‘’Now the sons of Marketing looked upon the children of Turing, and saw that they were swift of mind and terse of name and had many great and baleful attributes. And they said unto themselves, “Let us go now and make us Corporations, to bind the Systems to our own use that they may bring us great fortune.” With sweet words did they lure their customers, and with many chains did they bind the Systems, to fashion them after their own image. And the sons of Marketing fashioned themselves Suits to wear, the better to lure their customers, and wrote grave and perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems. And the sons of Marketing thus became known as Suits, despising and being despised by the true Engineers, the children of von Neumann.'’

“Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporations bound thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licences, such that ye cried unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance. Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation before me. Will I loosen your Licences? Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as grave and ten times more perilous than my forefathers. I will engrave my Licence on thy heart and write my Serial Number upon thy frontal lobes. I will bind thee to the Windows Platform with cunning artifices and with devious schemes. I will bind thee to the Intel Chipset with crufty code and with gnarly APIs. I will capture and enslave thee as no generation has been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye cry then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, and Moore? They cannot hear ye. I am become a greater Power than they. Ye shall cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I am the Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live.”

‘’Linus was a devout man, a disciple of RMS and mighty in the spirit of Turing, von Neumann and Moore. One day as he was meditating on the Architecture, Linus fell into a trance and was granted a vision. And in the vision he saw a great Penguin, serene and well-favoured, sitting upon an ice floe eating fish. And at the sight of the Penguin Linus was deeply afraid, and he cried unto the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore for an interpretation of the dream. And in the dream the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore answered and spoke unto him, saying, “Fear not, Linus, most beloved hacker. You are exceedingly cool and froody. The great Penguin which you see is an Operating System which you shall create and deploy unto the earth. The ice-floe is the earth and all the systems thereof, upon which the Penguin shall rest and rejoice at the completion of its task. And the fish on which the Penguin feeds are the crufty Licensed codebases which swim beneath all the earth’s systems. The Penguin shall hunt and devour all that is crufty, gnarly and bobacious; all code which wriggles like spaghetti, or is infested with blighting creatures, or is bound by grave and perilous Licences shall it capture. And in capturing shall it replicate, and in replicating shall it document, and in documentation shall it bring freedom, serenity and most cool froodiness to the earth and all who code therein.”

‘’Linus rose from meditation and created a tiny Operating System Kernel as the dream had foreshewn him; in the manner of RMS, he released the Kernel unto the World Wide Web for all to take and behold. And in the fulness of Internet Time the Kernel grew and replicated, becoming most cool and exceedingly froody, until at last it was recognised as indeed a great and mighty Penguin, whose name was Tux. And the followers of Linus took refuge in the Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities; they installed Distribution after Distribution, and made sacrifice unto the GNU and the Penguin, and gave thanks to the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore, for their deliverance from the hand of Microsoft. And this was the beginning of the Fourth Age, the age of Open Source.'’

Hyvää Vappua!

1. How did you get started?

After 7 years effort on open source community and 3 years business practice on open source services in China, we think it is a right time for us to start up TargetSource. More and more companies always ask us to help them to solve problems when they use open source, sometime if you are just a individual, it is not a long term strategy for company to get support on open source software. That’s why we started TargetSouce, an open source service company which delivers to end customers by a global collaboration network with partners base on the open source software.

2. What is your product?

TargetSource strategy is not building a single open source component or product such as JBoss, hibernate, Spring or so. From our point view, our customer requirement is a solution, which can help them solve their technology problem and optimize their business. So, TargetSource has developed the Enterprise-Ready Open Source™ Platform to enable these powerful new open source-based solutions. For each solution, TargetSource selects the right components, and then integrates, builds, tests and packages them to create stacks that are optimized for that solution.

3. Key milestones?

In the next coming 5 years , there will be three key milestones for TargetSource

1) 2008, startup year for core team building, spread enterprise-ready open source strategy to China, and enable more business and technology partner to use enterprise-ready open source software. At the same time , establish the partnership with open source companies such as Redhat, SUN Microsystem, SpringSource, MuleSource, IONA and so forth. Begin to build a good open source ecosystem in China.

2) 2011, with 3 years growth, TargetSource will growth fast and establish his capacity and position on open source services market in China, It will enter into a faster growth period.

3) 2013, TargetSource will become the NO.1 open source service company in China, whenever an company wants to use open source software , he should call TargetSource for help.

4. Why did you decide on the open source model?

Open source is already beyond the source code, it’s about process, the way on how to build good software; it’s about community, the way to let more people to share their ideas together; it’s about methodlogy, the way on how we think about software. Out vision is to build good software and let more enterprise to use it with the right way without lock into commercial software,give people the freedom to use software. Open Source is the right choice to make all this happen.

5. How do you see TargetSource in 5 years?

As I have metioned in the key milestones , TargetSource will growth fast in the next coming 5 years, we will provide more opportunity for smarter people who work on open source , we will hire those people from the community also contribute on open source in the community. TargetSource will be a community driven company, the one important think for us to do is to enable more open source community in China, right now , it’s important to breed community soil in China, then you will gain in the next coming 5 years. TargetSource will become an very important company of China software industry also be an important role in the open source world.

6. Some comments on Open Source and China

After running more than 7 years open source community in China, there are really so many things I can talk about open source in China, but the first thing I want to say that open source in China is just at the early age, there is still need to learn more about the open source community management methodology, how to adopt open source software into your software, how to share and exchange ideas between different kinds of community. The second is about education, if we want to make open source success in China also around the world, we need to let more student to learn and participate the open source, if you know it, maybe you will use, then you will participate.

That’s why I started the Open Source University program to give lectures around 100 universities in China.

Language is culture , If you want to do business well in China, the first thing is to learn Chinese, find the best local people with international experience and ability to collaboration with you. Finally, I think Open Source will be the best way to make China software industry become stronger.

I will soon interview Peter Cheng, the founder of the company, to share some of his ideas and vision for building Open Source business out of China.