Here is (one of) the organizer of BarcampHK ( as mentioned by @wyeunho ). 7+ years ago J.Aaron Farr (ASF) talks about open source in China. I put his slide onl

Here is (one of) the organizer of BarcampHK ( as mentioned by @wyeunho ). 7+ years ago J.Aaron Farr (ASF) talks about open source in China. I put his slide online and there are still views/mentions everyday... guess what? People have the same question, and there are not much good answers. I do agree a lot with the blogger. Without Taobao and perhaps Douban, business propelled open source movement in China by Chinese is quite a shame to be mentioned. Just try to put my own self as an example, in 2003-2007, I do quite a lot of breeding edge OSS project digging and delivered hundreds of patches ( mainly among asterisk, qmail, horde, IMEs, bbs-related stuff... ). Jumping into the business field, I'm damned to be a pure consumer... shameful. Most of the time clients stop me from releasing the code. But from my own perspective, its more like they believe in hasten broken code with cheap labour and obscurity is the only safe. It was hourlyWTF for me. But I still do barcamps, still stressing open source is not a biz talk but hands-on the hack. The damn thing is I, as a foreigner/guest in cities out of China (Bangkok,Tokyo,SG etc), can freely challenge super facial "open source" demonstrations, but hardly do the same in HK/GZ, where I am the organizer. Just can't be the black face too often. In open source we need open minds. The whole Asia thing is not quite open so far. People easily feel ashamed/transgressed for technical challenges. It wastes a lot of time to just be nice and "suggesting" the damn alternatives. It is not about China, but the whole Chinese culture circle including JP/KR/SG. Taobao is good that their engineer are both courageous to show what they can do ( such as strong urge for node.js security patch. They show how to be better and keep pushing the U.S. to acknowledge. ), and humble enough to shame what have done wrong among the community. But these are rare kind of people. I just hope to foster more open minded ones, and the spirit of hand-on hacks. Again, it is not about how much open source projects you know or how is your level of skill. It is more about how openness jam into the corporate culture and the civic society at large.