Mozilla in Asia

This news is a few weeks old but nonetheless important to note.

Matrix Partners Establishes USD275mn China Fund

Matrix Partners has a new China fund led by David Zhang, who left WI Harper to join Bo Shao at Matrix. This is news to me because Matrix has funded mobile browser OpenWave and the brand new SkyFire (who use Mozilla’s Gecko engine on the server) and Zhang funded Maxthon at WI Harper.

This year I will be focusing more on evangelism of Mozilla in Asia and so I was glad to be able to accept an opportunity to speak about open source and Mozilla in Asia at the upcoming Lift 08 Conference in Geneva, Feb. 6-8, 2008.

My presentation as it stands right now will use Mozilla as an example of open source in Asia, looking at our situation in both East and South East Asia.  I will try to address Glyn Moody’s question about the weakness of GNU/Linux in Japan, and puncture some myths in the process, but I’m not sure there is a clear answer for this complex question.

I would very much appreciate any information you may have about the success or lack thereof of open source software in Asia.  Feel free to leave me comments here.

Also, if you are attending Lift08, please say hello and introduce yourself to me.  I look forward to meeting fellow Lift 08 attendees and hope to hear from others who are working on open source in Asia.

Jasmina Tesanovic and Gen Kanai added to the speaker program

Although not directly relevant to Mozilla, this recent Technical Report: Studying Malicious Websites and the Underground Economy on the Chinese Web on security in the Chinese Internet looks very interesting.  Amazing to see that gaming fuels the underground economy and that many of the transactions are done via Baidu and Taobao (which would be Google and eBay in the US.)

Ryan Naraine from ZDNet breaks out some of the key findings:

• “The market price of a Trojan is between tens to thousands Renminbi (RMB), and a package of 0-day powerful Trojan generator and evasion service can be up to several ten thousands RMB. 10 RMB is as of November 2007 equivalent to $1.34 US dollar.”

• “The administrators of certain personal websites attract visitors with the help of free goodies, e.g., free movies, music, software, or tools. These websites often betray their visitors: they sell the traffic (i.e., website visits) of their websites to Envelopes Stealers (people that buy traffic and malware) by hosting the Web-based Trojans. This means that innocent websites visitors are redirected via these malicious websites to other sites that then attack the victims. If the attack is successful, a piece of malware is installed on the victim’s machine.” The going rate: 40 to 60 RMB per 10,000 IP visits.

• Gamers are the linchpin of China’s underground economy. These folks are the victims of virtual asset theft–powers in games and virtual money. Without their demand, hackers wouldn’t have much to sell.

• Bulletin boards are the communications tool of choice. Specifically, Baidu’s bulletin board is popular with hackers. “One of the most prominent places for such markets within China is the Baidu Post Bar, the largest bulletin board community in China but with weak administration. Advertisements can be commonly found on several pertinent post bars at the site post.baidu.com. This system has a keyword-based structure, and there are no other entries to the post bar: if you do not know the keyword to search for, you will not find any malicious entries. The actors within the black market have their own, unique jargon, and thus it is hard for an outsider to find any information about this threat. The actual trading of virtual assets happens on public market places like Taobao. These very common online business platforms within the WWW are used by the cyber criminals to advertise and sell their goods. After a trade was successful and a Player has bought a virtual good, the money is sent commonly via Alipay.”

Technical Report: Studying Malicious Websites and the Underground Economy on the Chinese Web

For those of you who are interested, Mozilla Online, Mozilla’s official affiliate in China, has announced a partnership with Baidu around search in simplified Chinese versions of Firefox.

Baidu.com (BIDU.NASDAQ) has established cooperation with Mozilla Online Ltd., a subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation, the provider of Firefox web browser, under which Baidu search engine will be embedded into all Chinese editions of the web browser, and Mozilla Online will charge Baidu for this service, Sina.com reported.

Firefox to install Baidu search engine

As web browser diversity broadens both on mobile and the desktop, web site compatibility and support of open web standards are more and more important.

In light of the non-compatibility of many websites in Asia outside of Internet Explorer, an open source software promotion forum funded by the governments of China, Japan and Korea have pooled resources to prepare a report that extensively reports on the discrepancies in web interoperability looking at the dominant browser (Internet Explorer) and the leading open source browser (Firefox.) This is not necessarily new information per se, but it is information that was compiled by web experts from China, Japan and Korea.

