Sunwah - PearL Linux (previously spelled as Sun Wah – PearL Linux, abbreviation SWP) is a joint venture of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Sunwah Group (previously spelled as Sun Wah Group). Sunwah - PearL Linux established the (SWP) Sunwah - PearL Linux Training & Development Centre on the university campus on January 2001. Over the years, SWP keeps trying its best to promote open source software (OSS) technology on one hand, and to strive to find a way to finance itself in achieving its goals.
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Evolution
Since its incorporation, SWP has positioned itself as the open source technology transfer centre of its region. It developed many skill transfer programs based on open source. In the early years, SWP's own developed programs are module by module based on specific applications for operating systems or programming languages. In 2005, SWP started to become more of a focus in information security.
Besides short training programs, SWP started to work on Higher Education (HE) programs. Based on the technology infrastructure, SWP cooperates with some United Kingdom universities to offer programs in Hong Kong. Namely, they are the University of Glamorgan and the University of Sunderland. SWP and The University of Glamorgan cooperate to offer postgraduate education in computer forensics, forensic accounting and information security. SWP and The University of Sunderland cooperate to offer BA (Hons) Top-up Graphic Design program in Hong Kong.
In the summer of 2009, SWP became an accredited centre of Edexcel and NCC Education. The accreditation lets SWP offer Foundation Studies and Higher National Diploma (HND) courses.
Difficult times
SWP has had difficult times.
1. In 2003, SARS attacked its region. All training activity stopped. Positioned as a skill transfer centre, the major revenue source is delivering skill transfer training classes. This put SWP in a difficult financial crisis.
2. Linux and OSS business has proven challenging. The revenue model was not based on grants of any sort, while pure Linux and OSS business might not generate enough revenue to keep SWP going. SWP had to rethink a way to survive, or its own generated funding would be ended by mid-2004.
Skill transfer training courses
Since its establishment in January 2001, SWP has been working with open source community on developing skill transfer training. SWP has developed courses on operating systems including Linux and BSD Unix, and on programming including PHP, Java, MySQL database, Ajax, XML, JavaScript, Extreme programming and many others.
OSS events
SWP has had the honor to conduct many technical seminars on open source technology. Some open source leaders like Zeev Suraski, Jeremy Allison, Andrew Tridgell, Jon Hall, and others were also guest speakers at its seminars.
SWP also took the initiative to organize the first Software Freedom Day in Hong Kong in 2007.
Community links
During the years, SWP has been contributing into some international and local open communities. Some of them include the International Information and Communication Technology Council Certification Program, The Hong Kong Linux User Group, The Opensource Application Knowledge Association, The Linux Professional Institute Certification Program, The Hong Kong Samba Association, Software Freedom Day, etc.
The team
Board of Directors:
Dr. Lui Sun Wing
Professor Johnathan Choi
Mr. Andrew Young
Mr. Alwin Wong
Professor Keith Chan
Mr. Alex Banh
Mr. Daniel Lee
Mr. Albert Chung
Operational team:
Many members of the operational team come from the local OSS community. A few of them are active and often contribute columns, articles and publication at local IT or OSS related magazines. General enquiry can be made to enquiry.cs@swpearl.com
Some history
There was a time when there were 3 Hong Kong based Debian developers and a few locally active community members being employed at the Sunwah Group. The Group has developed a special Linux distribution called Sunwah Linux (rays Linux Distribution), which is a Linux desktop distribution specifically addresses the Chinese localization need, i.e. the handling and translation between the Unicode, Big5, and various versions of GB character encodings. Therefore once SWP was proud of the human resource and technical capability they had; and once they had a great vision being one of the major stream assisting Linux and OSS development in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Besides, few members of the group were, indeed, pretty active and represent China at the international events, namely North-East Asia OSS Promotion Forum and Asian Open Source Software Symposium.
The Sunwah Linux (rays Linux Distribution) won the Best Linux Desktop Application at the 2006 LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, Boston.
External links
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