{"id":10490,"date":"2020-08-22T18:49:50","date_gmt":"2020-08-22T14:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/?p=10490"},"modified":"2020-08-26T08:04:41","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T04:04:41","slug":"china-building-github-alternative-called-gitee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/china-building-github-alternative-called-gitee\/","title":{"rendered":"China is building a GitHub alternative called Gitee"},"content":{"rendered":"

The technological decoupling between the U.S. and China has been a boon to Chinese firms \u2014 from chipmakers for\u00a0smartphones<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0electric vehicles<\/a>\u00a0through to software \u2014 that are the backbones of millions of businesses\u2019 daily operations.<\/p>\n

Chinese companies might have established a firm grip on internet services for consumers, but many fundamental technologies undergirding hardware and enterprise software remain in the hands of Western companies. As tech businesses become increasingly entangled in broader geopolitical disputes, their users and clients are feeling the heat. Huawei\u2019s plan to unshackle imported chips is just one oft-cited example of the vulnerability of Chinese firms dependent on foreign tech.<\/p>\n

Another area that has made the tech community restless is source code hosting. Chinese developers rely heavily on\u00a0GitHub,\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0as evident from an\u00a0apparent government ban<\/a>\u00a0of the site in 2013 that prompted former Google<\/a> China head Kai-Fu Lee to speak out. Now the China developer community is wary that political conflict may inflict GitHub.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The scenario is not without precedent. Last July, Microsoft-owned GitHub\u00a0cut off<\/a>\u00a0certain services from users in U.S.-sanctioned countries, including Iran, Syria and Crimea, causing outrage and panic in the global developer community.<\/p>\n

Seven-year-old\u00a0Gitee<\/a>\u00a0is at the center of China\u2019s push to localize businesses\u2019 source codes. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), one of China\u2019s top tech policymakers, recently\u00a0picked<\/a>\u00a0(in Chinese) Gitee to construct an \u201cindependent, open-source code hosting platform for China<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project\u00a0will be carried out by a consortium led by\u00a0Open Source China<\/a>, the Shenzhen-based firm behind its namesake open-source community and Gitee. The hosting service appears to be a government-led effort with support from research universities and participation from the private sector \u2014 a group of 10 organizations including Huawei<\/a>, which is itself suffering from supply chain disruption amid the political storm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf China does not have its own open-source community to maintain and manage source codes, our domestic software industry will be very vulnerable to uncontrollable factors,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Huawei<\/a> executive Wang Chenglu at an event last August, shortly after GitHub acted to comply with U.S. sanctions laws.<\/p>\n

Gitee\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0claims to have hosted more than 10 million open-source repositories and provided services to over 5 million developers so far. For comparison, GitHub\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0having 100 million repositories and around 31 million developers worldwide last November.<\/p>\n

The question is whether Gitee\u2019s platform can convince Chinese developers to migrate from GitHub \u2014 or its\u00a0Tencent-backed<\/a>\u00a0local rival Coding.net \u2014 now that industry titans are onboard to help. It\u2019s also unclear whether GitHub will act to preempt export restrictions, as it hinted at the possibility when its executive\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Financial Times that it\u2019s \u201ckeen\u201d to open a subsidiary in China.<\/p>\n

Gitee is clearly confident there is space for a \u201cChinese alternative\u201d to GitHub.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world should be one where a hundred flowers bloom. The foreign market has GitHub and other kinds of foundations. In China, there are various organizations dedicated to evangelizing open source software, as well as Gitee,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0(in Chinese) Open Source China founder who goes by the nickname \u201cHongshu,\u201d or \u201cSweet Potato.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAn open-source ecosystem can\u2019t be built overnight. It\u2019s a process of building a tower with sand. We have faith in the innovative power of Chinese developers. We also believe in our perseverance and strength to strive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The technological decoupling between the U.S. and China has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":10491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[460,1259,3001],"contributor":[],"class_list":["post-10490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-tech-events","tag-google-2","tag-huawei","tag-miit"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/gitee-e1598000999533.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Techx Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/author\/techxadmin\/"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10490"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techxmedia.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=10490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}