| Cover: Zhou Ying
| Editor in charge: Li Mingkang
Open source, in 2021, is on fire, and it is a prairie fire, burning the sky and the earth. It can be said that it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the first year of the rapid development of China's open source. We have seen that in the field of open source, the key support of national policies, the increased favor of capital, the joint promotion of the community, and the continuous deepening of education...all of these are showing a trend-China's open source has moved to a high level The situation of high quality, high quality and high level is constantly advancing, and it is in the key historical stage of the rising period of the development curve.
At this stage, how to observe the status quo of China's open source, how to predict the development direction of China's open source, and how to make China's open source better embrace the world stage will surely become an important research topic. As the earliest open source community consortium in China with the mission of "open source governance, international integration, community development, and open source projects", Kaiyuanshe made up its mind to promote the development of China's open source as early as 2014. Now, the annual report on China's open source released to the public It has been going on for four years. In 2021, we joined forces with many friends in the open source industry to slowly develop from the four aspects of open source developer questionnaires, Github/Gitee data, open source commercialization, and open source memorabilia. All friends who pay attention to China's open source draw a clear, professional and valuable annual picture of China's open source.
Part1 Report - Preface
2022 is coming, and there is a joke on the Internet, saying that this is just "2020 too", and January 2022 is only the 25th month of 2020. Looks like nothing has changed, we are still in the midst of COVID. However, from another perspective, the world is undergoing tremendous changes, and the world we live in is moving towards an unknown direction at high speed.
For China's open source, the key word in 2021 should be "running up". The signs are already very obvious. The Department of Information Technology Development of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "14th Five-Year Plan" Software and Information Technology Service Industry Development Plan, which is a typical signal that the open source field is about to take off. From walking on the ground to flying in the sky, these are two completely different stages. In 2021, it will be the run-up stage before take-off. From the ground to the sky means that the entire pattern of behavior will change profoundly. We used to only need to think about paths and directions on a two-dimensional plane, but when it comes to the sky, in three-dimensional space, we have countless choices.
Although we can't predict and grasp the future and the status in the air, everyone is running hard and moving forward bravely.
In last year's China Open Source Annual Report, we summarized three trends. In this year's report, we simply added the column "Open Source Events", summarizing ten trends. So in this preface, let's talk about our feelings.
Out of the circle
Open source is not only getting hotter, but it has also sparked various discussions among friends outside the circle. First, investors with a keen sense of smell began to pay attention to the "track" of open source. Then, based on the background of Sino-US confrontation, many people began to discuss open source from the perspectives of international politics, national strength, and national security (this was originally purely technical). category). Until the recent few open source software security incidents, it is even more controversial. Such a mixed phenomenon may continue to persist.
ecological responsibility
When open source was just a hobby of a small group, it was free to do almost anything. However, today, when software swallows the world and open source swallows software, open source technology has become one of the infrastructures of the entire world. With great power comes great responsibility. The wider the application, the higher the risk. How should we think about and ensure the security of the open source supply chain ? How should we build a healthier open source ecosystem? In such an ecology, how should the responsibilities of all parties be defined?
Sense of history
Kaiyuanshe has released the China Open Source Annual Report for the fourth consecutive year, and also held the sixth China Open Source Annual Conference . Constantly, in the communication with friends, we often talk about: If we do open source things, what will happen if we do it for another 10 years or another 20 years? If in another 10 or 20 years, we come back to look at the things we open source people have done, which ones have been done right? What went wrong? Which should be done sooner? This feeling is a kind of "historical sense". When we have more of such a sense of history and more mentality of being looked back on in the future, how should we choose when we do these things? How to act?
Of course, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The future we yearn for can only be shaped by our efforts. Let's share with you!
Zhuang Biaowei, Chairman of 2021 Kaiyuan Society
January 14, 2022
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Reply to " 2021 China Open Source Annual Report " in the background to get the full version of the report
Part2 overall report overview
The 2021 China Open Source Annual Report is mainly composed of four parts, namely questionnaire , data , commercialization and 2021 open source events .
1 Questionnaire
In early 2016, Kaiyuanshe released the "2015 China Open Source Community Attendance Survey Report" [1], and in the following years, continued to release developer survey reports, aiming to present the development of open source in China from multiple dimensions. This year we set off again, combining data analysis methods and survey reports to draw a map of China's open source world in 2021.
