one of the few technology companies that has persisted all the way. Therefore, it has a deeper meaning and value to initiate ecological construction.
Secretary-General Lv Weifeng, who holds the same opinion, believes that the important factor for the success of operating system products is ecology, whether it is a technical ecology or a business ecology, it is inseparable from the persistence of the majority of developers. The healthy development of the domestic ecology is inseparable from the participation of more, better and younger developers. Building an open, complete and rich application ecosystem not only requires the active cooperation of mainstream software and hardware manufacturers, but also attracts the continuous influx of developers from many open source communities around the world, while providing users with more and more abundant usage scenarios, building branches and leaves Mao's industrial full-stack ecosystem.
Difficult words, Kylin software goes upstream
China is a major country in the use of open source code, and it is also the largest open source contributor outside the United States. Secretary-General Lv Weifeng believes, "From the perspective of the current number of open source projects and code contribution, my country's open source community has developed into a period of rapid growth. From the perspective of root technology, community operations, open source compliance, etc., China's independent open source industry has begun to develop. With scale, over time in the future, China's open source community will be able to gradually occupy more voice in the world, make Chinese contributions to the global open source development, and make a Chinese voice."
As the main platform for the cultivation, birth and development of basic technologies of open source operating systems, the open source community is also a gathering place for open source talents and smart products, and an indispensable key link in the domestic basic software industry chain. The open source community's concept of openness, freedom and collaborative innovation lowers barriers and inspires enthusiasm. Therefore, Secretary-General Lv Weifeng called on more leading companies in the domestic software ecosystem to actively join the open source community and become an important platform for domestic developers to shift from hobbies to career success.
Kylin Software
From the perspective of international trends, open source community participants have gradually evolved from community enthusiasts in the early days to commercial enterprises. Communities with long-term involvement and support from commercial enterprises often have more lasting vitality. Therefore, Secretary-General Lv Weifeng called for the construction of an independent open source community in China, with enterprises as the most dynamic construction subjects, and at the same time, it is necessary to integrate multiple levels of industry, academia, and research. Only in this way can we improve the industrial ecological environment as soon as possible, promote independent research and development and industrial transformation and upgrading, and achieve high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and high-quality development.
Focus on ecology, based on richer desktop development
In the long-term work, Secretary-General Lv Weifeng believes that there are many criteria for evaluating the quality of a software, and "ecological richness" is one of the key factors, and ecological development is a process that accumulates and changes from quantitative to qualitative. After years of continuous investment, the core ecosystem of domestic operating systems has initially taken shape. my country's open source community is gradually becoming a platform for technological collaborative innovation, and domestic operating system developers have gradually gained more technical support and market recognition. Domestic operating systems have also begun to integrate into the business ecology, open source ecology and developer ecology, resulting in rapid development.
It is an inevitable requirement for the development of my country's software industry to build an independent and innovative open source operating system and a Chinese-led open source community. Accelerate the implementation of the open source development strategy, continuously enhance the innovation vitality of the software industry, technological innovation and ecological co-construction go hand in hand, and enrich the upstream and downstream industrial chains and application ecology of domestic operating systems. Build a high-quality, high-efficiency, sustainable, and safer industrial chain and supply chain, fully release the amplification, multiplication and superposition effects brought by software integration, and effectively meet multi-level and diversified market needs. On the premise of ensuring system security and intellectual property compliance, encourage global software companies and technical and ecological operation talents to innovate collaboratively, deepen the application of open source technology, improve open source governance mechanisms and governance rules, and build an independent open source ecosystem based on China and facing the world .
Secretary-General Lv Weifeng said, "Software is the soul of information technology, and open source is the root of software. We have worked hard for many years from closed source to open source. Whether it is from terminal applications to emerging technologies such as cloud computing, open source has become very common. For example, the number of ecosystems of the Kylin operating system exceeded 400,000 a while ago, which is a good starting point. In the next step, we hope that openkylin (Open Kylin) can also further expand and expand the ecological capabilities on the basis of these ecosystems .”
openkylin
On the road of practice, according to Zhu Chen, openkylin (Open Kylin) has gathered more than ten founding units, including many operating system manufacturers, and hopes to gather open source forces through the openkylin (Open Kylin) community to jointly solve basic problems. , so that commercial companies can focus more on differentiated competition in advanced capabilities, launch mature desktop commercial distributions and supporting ecosystems based on openkylin (open Kylin), and promote the rapid development of the desktop operating system track. Considering the operating system in the next few years, the market will continue to grow. Therefore, it is very necessary to create an operating system that is open to assist and gather innovation and development. This is also the driving force behind the ecological construction of the openkylin (Open Kylin) community. Zhu Chen firmly stated that the goal of the openkylin (Open Kylin) community is to create an " industry-led, platform-based " An independent, technologically advanced and ecologically rich " desktop operating system root community.
To this end, openkylin (Open Kylin) will build an open, diverse and architecturally inclusive developer innovation ecosystem and desktop operating system innovation system by aggregating multiple open source forces to jointly promote the prosperity and development of the community ecosystem. In order to gather a variety of open source forces, it will become a top open source community with the ability to customize the operating system form, so that openkylin (Open Kylin) has the ability to develop independently and sustainably.
When talking about the future vision, Zhu Chen said that he hopes to build openKylin into a top open source community with international influence by establishing a sound community organization structure and an open and transparent operating mechanism, and continuing to contribute to mainstream upstream open source projects.
Epilogue
Ecological construction is not achieved in a day, and the domestic desktop operating system has a long way to go. Secretary-General Lv Weifeng suggested that the domestic operating system, as the key core software, needs to further improve the user experience and graphics optimization capabilities and stability, and continue to expand the hardware driver adaptation and the compatibility and transplantation of core software systems. Relying on the demand traction of the domestic big cycle, relying on the characteristics of open source that can gather wisdom, and on the basis of open source software in the industry and field, building an independent and controllable ecology is a sustainable development route. Only if the domestic operating system can support the transplantation and accumulation of core applications in my country's important industries and fields to the self-controllable key software stack, can my country's key information infrastructure's dependence on foreign products, services and open source communities be solved in the long run.
With the support of policy and the traction of Kylin software, the domestic operating system will gradually mature. However, the sign of the real maturity of the domestic operating system is to gain the favor of consumers in the C-end market, to truly form an ecosystem that can meet the needs of consumers, and to compete with Windows and macOS. war". The road is difficult, but there are frontrunners like openkylin chasing their dreams. In the near future, there will be more forerunners on the road to the construction of the domestic desktop ecosystem.