Recently, the first Open Source Club (OSC) by a Chinese university was established by the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). The club is jointly supported by the career services center of the Office of Students Affairs, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) at SUSTech, Linux foundation, Tencent, Huawei, OSTech, and other enterprises and open source organizations. It is also the first university open-source club recognized by Linux Foundation in China.

Yuntian WANG, Founder of the Open Source Club (sophomore of EEE), introduced the idea of setting up an open-source club from a class task. “We usually need to use open source code in some courses, such as power transmission and analog electric experiments. Our team has made a hand-controlled UAV, and some chips used were are open source. I think open source is very important.”

This idea was supported by Ping SHEN, Deputy Director of EEE. He is a fellow of the Optical Society (OSA) and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), and the Global Vice President of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He said that this club was established to attract more students who are interested in programming, open-source, or computer science.

OSC hopes to develop a P2P (partner to partner) model, where students can form teams and cooperate. Students who are especially good at some fields, such as app writing and network security, can offer classes to help junior students choose their research direction and set goals. At the same time, students can organize some activities to improve their organizational and leadership skills.

It also aims to cultivate an open-source culture and learning ability. Students will learn how to do programming and upload data to a shared platform, making them more competitive at work. Open source projects can also help foster the team spirit of students. OSC will invite more mentors in particular areas and jointly hold competitions.