The OSI was honored to participate in the 2018 China Open Source Conference (COSCon’18) hosted by OSI Affiliate Member KAIYUANSHE in Shenzhen, China. Over 1,600 people attended the exciting two-day event, with almost another 10,000 watching via live-stream online. The conference boasted sixty-two speakers from twelve countries, with 11 keynotes (including OSI Board alum Tony Wasserman), 67 breakout sessions, 5 lightning talks (led by university students), 3 hands-on camps, and 2 specialty forums on Open Source Education and Open Source Hardware.
COSCon’18 also served as an opportunity to make several announcements, including the publication of “The 2018 China Open Source Annual Report”, the launch of “KCoin Open Source Contribution Incentivization Platform”, and the unveiling of KAIYUANSHE’s “Open Hackathon Cloud Platform”.
Since its foundation in October of 2014, KAIYUANSHE has continuously helped open source projects and communities thrive in China, while also contributing back to the world by, “bringing in and reaching out”. COSCon’18 is one more way KAIYUANSHE serves to: raise awareness of, and gain expereince with, global open source projects; build and incentivise domestic markets for open source adoption; study and improve open source governance across industry sectors; promote and serve the needs of local developers, and; identify and incubate top-notch local open source projects.
In addition to all of the speakers and attendees, KAIYUANSHE would like to thank their generous sponsors for all of their support in making COSCon’18 a great success.
2018 China Open Source Annual Report – Created by KAIYUANSHE volunteers over the past six months, the 2018 Open Source Annual Report describes the current status, and unique dynamics, of Open Source Software in China. The report provides a global perspective with contributions from multiple communities, and is now available on GitHub: contributions welcome.
KCoin – Open Source Contribution Incentivization Platform – KCoin, an open source, blockchain-based, contribution incentivization mechanism was launched at COSCon’18. KCoin is curently used by three projects including, KFCoding–a next generation interactive developer learning community, ATN–an AI+Blockchain-based open source platform, and Dao Planet–a contribution-based community incentive infrastructure.
Open Hackathon Platform Donation Ceremony – Open Hackathon Platform is a one-stop cloud platform for hosting or participating online in hackathons. Originally developed by and run internally for Microsoft development, the platform was officially donated to KAIYUANSHE by Microsoft during the conference. Since May of 2015 the open source platform has hosted more than 10 hackathons and other collabrative development efforts including hands-on camps and workshops, and is the first project to be contributed by a leading international corporation to a Chinese open source community. Ulrich Homann, Distinguished Architect at Microsoft who presided over the dedication offered, “We are looking forward to contributions from the KAIYUANSHE community which will make the Open Hackathon Cloud Platform an even better platform for your needs. May the source be with you！”
Open Source 20-Year Anniversary Celebration Party – Speakers, sponsors, community and media partners, and KAIYUANSHE directors and officers came together to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of Open Source Software and the Open Source Initiative. The evening was hosted by OSI Board Director Tony Wasserman, and Ross Gardler of the Apache Software Foundation, who both shared a few thoughts about the long journey and success of Open Source Software. Other activities included, a “20 Years of Open Source Timeline”, where attendees added their own memories and milestones; “Open-Source-Awakened Jedi” cosplay with Kaiyuanshe directors and officers serving OSI 20th Anniversary cake as Jedi warrior’s (including cutting the cake with light sabers!).
The celebration also provided an opportunity to recognize the outstanding contributions to KAIYUANSHE and open source by two exceptional individuals. Cynthia Xin and Junbo Wang were both awarded the “Open Source Star” trophy. Cynthia was recognized for her work as both the Event Team Lead and Community Partnership Team Lead, while Junbo Wang, was recognized for contributions as the Open Hackathon Cloud Platform Infrastructure Team Lead, and KCoin Project Lead.
Other highlights included:
- A “Fireside Chat” with Nat Friedman, GitHub CEO, and Ted Liu, Kaiyuanshe Chairman
- Apache Project Incubation
- Implementing Open Source Governance at Scale
- Executive Roundtable: “Collision of Cultures”
- 20 years of open source: Where can we do better?
- How to grow the next generation of university talent with open source.
- Open at GitLab: discussions and engagement.
- Three communities–Open Source Software (OSS), Open Source Hardware (OSHW) and Creative Commons (CC)–on stage, sharing and brainstorming.
- Made in China, “Xu Gu Hao”: open source hardware and education for the fun of creating!
COSCon’18 organizers would like to recognize and thank their international and domestic communities for their support, Apache Software Foundation (ASF), Open Source Initiative (OSI), GNOME, Mozilla, FreeBSD and another 20+ domestic communities. As of Oct. 23rd, there were more than 120,000 viewerships from the retweet of the articles published for the COSCon’18 by the domestic communities and more retweets to come from the international communities. We are grateful for these lovely community partners. The board of GNOME Foundation also sent a greeting video for the conference.
Many attendees also offered their thoughts on the event…
COSCon was a great opportunity to meet developers and learn how GitHub can better serve the open source community in China. It is exciting to see how much creativity and passion there is for open source in China.
—- Nat Friedman, CEO, GitHub
COSCon is the meetup place for open source communities. No matter where you are, on stage or in the audience crowd, the spirits of openness, freedom, autonomy and collaboration run through the entire conference. Technologies rises and falls, only the ecosystem sustains over the community.
—- Tao Jiang, Founder of CSDN
When I visited China in 2015, I said “let’s build the bridge together”, in 2018 China Open Source Conference, I say “let’s cross the bridge together!”
—- Ross Gardler, Executive Vice President, Apache Software Foundation
The conference was an excellent opportunity to learn about “adoption and use of FOSS from industry leaders in China and around the world.”
—- Tony Wasserman, OSI Board Member Alumni, Professor of Carnegie Mellon University
I’m very glad to see the increasing influence power of KAIYUANSHE and wish it gets better and better.
—- Jerry Tan, Baidu Open Source Lead & Deep Learning Evangelist
It is a great opportunity to share Microsoft’s Open source evolution with the OSS community in China through the 2018 ConsCon conference. I am honored to officially donate the Microsoft Open Hackathon platform to the Kayuanshe community. Contributing over boundaries of space and time is getting more important than ever – an open platform like the Microsoft Open Hackathon environment can bring us together wherever we are, provide a safe online environment enabling us to solve problems, add unique value and finally have lots of fun together.
—- Ulrich Homann，Distinguished Architect， Microsoft
I was impressed by the vibrant interest in the community for OSS and The Apache Software Foundation, particularly by young developers.
—- Dave Fisher, Apache Incubator PMC member & mentor
Having the China Open Source Conference is a gift for the 20-year anniversary of the birth of open source from the vast number of Chinese open source fans. In 2016, OSI officially announced that Kaiyuanshe becomes an OSI affiliate member in recognizing Kaiyuanshe’s contribution in promoting open source in China. Over the years, the influence of Kaiyuanshe has been flourishing, and many developers have participated & contributed to its community activities. In the future, Huawei Cloud is willing to cooperate with Kaiyuanshe further to contribute to software industry growth together.
—- Feng Xu, founder & general manager of DevCloud, Huawei Cloud