Economic Observation Network reporter Song Fuli The 2023 Zhongguancun Forum is on its fourth day. The theme of this year’s ZGC Forum is “Open Cooperation and Shared Future”. With the rapid development of scientific and technological innovation, open cooperation has become an inevitable choice to break through development problems. In this forum, guests from all aspects of industry, academia and research all emphasized that open cooperation can promote scientific and technological innovation to achieve new breakthroughs.
The World Open Source Innovation Development Forum, which was held on the 26th, took “Open Source Education under the Background of Open Science” as its theme, reiterated the theme of openness and sharing, and attracted the attention of the industry.
Open source is an important way to promote information technology innovation. It is a technology development and distribution model for open sharing of source code, design documents or other creative content. Maximizing the use of intellectual resources and promoting technological innovation is also an important way to convert the research and development achievements of large enterprises and institutions into the common value of the whole society. The so-called open source (Open Source), that is, open source code, the concept comes from the “Free Software Guidelines” drafted by Bruce Perens, the president of the famous hacker community Debian in 1998.
Open source and openness, as the key to global digital technology innovation, will be officially written into the “14th Five-Year Plan” at the end of 2021, and it has become an important national technology strategy. At present, 97% of software developers and 99% of enterprises in the world have used open source software. At the end of 2021, the State Council issued the “14th Five-Year” Digital Economy Development Plan, proposing to support the development of open source communities, open source platforms, and open source projects with independent core technologies, promote the co-construction and sharing of innovative resources, and promote the open evolution of innovation models.
At the Zhongguancun Forum, many technology companies actively expressed their support for open source and opening up, and opened up basic software technologies to the outside world, reflecting the prosperity of China’s open source ecology. Among them, Ant Group announced for the first time the complete layout of open source with key basic software as the core, announcing that all nine core technologies are open source, and at the same time announced the open source solution for rare characters.
According to reports, Ant Group demonstrated the complete layout and achievements of open source technologies accumulated over ten years, focusing on basic software fields such as databases, cloud native, and middleware, and has accumulated nearly 100 community-leading open source projects, nearly 1,600 open source warehouses, 9 core open source projects, such as “2022 World Artificial Intelligence Conference Town Hall Treasure” argot privacy computing technology stack, distributed database OceanBase, the industry’s first cryptography technology “Copper Lock” certified by commercial cryptography products and other self-developed core technologies .
During the forum and exhibition, the reporter interviewed Wang Xu, Chief Architect of Ant Group’s Trusted Native Technology Department.
Economic Observation Network: For the general public, how to understand softwareopen source this thing？
Wang Xu:A simple understanding is to open up the source code and “how the software is written” so that everyone can see it. The earliest open source thing is called free software, which means that the source code is the common spiritual wealth of mankind, and it should be shared. It’s like saying that the author of the book can sell the book to make money, but the knowledge in the book should be shared by everyone. Therefore, the software should also share the code so that everyone can learn it. This is the basic idea of open source.
Open source software started in the 1980s, and it has been 40 years since then. In the last 20 to 30 years, open source has gradually been combined with business. Why is this? That is to say, when the author makes the source code of the software open, more people can participate and collaborate. A person’s imagination is always limited. If more people participate, more innovations will emerge. It turns out that only the original author can think about it, and he may not be able to come up with it until he retires. After the software is open source, it can brainstorm and greatly increase the speed of innovation. It is likely to come up with it in a year or two, so software open source is regarded as a catalyst for innovation.
Economic Observation Network: Open source seems to have the attribute of public welfare, but it is obviously not public welfare. What is the consideration of commercial interests?
Wang Xu: From a commercial point of view, when a company releases its source code, it definitely hopes to have a commercial return. Open source is similar to “try before you buy” in traditional business. When users see the code, they can run it, but if you want to run better, you generally need more support. At this time, commercial support after open source can follow up Once this matter is closed, it will become a complete ecosystem.
The theme of the Zhongguancun Forum this time is open cooperation and shared future, which contains the concept of “win-win business“, which is very in line with the concept of Ant Group. Ant Group concentrates on open-source basic technologies, namely cloud-native technologies in the cloud era, as well as encryption technologies often used in commercial software. For example, the “copper lock” of our open source encryption algorithm is a national secret algorithm, and it also includes the large-scale distributed database technology OceanBase, which are all basic technologies. After these technologies are open source, everyone can build businesses based on these technologies, so it does not conflict with our business goals.