This questionnaire is an important part of China's annual open source annual report, and analysis reports that are not based on research are just empty talk. The questionnaire is launched from two perspectives, including personal information (including work information and developer technical information) and open source community participation. Unlike previous years, this year we have added topics related to open source community measurement and open source commercialization. Welcome Participate in the questionnaire and express your thoughts.
Through the statistical investigation and analysis of about 44 issues, we hope to restore the true status quo of the current Chinese open source community, so as to provide an authoritative reference for future generations of open source.
2 Data articles
The data of this report is jointly produced by X-lab (Github part) and Gitee.
The Github part specifically analyzes and compares the Chinese open source projects hosted on it, provides ranking indicators according to the self-developed formula, and provides a punch chart of the working hours of the top open source projects, including the world activity ranking Top10 , China's activity ranking Top30 , Chinese enterprise open source data analysis (sorted by activity) . In addition, the activity ranking of the Chinese projects in the Apache Foundation, CNCF Foundation and Linux Foundation was also carried out.
The Gitee part conducts statistical analysis of open source projects hosted on Gitee, sorts out and interprets the changing trends of programming languages and function distribution, and analyzes the situation of developers participating in open source in Gitee, in order to provide a "local platform" perspective for observing the evolution of domestic open source .
3 Commercialization
The term Open Source was born in 1998. The emergence of this new term is largely to eliminate people's vague understanding of "Free" in Free Software and make it more business-friendly. It can be said that there is no contradiction between open source software and commercialization from the beginning of its birth, and open source does not mean free . In recent years, as some open source companies have achieved outstanding performance in the capital market, the awareness of open source commercialization in the domestic developer community and investor groups has also gradually increased. The unique development model of open source has created huge potential commercial value, attracting developers, technology companies, investment institutions and other parties to invest in the open source industry.
Although it is an indisputable fact that open source companies can achieve cash realization, it is still a difficult problem for every open source company to choose which model can be the most efficient for commercial development. There are five types of open source commercialization models: support, hosting, restricted license, open core, and mixed license. In the current open source market, hosting, open core, and mixed licensing are the most adopted by mainstream technology companies, but enterprises should choose their business path according to their own community and product conditions.
The capital side is an important participant in promoting the development of the open source market. For investment institutions, when judging an open source project, the following points are often considered comprehensively: in the product development stage, the focus is on whether the enterprise has code ownership and control and whether it has international competitiveness; in the community operation stage, it mainly depends on the enterprise Whether it has sufficient operational capabilities; and in the commercialization exploration stage, the market matching ability and the maturity of the business model will become the main focus.
As the earliest organization in the field to pay attention to and continue to cultivate open source, Yunqi Capital has successfully discovered and invested in open source companies such as PingCAP, Zilliz, and Jina AI in the early stage.
The content of this chapter is written by the investment team of Yunqi Capital. The main contents include:
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The underlying driving factors of open source software commercialization success
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Possible Commercialization Paths for Open Source Software Companies
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Open source project investor judgment criteria and case sharing
2021 Open Source Milestones
This part is a special new part of the 2021 China Open Source Annual Report. Our editorial board members have sorted out in detail the top ten events that we think can be called memorabilia in the open source world in 2021.
The editors all think that this part is very exciting, but the full text is a bit long, and we only preview it here on WeChat. Here, I would like to thank Ms. Cai Fangfang for providing the abstract version, so that everyone can have a sneak peek.
1. The open source policies of various countries will have a major impact on the future of the open source world
2. The trend of open source legal compliance: awareness is enhanced, and the road is obstructed and long-term
3. Open Source Governance Becomes a Famous Learning
Open source software security incidents occur frequently, and open source software supply chain governance is becoming increasingly important. The Linux Foundation actively promotes the integration and communication of OpenChain domestic and foreign communities, and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and many domestic companies pay close attention to or join. In addition, issues such as how enterprises open source, project open source process, and open source project measurement are also the focus of attention of the industry. Evaluation of community governance effects based on quantitative models has become a "standard configuration" for more and more mature open source organizations. CHAOSS, an open source project promoted by the Linux Foundation to measure the health of open source projects and communities, deserves attention.
