Sunwah - PearL Linux
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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 keep trying very best to promote OSS technology on one hand, and strive to find a way to sponsor itself in achieving its goals.
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[edit] Evolvement
Since its incorporation, SWP positioned itself in open source technology transfer centre of the region. It developed many skill transfer programs based on open source. At the early years, SWP's own developed programs are module by module based on specific OS application or programming language application. In 2005, SWP starts to become more focus in information security.
Besides short training programs, SWP started to work on higher education programs. Based on the technology infrastructure, SWP cooperates with the 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 and information security. SWP and The University of Sunderland cooperate to offer BA (Hons) Top-up Graphic Design program in Hong Kong.
[edit] Difficult Time
SWP encountered difficult times:
1. SARS
Positioned as a skill transfer centre, the major revenue source is by delivering skill transfer training class. When SARS attacked the region in 2003, utterly alway training activity stopped. It put SWP in a financial difficult crises.
2. Linux & OSS Business
As the revenue model was not based on grand of anysort, whilst pure Linux & OSS business might not generate suffice revenue to keep SWP going. SWP had to re-think its way to survive or its own generated funding would be ended by mid-2004.
[edit] 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 & BSD, and on programming including PHP, Java, MySQL database, Ajax, XML, JavaScript, Extreme programming and many others.
[edit] OSS Events
SWP has honor to conduct many technical seminars on open source technology. Some open source figurehead like Zeev Suraski, Jeremy Allison, Andrew Tridgell, Jon Hall (programmer), etc were also guest speakers of its seminars.
SWP also took the initiative to organize the first Software Freedom Day in Hong Kong in 2007.
[edit] Community Links
During the years, SWP has been contributing into some international and local open communities. Some of them include the International ICT Council, The Hong Kong Linux User Group, The Opensource Application Knowledge Association, The Linux Professional Institute, The Hong Kong Samba Association, Software Freedom Day, etc.
[edit] The Team
Board of Directors:
Dr. Lui Sun Wing
Dr. 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
[edit] 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, Big 5 & 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 grant vision being one of the major stream assisting the Linux & OSS development in Hong Kong and the 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.