The foreword of the report states:

NEAOSS Forum (Northeast Asia Open Source Software promotion Forum) was formed by China, Korea and Japan governments and regional organizations for OSS promotion; China OSS Promotion Union, Korea OSS Promotion Forum and Japan OSS Promotion Forum. The Forum intends to promote Open Source Software in the northeast Asia area. NEAOSS Forum formed “WG3: Standardization and Certification Study” in order to study Open Source Software standardization and certification in July 2004. NEAOSS Forum WG3 formed subsidiary group SWG2 in June 2006 to accelerate promotion of OSS, to enhance Web interoperability between an existing proprietary browser, which currently has large market share, and OSS Web browsers. This document was prepared by the NEAOSS Forum WG3 and is classified as Technical Report type 3.

Northeast Asia OSS Promotion Forum Working Group 3 - Report of Web interoperability discrepancy (pdf)

Abstract: This technical report is to identify current situation of Web interoperability and to provide information to public. By figuring out and classifying the Web interoperability discrepancies, this report provides the foundation of further research.

The summary of the report states:

There are total 168 discrepancies reported in the survey. The result of this survey, however, does not reveal all discrepancies between IE and Firefox. It is impossible to gather all discrepancies because this laborious work is similar to fixing all bugs of software.

… (long list of incompatibilities)

It is important that Web developer make their Web content with opened [sic] and widely used format to be accessed by many users.

I am often asked about web site compatibility in Japan or Asia. While this report only covers China, Japan and Korea, it is a clear indication that website compatibility has a long way to go in North East Asia. As the report says, it is “the foundation of further research.”

Nice to see Tencent’s WebQQ service supporting Firefox.

Tencent (0700.HK) updated its web-based instant messaging service Web QQ with a new interface and improved speed and stability, according to a post on Sohu’s (Nasdaq: SOHU) online forum. The updated version also supports Mozilla’s FireFox browser.

Pacific Epoch - Tencent Adds Support For FireFox

Popular avatar-based virtual community Habbo Hotel has closed their China site.

Dear visitors:
unfortunately we have some bad news for you: since August 24, 2007 Habbo.cn has been closed at least temporarily, and possibly for a long time. Our Habbo Staff is currently working hard to find a way to continue the service in the future - you will be informed about the situation as soon as we know. We are really sorry about this. Meanwhile you can choose to visit other Habbo services all over the world.

Billsdue says that this is because Shockwave never took off in China. Such is the fickle nature of proprietary browser plugins.

Mozilla is working on better compatibility with non-English fonts in Firefox 3 for the Macintosh platform (changing defaults) and would love some help/feedback.

We have been told that the current default serif font for Mac “Song” is actually not widely installed (it looks like a MS font actually.)  If you use the simplified Chinese version of Firefox on the Mac, what we call the zh-CN version, could you:

a) confirm (in the comments) if the font “Song” is a default font

b) if “Song” is not a default serif font, could you let me know what you would recommend for a Simplified Chinese serif font that is default to the Mac platform?

Thank you in advance!
Gen

I’d prefer to see the study first-hand but it ‘feels’ accurate to me. Japanese youth spend more time on their cellphones and less time on PCs.

Chinese youth spend nearly five hours a day on a computer, double the amount of computer-use for Japanese youth, reports Beijing Youth Daily quoting data from China’s Tsinghua University and Japan’s news agency Nikkei Inc (Japan Business News). The data is based on Tsinghua University and Nikkei’s joint survey of 1,200 youths in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Osaka. According to the survey, 92 percent of Chinese youth use search engines and a 65.8 percent chat online.

Pacific Epoch - Study: Chinese Youths PC Usage Double That Of Japanese Counterparts

Tech Republic has a good summary of an excellent article by David Kirkpatrick of Fortune, who followed Bill Gates when he visited China in April 2007. The Fortune article goes over how and why Microsoft became successful in China, but I’m not sure how many lessons others can take from this history because Microsoft is such a unique entity. That being said, it’s important to see the trends in corporate strategy with respect to China, and the weaknesses of open-source in Asia (specifically Red Flag Linux in China.)
How Microsoft beat Linux in China and what it means for freedom, justice, and the price of software [Tech Republic]

How Microsoft conquered China [Fortune]