4. The left-right game of the International Foundation: RMS returns to the Free Software Foundation and the Rust community dispute
Open source software projects require the cooperation of different subjects, and conflicts within the community will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the development and maintenance of software projects. In 2021, Richard M. Stallman, the father of free software, returned to the Free Software Foundation, causing fierce controversy, and the Moderation Team of the Rust community resigned collectively due to dissatisfaction with the core team, all of which exposed the complex situation and governance faced by the free and open source software community problem.
5. China's open source goes to the world, shaping the influence of the new era
The influence of Chinese developers in the open source world is constantly increasing. According to the latest GitHub annual developer report, the number of Chinese developers on GitHub will increase by nearly 1.03 million in 2021, with a cumulative total of about 7.55 million. In international open source foundations such as ASF, LF, and CNCF, there are more and more open source projects originating from China. At the same time, more and more Chinese open source people have been elected to important positions in international foundations.
6. Open source and new venture investment continues to shine
From the end of 2020 to the end of 2021, start-ups based on open source projects at home and abroad are unprecedentedly active. It is not uncommon for commercial companies based on open source projects to obtain financing and go public, and the financing amount and valuation/market value continue to refresh the upper limit. The value is recognized by capital.
Seven, the open source operating system ushered in a new round of prosperity
At the end of 2020, RedHat announced that it will end its support for CentOS 8 by the end of 2021. Users around the world began to try to find a suitable operating system to replace it. It has become the hard work of operating system manufacturers and developers to solve the risks that users may face after CentOS exits. Direction, which makes the open source operating system usher in a new period of vigorous development in 2021.
8. Rust embarks on a new journey
In 2021, the Rust Foundation was jointly established by Mozilla, Amazon, Huawei, Google, and Microsoft, and Rust finally bid farewell to "turmoil." In addition, the Linux community has also shown a positive attitude towards Rust. The Rust for Linux project is progressing smoothly in the second half of 2021, and developers are expected to see the Linux kernel officially support Rust in 2022.
9. How AI & low code will change open source is worthy of attention
Open source work in the era of artificial intelligence is facing new challenges. The GitHub Copilot tool released this year uses machine learning technology to provide code suggestions/auto-completion, and it has caused quite a bit of controversy. Many developers believe that GitHub Copilot's claimed training based on open code is actually "plagiarizing" open source code without following the open source license.
10. Open source hardware continues to heat up, and RISC-V results emerge
Open source hardware continues to grow in popularity as demand for custom hardware increases and as more startups seek accelerators and solutions for building highly suitable AI/ML algorithms. And with the advent of the RISC-V processor ISA, open source hardware has become a reality. At the same time, RISC-V has received more and more attention and investment in China, and more and more outstanding achievements have emerged.
Part3 thanks
The preparation of the "2021 China Open Source Annual Report" has received strong support from many friends in the open source community, volunteers of the Open Source Society, and members of the Advisory Committee of the Open Source Society . I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those who participated in the production of the report! Thank you for contributing your own strength to China's open source!
Pay attention to the official account of Kaiyuanshe
Reply to " 2021 China Open Source Annual Report " in the background to get the full version of the report
Or click to read the original text and go to the official website of Kaiyuanshe to download
References
[1]
Previous China Open Source Annual Reports: https://kaiyuanshe.cn/categories/Document/
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Introduction to Kaiyuanshe
Founded in 2014, Kaiyuan Society is composed of individual members who voluntarily contribute to the cause of open source. It is formed according to the principle of "contribution, consensus, and co-governance". It has always maintained the characteristics of vendor neutrality, public welfare, and non-profit. International integration, community development, and open source projects" is an open source community federation with the mission. Kaiyuanshe actively cooperates closely with communities, enterprises and government-related units that support open source. With the vision of "Based in China and Contributing to the World", it aims to create a healthy and sustainable open source ecosystem and promote China's open source community to become an active force in the global open source system. Participation and Contributors.
In 2017, Kaiyuanshe was transformed into an organization composed entirely of individual members, operating with reference to the governance model of top international open source foundations such as ASF. In the past seven years, it has connected tens of thousands of open source people, gathered thousands of community members and volunteers, hundreds of lecturers at home and abroad, and cooperated with nearly a hundred sponsors, media, and community partners.