HKPC and Red Hat Jointly Organize Open Source Software Forum

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, and the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) today (24 April 2007) jointly organized the "Michael Tiemann Keynote Speech and Hong Kong Open Source Software Forum".

Mr Michael Tiemann, President of Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Vice President, Open Source Affairs of Red Hat, presented a keynote speech on "Being Successful with Open Source, Locally and Globally". Local academic institutions, industry professionals, and representatives of business associations participated in the panel discussion on the future development of the Open Source industry in Hong Kong.

As one of the pioneers in the promotion of Open Source, Mr Tiemann published the GNU C++ compiler, the first native-code C++ compiler and debugger in 1989. His early work led to the creation of leading Open Source technologies and the first Open Source business model. In his address, he presented the relationship between software copyright and Open Source, and the impact of Open Source software innovation on software development.

On the application of Open Source in academic areas, he pointed out that there were over 15,000 entries available through the MIT's Open Courseware and over 1,100 related programmes have been translated for the Mainland market.

In today's Forum, Mr Gordon Lo, Principal Consultant (IT Industry Development) of HKPC, introduced the Software Product Porting Support Programme, launched recently with funding support from the HKSAR Government. This is yet another initiative of HKPC to support the adoption of Open Source software. Earlier, HKPC has announced the establishment of the Hong Kong Open Source Software Centre (HKOSSC) in 2007.

Panelists at the Forum included Mr Barry Lo, Regional Sales Director, Hong Kong & Taiwan of Red Hat; Professor Kam Fai Wong, Director, Centre for Innovation and Technology, Faculty of Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Mr Jeff Chui, Manager of Linux Business, IBM China/Hong Kong Limited; Mr Alan Kan, Chairman, Hong Kong Linux Association; Dr Samson Tam, Vice Chairman, Information and Software Industry Association; and Mr Zunix Ling of the Open Standard Support Organization.

For further information on the Forum, please contact Mr Steve Lau of HKPC at tel. (852) 2788 6081, or e-mail: stevelau@hkpc.org.

For media enquiries, please contact:
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HKPC
Tel: (852) 2788 5895
Fax: (852) 2788 5056
E-mail: justina@hkpc.org
Website: www.hkpc.org

Ms Rachel Wong
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24 April 2007