On November 5, 2008, the grand opening ceremony of The 6th OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008 was held in Diaoyutai State Guesthouse undertaken by Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Technology Company Limited("Redflag 2000") and Peking University.

During the ceremony, Chen Ying, Deputy Director with Software Service Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Dr. Zhang Boxu, director of the Management Committee of Beijing Economic-Technological Development Zone, Chen Chong, Board Chairman of China Software Industry Association, Lu Shouqun, Promotion Union Chairman of OSS, Ni Guangnan, Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Yu Pun Hoi, President of Redflag 2000, Hu Caiyong, General Manager of Redflag 2000, Louis Suarez-Potts, International Community Chairman of OpenOffice.org, and world known representatives from IBM, Sun and Novell attended the ceremony and made speeches. Feng Jichun, Head of the High-tech Development and Industrialization Department under the Ministry of Science and Technology, and Malin, Director of Beijing Science and Technology Committee, both of who originally planned to give speeches, were unable to present, and thus represented by Qiang Xiaozhe, Chief to the Space Section of the High-tech Development and Industrialization Department, and Wang Rongbin, Deputy Director of Beijing Science and Technology Committee, respectively. Mr. Qiang and Mr. Wang congratulated on the opening warmly.

Grand opening ceremony of The 6th OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008

The OpenOffice.org annual conference (OOo Conference for short) is sponsored by OpenOffice.org International Community, one of the three big open source communities in the world. The first OOo Conference was held in 2002, and five conferences had been held until now, with main focus on the technical trend and development prospects of open source software, such as OpenOffice.org. The discussion hotspot in every OOo Conference would be straightly reflected in the following development of OpenOffice.org software. The OpenOffice.org office software by the community is the only single one in the world to compete with Microsoft Office, and meanwhile the biggest application software in open source field, with more than 100 supporting languages and 100 million downloads.

In October 2008, one week after the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 new edition, it quickly achieved 3million downloads by users, 80% of who were Windows users. In China, domestic office software based on open source represented by RedOffice is widely applied in government organs, education, finance, telecom, energy resources, etc. The development of OpenOffice.org and other open source software is to impose great impact on the monopoly, thus this year's conference attracted great attentions from home and abroad. Up to the deadline, there had been 608 open source experts from 30 countries or regions signed up for it. Its scale was the biggest so far. Meanwhile, in paper submission, it yet boasted another apparent feature: Many Asian national governments, such as Japan, South Korea, Burma, Malaysia and India, paying extra attention to the conference, had attended it and submitted papers to exchange ideas of OpenOffice.org product's application and research in various countries.

Hu Caiyong, General Manager of Redflag 2000

In accordance with the open source spirit, namely open, fair and devoting, the scale and influence of OOo Conference are getting up each year, discussion topics and areas expanding, deeply contributing to the development of world open source technology.

The OpenOffice.org Annual Conference was also the first to be held in Beijing, China, that is off Europe, a great inspiration to open source lovers in China as well as the whole Asia. Dr. Ma Lin, Director of Beijing Science and Technology Committee, commented that the fact (meaning the conference first held in China) indicated that the cooperation between China and international community had achieved a new level, a landmark in China's open source campaign and an acknowledgement in Beijing's open source work. Over the past years, Beijing has been actively participating in research and application of open source software, continuously following up and testing the mainstream open source products, such as OpenOffice.org, and returning feedback in time to the international community, contributing greatly to the further improvement of open source software.

Yu Pun Hoi, President of Redflag 2000

Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Technology Company Limited, winner in the bid for hosting of the conference and bringing the conference into China, is a representative in the uprising Chinese open source power, and important member to facilitate the development of open source in Beijing. In recent years, they had increased uninterruptedly their participation and contribution to the community, becoming the second biggest contributor to the OpenOffice.org international community and being highly recognized by it. In the global voting of OOo Conference closed this year in March, Redflag 2000 beat the five European competitors by absolute advantage and won the bid for hosting this year's conference. In the half-year preparation, Hu Caiyong, General Manager of Redflag 2000 was keeping close interaction and contact with the OpenOffice.org international community, deepening into study of processes and routines of the past few OOo Conferences, determined to held an original OOo technology conference in China that goes with open source spirit and satisfies the appeal of open source lovers.

With the discussion subject of "Green, Ecologic and Friendly - Open Source Software's Universal Responsibility", The OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008 mainly focused on taking environmental protection as a responsibility of IT industry, making OpenOffice.org interface more user-friendly and energy-saving; making OpenOffice.org open up to a third-party software system and facilitating their integration; strengthening the realization and integration of opening criteria; respecting different cultures, providing and enhancing free customization of OpenOffice.org; meeting customers' needs and helping them increase productivity so as to popularize OpenOffice.org. Yu Pun Hoi, President of Redflag 2000, addressed mainly in his speech his and Redflag 2000's recognition stride and concrete practice, vowing to make more efforts to improve the software's efficiency, simplicity and reliability and shoulder more environmental protecting responsibilities. Meanwhile, he also mentioned the deep influence open source technology was to exert on the nation's IT industrial development, deeply stated the connection among technology, creativity and service model, etc. based on how to promote our IT development as well as the exploration for new commercial values, so as to achieve the goal of promoting international technology interaction and leading the industrial development.

After the opening ceremony, most of the conference and all forums are to be held in Peking University, China's highest education institution. There is an original open source technology conference is to be officially presented in front of the world. One can communicate with the world's top open source experts face to face while enjoying the clashes of latest technologies and ideas. The conference is to attract more people to know and use open source, more enterprises and open source lovers to participate in the community so as to facilitate the overall development of China's software industry and apply more quickly to the new round of industrial transformation.