This Week in Collaboration: Is China Copying GitHub? | August 24, 2020

China pushes for open source development with a government-backed initiative for cloud-based code sharing like GitHub, RingByName, and Otter.ai launch new collaboration solutions.

GitHub Finds a New Competitor in China-backed Gitee

China is working hard to plug the gaps in its technology sector, the latest of which is the creation of a GitHub-esque cloud-based open source code hosting platform. The country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has selected Shenzhen Aosi Network Technology Co., Ltd., to lead the charge in the development of China’s own software development collaboration platform. 

The Shenzhen-based company will lead a consortium of companies that “will rely on Code Cloud Gitee to build an independent open source hosting platform in China,” according to a blog post by Gitee.

Led by Shenzhen Aosi Network Technology, the consortium consists of private players, and research institutions likeOpens a new window Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd., Suzhou Prism Colorful Information Technology Co. Ltd., National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, The Fifth Institute of Electronics, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Southwest University of Science and Technology, and China Electronics Standardization Institute.

Gitee’s blog post says, “the development of open source is the only way for China to improve the level of the information technology industry, a key link and a necessary choice.” Multiple interpretations could be derived from this. It is, without a doubt, clear that the Chinese are now more than vary of the implications of the United States-China trade war. 

Moreover, deteriorating confidence among trade partners like India, Australia, Japan, not to mention the U.S. has severely impacted the Asian power’s industrial output. Another key factor is that GitHub in 2019 blocked accessibility to developers from certain countries as per the U.S. government sanctions. This barred countries like Iran, Syria, and Crimea to access private repositories and marketplace.

To comply with US sanctions, we unfortunately had to implement new restrictions on private repos and paid accounts in Iran, Syria, and Crimea.

Public repos remain available to developers everywhere – open source repos are NOT affected.

— Nat Friedman (@natfriedman) July 28, 2019Opens a new window

GitHub was also briefly banned in ChinaOpens a new window in 2013. The platform was a rising star then and had three million developers. GitHub now has 32 millionOpens a new window monthly visitors and over 100 million repositories.

Gitee claims they are a community of more than five million developers and hosting over ten million repositories. The seven-year-old company is all set to play a pivotal role in developing the open source undertaking.

“Don’t dare to speak big words, we hope that Gitee is a useful platform for developers, we hope it is an open source platform that can form its own characteristics, and we hope that more developers can participate in the open source army,” saidOpens a new window the Founder of Open Source China, who goes by the nickname Hongshu (Sweet Potato in English). 

He adds, “The construction of an open source ecosystem is not an overnight effort, but a process of gathering sand into a tower. We believe in the creativity of Chinese developers, and we also believe in our persistence and hard work.”

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Free Video Collaboration Service Launched by RingByName

RingByName launched a new web application for video collaboration as a free offering. Called R! MeetOpens a new window , the web app leverages WebRTC to support browser-based communication in real-time. It eliminates the need for additional software downloads for voice as well as video collaboration and ‘can host hundreds of people per meeting session’. 

Kooi Lim, CEO for RingByName says, “R! Meet allows users with a desktop computer or a smartphone to participate in virtual meetings and is designed to bring co-workers, customers, and friends and family together although they are apart.”

Current features include:

• Group video meetings, broadcasts to thousands, and screen sharing
• Session recording
• Meet scheduling
• Capture session data metrics for meet analytics
• Enables users to exercise firewall-control, regional isolation, and compliance certification options

RingByName plans to release an enterprise version of the solution that will feature service integrations with R! Web and R! Mobile for end-to-end assistance.

See Also: Evernote Co-Founder’s ‘mmhmmm’ Promises Virtual Meetings That Don’t Suck

Otter.ai Streamlines Virtual Event Content Generation  

Otter.ai launched a new collaboration service for enterprise-level events. Otter for Events is built for hosting virtual, live or in-person events and provides a hub for sharing rich content during multi-track virtual or in-person events. 

Otter.ai’s solution features the following: 

• Public and private group: mainly for recording and content sharing from the event, either during or after the event
• Zoom Webinars: available for Otter for Teams subscribers, who can launch Otter Live Notes directly from the Zoom webinar; available at no additional cost
• Live transcription: transcription of multiple sessions at once is possible, which allows the audience to access Otter Live Notes from all sessions
• Live collaboration: live interactive transcript view and the ability to raise questions during an ongoing event, virtual or otherwise
• Embedded Otter.ai player: features the Otter.ai player to access a session transcript in real-time

One of the major advantages of Otter.ai is that event organizers can generate, access, share content from all types of events. This includes control over how and where it is shared, thereby exerting a near-total control over the audience engagement. 

Meanwhile, the audience —  right from casual viewers, to stakeholders and journalists can get their hands on all relevant information or content at any time, alleviating the pressure to stay alert at all times. 

Otter for Events was recently used for transatlantic New York-New Belfast Conference 2020 hosted by Aisling Events. Mairtin O’Muilleoir, Founder of Aisling Events said, “The benefits are clear to us as we were able to boost engagement with attendees, extend the reach of our sponsors and we also have access to really rich, valuable content in the form of Otter.ai’s accurate transcriptions during and after the conference. Otter.ai adds a new dimension to events that will transcend when we can all gather again face-to-face.”

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