How OpenCloudOS Is Driving China’s Cloud‑Native OS Revolution

Chinese operating system companies are shifting from open‑source users to contributors and even technology leaders.

On June 22, during the 2022 OpenCloudOS Community Open Day, the domestic open‑source OS OpenCloudOS officially released its first source community (L1) project and the first full‑package (L3) version, unveiling its technical development roadmap.

This marks OpenCloudOS as China’s first server OS with end‑to‑end domestic capabilities, providing enterprises with a controllable upstream version and a software supply version that meets enterprise‑grade stability requirements.

Operating systems are core infrastructure software essential for technology research and development. Historically, China’s OS industry was fragmented and considered a “bottleneck” technology, facing risks of being blocked as competition intensifies.

In recent years, the situation has improved dramatically. On December 22, 2021, the OpenCloudOS open‑source community was officially established by OS and hardware vendors together with individual developers, aiming to develop a domestically controllable, next‑generation cloud‑native OS featuring stable, production‑validated releases and an open ecosystem.

To date, the OpenCloudOS community and its derivatives have been installed on over 10 million devices across twelve major industries such as banking, insurance, and securities, enduring extensive real‑world testing.

During the 2022 OpenCloudOS Community Open Day, Sun Wenlong, Secretary‑General of the Open Atom Foundation, praised the community for gathering diverse enterprises, universities, research institutions, and developers to co‑create an open ecosystem.

Xie Ming, Vice President of Tencent Cloud, highlighted Tencent’s ten‑year OS expertise and its open‑source contributions such as TencentOS Server and TencentOS Tiny.

Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation noted cultural and language barriers in global open‑source collaboration, commending Tencent’s significant contributions.

Yang Jiguo, Vice Chair of the OpenCloudOS Community and Director of Intel’s Open‑Source Technology Center, reported that 47 well‑known enterprises and institutions—including Tencent, Intel, ZTE, JD Cloud, Baode, and top Chinese universities—participate in community co‑construction.

The council, comprising representatives from 26 organizations such as Haiyun Jiexun, JD Cloud, OPPO, and Tencent, elected Xie Ming as community chair, Yang Jiguo as vice chair, and other leaders for the technical supervision committee and TOC.

The Linux supply chain is described as a river with three stages: L1 (upstream source), L2 (enterprise‑grade stable version), and L3 (downstream community‑re‑distribution). OpenCloudOS’s source community operates at L1, independent of any commercial or community distribution, using the latest upstream kernel and user‑space software.

Future plans include releasing the first official source community version (OpenCloudOS Stream 22.12) and a second major community version, further satisfying enterprise autonomy needs.

In the cloud‑native era, OpenCloudOS will support server, desktop, embedded, and edge scenarios, with dedicated SIGs for each.

Standardization expert Fan Kefeng emphasized that OS standards should be developed alongside community technology, urging active participation in OS standardization to build secure, interoperable systems.

The event also launched the “Open‑Source Star Project – 100 People for Operating Systems” to support developers and academia through mentorship, hands‑on training, and incentives, fostering broader contributions to the domestic open‑source OS ecosystem.