Antdegine, like Ant, is a very popular open source project in the world. Many young people come into contact with software and codes, and they can see it from a browser. Open source technology like this is beneficial to the innovation and development of young people. Very beneficial.
Economic Observation Network: Please give an example to talk about the open source technology and its characteristics.
Wang Xu:For example, the distributed database OceanBase we just mentioned, and the graph database Tugraph we recently promoted. The graph here does not refer to pictures, but actually refers to “points and connections”. What is “points and connections”? In fact, each of us is a point, and the acquaintance between us is the connection. For example, in the relationship between us, in addition to the legality judgment, is there possible fraud? Could there be money laundering? This uses some pictures. Ant Group is a leader in the field of graph technology, so we open up its stand-alone version, which can make the whole industry take a big step forward.
In addition, there is also a privacy computing framework “crypto”, which is also a relatively important scientific research technology for us. In addition, open source and sharing should also pay attention to protecting privacy. In fact, security, privacy and sharing are combined with each other.
Economic Observation Network: Everyone is more concerned aboutChinese Character Pick Up Project, what kind of technology is this? What’s the point of it being open source?
Wang Xu:This is a larger project we brought this time, which is the Chinese Character Pickup Project for open source and rare characters. In real life, many people use nice and quaint rare characters when naming their names, but these characters are difficult to write. The earliest digitization of Chinese characters was done decades ago, and only more than 6,000 of the most commonly used Chinese characters were made. In today’s digital age, these rare characters have great troubles when inputting: buying train tickets, handling banking business, and rare characters will encounter troubles.
Ant Group noticed this problem very early, so it introduced the plan of rare characters. In order to solve this problem, it has done a lot of related real-name authentication. Now the new national standard 18030 includes more than 20,000 Chinese characters, which is about three times larger than the original 6,000 commonly used Chinese characters. Some new Chinese characters are completely included, but the original input method may not be able to input. Come in. Then our Chinese character picking up plan is to help everyone input rare characters. After this technology is open-sourced, it can solve the embarrassment and difficulties of many people. This matter sounds like a small thing, but in the digital age, it can solve a big trouble in life when implemented to specific people.
Economic Observation Network: To Ant GroupSpeaking, choose when to opensource some techniques andopenwhich technologies,Yes or nostill operatingStrategic considerations?
Wang Xu:Yes, the matter of open source code, historically speaking, first started from academia, because researchers advocate knowledge sharing, but for commercial companies, they resisted it at first, which conflicted with commercial interests . But the current business ecology is already in a different situation. After your technology is open, it will be easier to enter and more users can use it. When they use it, they are building an ecology based on your technology, and everyone will trust you more.
There are some technologies, such as the underlying technologies of some basic operating systems, but few people have mastered these technologies, and only by working together can we do better. For Ant Group, I am from Ant’s infrastructure team. If you can’t open source and let everyone communicate, then we are not willing to use such technology.
Economic Observation Network: This isWhyWoolen cloth？
Wang Xu:Because there are not many people in the world who have mastered such a core technology, it does not particularly help you to develop your business, and open source it will not cause any loss to yourself. But if you open source it, others may help you find problems, and eventually help you improve it and perfect it. This is a mutual promotion.
In general, we also need to judge which technologies need to be open sourced, which technologies do not need to be open sourced, and which technologies are open sourced to benefit society.
Economic Observation Network: Can it be understood in this way, software source codeAfter open source sharing,existWhile benefiting the society, it will ultimatelymeetingConducive to their own development?
Wang Xu:That’s the logic. Open source has been commercialized for more than 20 years, and it is still thriving after such a long journey. In fact, it proves that open source is mutually beneficial to everyone. It is not a single-round game, but a collaborative development.
Economic Observation Network: Ant Group’sopen source is usTechnology SystemofAll open sourcestillPartially open source?As far as open source is concerned, we shouldhow comeunderstand?
Wang Xu:As far as this time is concerned, of course we have a choice, focusing on the open source of the basic technology, and the social effect will be the best after open source.
In addition, we must maintain neutrality after open source. Open source means giving up part of the control and allowing others to participate. Only when everyone has a sense of participation will they contribute and make this matter better. We often educate the team that open source is not about showing off our muscles, showing off our influence, or showing how hard-core we are, but about getting everyone involved and building an innovative ecosystem.
The proportion and quantity of open source you mentioned is actually difficult to quantify, because new codes are generated every day. For us, every application on Alipay is supported by open source projects. Including the distributed architecture, distributed database, and security isolation technology here. Our choice of open source technology can only be said to wait until a technology is mature and ready to be shared, and we will share it.
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